Originally published January 25, 2023 , updated on October 25, 2023

Content marketing is incredibly effective for driving organic traffic to your website. But, many businesses have gaps in their strategy because they underestimate the importance of SEO. Creating high-quality content is important, but it must rank well on search engines if you are to increase organic traffic levels.

This article explains why SEO is crucial and how you can adjust your content to rank better on search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Why is SEO Content Marketing Important?

When somebody uses a search engine, a complex algorithm ranks all the relevant sites and displays them in an ordered list. Statistics show that 27.6% of people click on the top result. Only 0.63% of people click on a link from the second page of results. So, if your site doesn’t appear near the top of the first page, you will not increase traffic in a meaningful way.

Many of the elements that algorithms look for are present in your content. Good SEO practices will improve your rankings and increase organic traffic on your website. There are other vital elements of SEO, but content marketing is one of the most effective. A good digital content marketing agency can show you how to manage all the important SEO elements.

How to Improve Your SEO Content Marketing

SEO content marketing is complex, and there are several elements you must get right. A digital content marketing agency can help you implement these changes.

Use More Visual Content

The type of content you use impacts SEO. Visual content includes images, videos, infographics, GIFs, charts and tables. Using more visual elements has been shown to boost your rankings and make your site more interesting for users. 

Our brains absorb and understand visual information easily compared with large blocks of text. So, people spend more time on the page if there is a visual stimulus, reducing your bounce rate (the percentage of people that leave the site after only viewing one page). A high bounce rate suggests your site is not useful/interesting, and your search rankings reflect this. In fact, Google’s algorithms tend to prioritise pages with videos for this reason.

Visual elements improve engagement too. Your web page is 40 times more likely to be shared than non-visual content. This drives more organic traffic to your site and improves SEO at the same time. Shares are one of the most efficient ways to increase traffic, and visual content holds the key. It’s the reason why content marketing services often focus heavily on visual elements.

Get the Publication Frequency Right

Publication frequency is a difficult balance to get right. You should post regularly to maintain an audience. But, posting too often can harm your strategy due to ‘keyword cannibalisation’. (The term used when two or more pages rank for the same keyword.)  Although this seems like a positive, they are in direct competition, so neither performs as well.

Consistency is essential, so you should always post on the same day, at the same time. One or two posts per week is a good baseline, but some sites benefit from more. Blog posts, for example, are more effective with a higher frequency. Consider what you can keep up with because you must remain consistent, even if you post less often.

Increase Backlinks

A backlink is an incoming hyperlink to your page from another site. When somebody else links to your website, it’s a vote of confidence that proves it is valuable. Search engines track backlinks, and having more can increase your ranking.

Creating high-quality, informative articles that many people are likely to reference is the best way to build backlinks. Start by doing a Google search for your keyword to see what pages rank well. This gives you an indication of the information that people want. Then, you can create posts that fill that need and give more detail than existing pages.

Certain post formats get more backlinks too. ‘Why’ and ‘what’ posts and infographics get 25.8% more links than ‘how-to’ posts and videos. Long-form articles get 77.2% more links than short pieces. Focusing on these formats can encourage more backlinks and help build your site’s authority.

Guest posting on third-party sites is beneficial too. Reach out to blogs that write about your area of expertise and offer a guest post. You can then include a link back to the original post on your site. This is a simple way to reach new potential customers and get a backlink at the same time. Content marketing services can assist you in developing a guest posting strategy.

Improve Keyword Research

Keywords are central to SEO. Using the right words and phrases in your writing helps search engines match it with relevant user searches. Conducting keyword research shows you what people are searching for and which terms have the most competition. Being more specific can help you find keywords with less competition, making it easier to rank well for those terms.

Use a combination of short and long search terms, and don’t underestimate the influence of voice search. When searching via a voice assistant, people are more likely to use full sentences instead of short strings.

You can use keyword research tools to give you data about search volume for different terms. Use these tools to do an in-depth analysis of your chosen search terms and find the sweet spot between search volume and competition. Alternatively, a digital content marketing agency can conduct this research for you.

Use Social Media and Mailers to Drive Traffic

Social media and mailers are both excellent for increasing organic traffic to your site. You can share things on social media and drive more traffic to supplement the clicks you get from search engines. Physical mailers with your web address on them also encourage visits from those that are less active online. Including a special offer on mailers is a simple way to increase your returns.

Could an SEO Content Writing Agency Help You?

SEO is very complex. Getting all the elements right is a challenge, and the requirements often change as search engines update their algorithm. Working with a digital content marketing agency is one of the most effective ways to get your content strategy right.

Goodman Lantern offers award-winning SEO content marketing services. Get in touch today to discuss your needs and learn more about how we can help.

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