Content marketing has emerged as the top marketing activity today. Every business is bullish on content marketing and is investing even more into it this year.
Here is the result of survey conducted by Smart Insights asking 850 marketers to pick the most important marketing activity.
As you can see all marketers are aggressive on content marketing. This has increased the competition marketers face despite great content.
In this blog we will discuss what you can do differently this year to stand out and pull more traffic through your content.
• Long form in-depth Content
There was a time when a decent quality 650 word blog post had a chance to rank on page one on Google. This is not the case now. Ranking high on Google requires quality backlinks, domain authority, time and so much more.
When it comes to blogs, think of long form anchor posts of 1500 to 2500 words. These should be like a helpful guide covering A to Z of your industry or topic.
Anchor posts are blog posts that are the pillar of your site and pull in tons of traffic consistently. Do not expect to get traffic within a month.
It is typical to see your traffic rising after 6 months of posting. Do everything to make your content really helpful for your audience. Use infographics and videos to explain concepts.
Any content which does not make your reader say ‘ Wow! That was helpful’ has little chance to rank in top three searches. This is how you can differentiate your content and rank higher on Google in 2018
• Go niche
Differentiating your content in an already overcrowded web can be challenging. In any industry there will be in- depth blog posts that have been on the web for five years or more.
How can you possibly compete with those pieces? The answer lies in narrowing the focus of your content.
Write about nutrition for dancers instead of writing on general nutrition. Focus on long tail-keywords that will have less competition.
For example, instead of writing on ‘ladies shoes’, focus on ‘office shoes for working moms’. This way you will not only rank higher on search engines but will also attract highly targeted visitors that are easier to convert.
• Semantic Search
Google no more relies on just keywords to rank results. It uses something known as semantic search.
Semantic search takes into account the intent of the searcher.
This means weighing in the context, location, searcher history, language style and device.
That means Google now understands that a user typing in ‘green dress online’ is more likely to purchase the dress online than if she had typed ‘green dresses’.
For marketers this means that they have to be more aware of the context of searchers and conditions under which they are searching. Content should now match situations instead of just keywords.
• Target Google Featured Snippets
There is something better than position one on Google search. It’s position 0 .
You may have noticed that Google also gives the answer to your queries in a highlighted search box above all search results.
This gives the searchers the answers at a glance without having to go to another page.
Ranking in featured snippets increases your traffic and decreases bounce rates. The great news is that you don’t even have to rank number one on Google to be able to feature in rich snippet.
To increase your chances to be featured in a rich snippet make sure your content:
- Has a structured format with sub-headings
- Keep your answers to the point, short and snappy
- Mark up your article with structured data
- Answer popular questions asked
• Explore other formats of Content
Audio podcasts have made a big comeback last year. There are more than 42 million people who listen to podcasts weekly in the US alone.
‘How to’ searches on YouTube have gone up by 70% in 2017. YouTube is also the second most popular search engine after Google.
The trend is clear. Users prefer video and audio form of content and marketers must produce this if they want to reach their audience.
Bringing it all together
Content marketing is here to stay as the most profitable channel to get leads. However, digital marketing landscape is changing continuously and marketers must concentrate on long-form quality content and niche topics to stay at the top.
Understanding Google’s semantic search and featured snippets will help to reach more audience. Lastly, experimenting with fresher format of content such as podcasts and videos will differentiate you from the other content.
Above all, it is important to keep experimenting in digital marketing. New trends emerge quickly and demand agility from content marketers.
