By now you know how important search engine optimization (SEO) can be in creating a successful marketing campaign. You’ve seen the statistics: SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while direct mail and print advertising only have a close rate of 1.7%.
Yes, SEO is a powerful tool. But what do you think of when you hear the term “search engine optimization”? Keywords? Backlinks? It’s all about mastering the algorithm, right?
Wrong. While these things are essential for search optimization to work, the technical aspects of SEO represent just one side of the coin. If your SEO technique does not utilize good content marketing, you will not get the results you are hoping for.
How Do You Know Content Marketing Actually Works?
Content marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on creating valuable, relevant, and high-quality content to attract a target audience and increase a website’s online visibility. When done right, it naturally incorporates keywords into a piece of text that internet users actually want to read, or better yet, share with their friends.
The biggest challenge B2B marketers face in regards to lead generation is acquiring high-quality leads. But if you want to use SEO to attract leads, then it’s really quite simple: quality content attracts quality leads. SEO experts have reported that content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing and costs 62% less.
But while more people are relying on content marketing, many companies still don’t fully understand its benefits. Yes, content should draw in visitors to your website, and ideally those visitors will become leads. But just as importantly, you can’t rise up in Google search rankings without original content on your site. Period.
Don’t Make These Content Marketing Mistakes!
It may be simple in theory, but creating great content that meets all SEO requirements to generate results is not as straightforward as it sounds. Here are three common SEO mistakes content marketers make all too often.
- Weak Outreach:
In a perfect world, an informative, interesting, and well written blog post would yield loads of quality backlinks. However, our online world is far too vast for every piece of content to land in the right hands. You have to promote your content. Posting on your social media account, “Hey everyone, check out my new blog post,” is not going to cut it. - Using the Wrong Keywords:
This is arguably one of the biggest mistakes you can make. If you are not using popular keywords exactly as they are written, you will miss the mark entirely. For instance, if the keyword you are trying to rank on is “mens shoes,” you will not reach your goal if you use “clothing for men” or simply “shoes”. - Targeting the Wrong Audience:
This may come as a surprise, but from an SEO standpoint, your content’s audience will not always be your customers. Rather, you should often write content for online influencers such as big-name blogs that could link to your website, thereby boosting your ranking. SEO does not work if your content isn’t given the “stamp of approval” by trusted, authoritative sites.
Writing good content is half the battle, but turning it into quality leads is the hard part. If you’re looking to jumpstart your SEO efforts, give us a shout.
