Content marketing is an effective way of promoting your business online.  From pro marketers to newbie bloggers, everyone is getting into the game.

But despite the buzz, many are s unclear what content marketing is all about.  I receive a good number of emails from readers who have different viewpoints.

Some wonder if it is worth all the hype.  Others want tips on how they can ride on its wings to boost traffic and optimise conversion.  The importance of content marketing is aptly captured in this twitter quote.

What is content marketing?

After creating and hosting your site with a reliable and professional hosting service,  your mind races towards content marketing.

So for starters, what is it all about?

In my opinion, content marketing is the process of creating and sharing useful, relevant and free materials online.  These include written text such as articles or blog posts, audio, infographics and video.

The information is aimed at educating the audience and improving their knowledge of a subject or topic.  The theme  of  content  that you share will be determined by the objective or focus of your site.

What are the benefits of content marketing?

To those who do not see any benefit, I have a brief response.

Content marketing spurs interaction between a business and its customers.  It promotes trust and understanding.  The comment segment of a post can offer immediate feedback.   And the social media channels too.

Furthermore, by offering your audience valuable content, you are rewarded in turn.  This can be through the increase in site visitors, lead generation or conversion.

How to use content marketing to improve your search engine ranking

So how can you exploit the benefits of content marketing and use it in an effective manner?

1. Create unique and quality content

A key strength lies in the quality of content provided.   How good is your content?  Is it unique, informative and useful?   Google acknowledges that quality content is vital in its ranking systems.  So rest assured, the effort you invest in creating good content, is not in vain.  It will eventually pay off.

2. Using video and images  

As human beings and social creatures, we connect with things we can see or hear.  This, in turn, makes visuals effective tools for marketing.

Visuals not only illustrate our content but aid in communicating ideas and creating awareness.  They can be used to support our content or standing alone.

But while the search engines can read a text, they cannot read and make meaning of the images illustrating your content.  This is to say that the titles of your images are important.   For this reason, it is important to tag images in a descriptive manner.

3. Use alternative text in image descriptions

Giving an image a good, descriptive title, makes it easier for the search engines to read and rank.

So, instead of tagging an image as “image 001A” for example, give it a relevant descriptive caption.

This gives search engines more information in determining the relevance of the image and your content as a whole to the query. A good point to always remember is that people love to share video and images.

4. Updating your content regularly

Updating your site with fresh and unique content can lead to increase in traffic.  But fresh is not limited to the date the content was published.  Revising an old post with new information or changing the format of its presentation can make a difference.  Still, an evergreen content with quality information can be a great source of traffic.

5. Keyword

Keyword optimisation is helpful in enhancing search engine rankings.  But going for terms that are way high competitive may affect your chances of ranking high.

A solution is to focus on  phrases or words, not as competitive but  relevant to your niche.  With keyword research, you can find out what information your readers are looking for online and write about that.  Google keyword planner is a valuable tool in that endeavour.

6. Guest Posting

Guest posting entails creating content that is relevant and publishing it on other sites.  It is leveraging on other platforms to increase your reach and engage with newer audiences.  The guest post will include a link back to your site as the author.  A guest post can open up a flood of traffic to back to your site.

7. Linking Building

Having links from other sites pointing to your site can boost your ranking.  This is more effective when the sites linking to yours are high ranked or authority sites.  However, the bottom line is publishing good content that others will love to link to.

A good post that is referenced or linked to by multiple sites will get noticed by Google and enjoy a lift in rankings.   Google loves natural links.

8. User design and user experience

While the quality of a product remains paramount, packaging can make a difference between acceptance and rejection by users.  By user design I am referring to site layout and the ease of use.

Where a site is well designed and visitors can navigate with ease, bounce rate will be less.  However, a site that is slow in loading and hard to navigate will put off visitors.

“Site speed is vital to usability”, explains Brendan Wilde, Website & Domain Hosting Manager NZ | OpenHost. “We are operating at a time when web users have massive expectations, and very short attention spans. They will jump from site to site and will not hang around for heavy or poorly hosted sites to load.”

9. Responsive

Good user design requires that a site is responsive and mobile friendly.  The increasing use of Smartphone, tablet and other mobile devices suggest that many people will log on from their mobile devices.

Sites that are not mobile friendly will receive less traffic in comparison to those that are responsive and optimised for mobile.

Conclusion

Content marketing is a powerful strategy to boost your search engine rankings and increase traffic to your site. But always remember, it is not about the engines or you.

It is about service to your audience and the value you bring to the table.