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Content marketing is a cornerstone of an SEO campaign today. Without well-optimized, high quality content a website will have a hard time earning natural inbound links and ranking prominently for targeted keywords. While most website owners understand the importance of content, there\u2019s more that can be done to ensure that it has a positive impact on organic search engine traffic. Here are 4 content marketing best practices for SEO:<\/p>\n
In many smaller organizations, there is one team working on both SEO and content marketing. However, in larger organizations the two teams could be separate or one or both of the functions is being outsourced. What\u2019s important to understand is that not all writers have a full understanding of SEO and their content might not be as optimized as it can be. That\u2019s where the SEO team comes into play. All content should be reviewed by an SEO professional who can determine what the keywords should be and where they should be incorporated naturally on each page.<\/p>\n
Yes, search has changed and keyword density on a page carries little weight today as the search engines have a better understanding behind the meaning of searches and are utilizing machine learning, however keywords are still important. At the onset of an SEO campaign, conduct keyword research using a tool like Google Keyword Planner for every page of the site to determine how people are searching for what\u2019s offered. If you\u2019re running PPC ads, look at keyword data to see which keywords are driving traffic and conversions. Every service\/product page will only target a handful of relevant keywords, meaning that there are likely plenty more to target in ongoing content marketing (blogging) efforts. This keyword list can be helpful when it comes time to brainstorm topic ideas.<\/p>\n
Once content is published, how is it performing? Using an analytics tool like Google Analytics, review traffic data over time. It will take awhile to begin to see organic traffic to new blog posts but in the short term it\u2019s advisable to look at social media traffic (since all posts should be shared here). It will give you an idea of what topics are hits and misses and can help steer the content strategy in the right direction in order to generate the most inbound links and organic clicks over time.<\/p>\n
The whole \u201ccontent is king\u201d mantra has resulted in a lot of poor quality content being published on the web. While it\u2019s tempting to push out lots of posts to keep up, it\u2019s really the wrong approach. The search engines (and your target audience) will be much more appreciative of a few high quality pieces of content each week or month as opposed to low quality content pushed out every day. The only content that is king is great content.<\/p>\n