For the past couple of years, content marketing has been a buzz word impossible to escape, and in light of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm, investment in content is no longer optional – it is critical.
The impact of content on your blog and website should not be underestimated. Your content affects everything from your ability to attract new customers and retain the loyalty of existing customers right through to heavily influencing where your website ranks in search engine results.
1) Content helps a business to attract new customers
Platforms such as StumbleUpon, Flipboard, Pinterest and numerous others aid content discovery. They serve users content that is tailored towards an individuals interests and preferences.
Promoting your content on such platforms and encouraging readers to do so by including social sharing tools on your content page, is a great way of increasing the reach of your content. This would otherwise be limited to your website visitors, people signed up to your mailing list or blog visitors.
Your content conveys your USP’s and helps to differentiate you
When you produce great content, not only does it help to differentiate you from your competitors, but people will naturally want to share and talk about it too. When people talk about your content or share links on social media, your content has the potential to reach far more people and gives you the opportunity to tell your story. This helps to build trust and create an emotional connection; both critical components in the conversion process.
As well as improving brand awareness and driving traffic, content that is shared also provides valuable links back to your website or blog, which has a direct impact on SEO. In order for this to happen however, you need to be frequently publishing relevant, interesting and helpful content.
2) Content helps to influence the buying decision
Your content can help customers overcome common pain points. By understanding the needs of your customers, you can help them complete the enquiry or purchasing process as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Great content that will have a positive influence on your conversion rate include detailed products specification and clear 360 degree product views. It could be in-depth technical information like installation guides or system compatibility. Your content might be helpful, giving customers detailed information about your delivery or returns procedure or it might provide useful insights or add value in other ways.
As long as your content effectively answers all of the questions or concerns a customer might have prior to making a purchase, you will maximise your chances of converting them. Likewise, if you have poor product images, limited information on your services or incomplete technical data, your chances of converting visitors will drop substantially. Especially if you have competitors that are providing better quality information than you do.
3) Content plays a crucial role in how well your website ranks
The content on your website has a big impact on SEO and will determine the theme and authority of your website. The more theme relevant your content, the better it is in terms of building authority – an important SEO ranking signal.
Making sure your content is relevant seems obvious enough, but this can often be overlooked when it comes to blogs. Your blog shouldn’t be seen as a separate entity and needs to support the theme of your website.
Don’t go off on a tangent and talk about topics that have little relevance to your business or target audience. Writing content for the sake of having content isn’t a worthwhile activity. Remember that relevance and quality need to be maintained at all times.
Since the latest Google algorithm updates, over-optimised content will damage your website and can result in a Google penalty. Before you start thinking about creating new content, it’s a good idea to make sure that existing content is up to scratch by giving it an audit and taking steps to remove any old or outdated SEO methods that could be harming your websites ability to rank well.
Find out more about the Google Hummingbird Algorithm and The Changes You Need To Know About.
4) Content gives you something to say on social media
Every time you update content on your website, add a case study, news or blog article, you have a great excuse to post on social media. Promoting content on social media will help you to grab peoples attention and will also help you to drive closely targeted traffic to your website.
Useful and interesting content creates engagement on social networks
Posting interesting, relevant and unique content helps you to tell your story, reinforces a positive brand perception and helps you to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Maintaining the quality and relevance of your own content and all that you curate, will help you to grab and keep peoples attention. This gives you the opportunity to start conversations that keep your business or brand firmly in mind.
Summary
Content will continue to play the most important aspect of SEO for the foreseeable future. Poor quality and stagnant content is not considered valuable by Google. In order to be effective, content creation needs to be seen as an on-going, rather than a one-off activity.
The publishing and promotion of theme relevant, quality content on a regular basis via a blog, is now essential and something that businesses can’t afford to put off any longer.
We can create great content for you!
Here at Surefire we create quality content for a wide number of clients. Whatever your objectives are, we can help you to improve your website content, plan your content marketing strategy, keep your blog up to date or provide you with day-to-day social media management.