Many businesses complain that content marketing is a waste of time. They’ve created high-quality content and used SEO to market it, but their traffic is still flatlining. This how-to article provides a complete guide to using SEO and content marketing to get & grow organic traffic.
The main issue is they’ve got things the wrong way around. They should be building their content around their SEO research.
The key to making content marketing work is to support your content with a well-researched SEO strategy. In this article, we’ll walk you through creating high-quality, cornerstone content that has a guaranteed audience before you’ve even hit the upload button. Here are four simple steps to help you drive organic traffic to your website using SEO and content marketing.
4 Steps to Using SEO and Content Marketing to Gain Organic Traffic
Step 1 – Do your Keyword and SEO research
It is a common misconception that businesses should build their SEO around their content. However, the most optimized approach to driving traffic to your website is creating content around relevant keywords. Moreover, tips on ways to use SEO to grow organic traffic.
By drawing the titles for your content from primary keywords, you will ensure that you expose your content to a much wider audience. Creating great content without SEO or building your SEO around your content is like keeping your priceless oil painting at the back of your garage under a sheet. On the other hand, by building your content around keywords, you’ll guarantee an audience will be waiting for the content you’ve created.
Most people search with a problem in mind that they are looking to solve. Build this into your Content Marketing strategy. Your primary keywords will give you a good idea of the most common issues for your target audience.
Step 2 – Long Tail Keywords are Your Best Friend
Any high-quality ranking site will provide you with primary and secondary (or longtail) keywords. Again, smart content marketing utilizes these.
How do you do that? Well, a simple way to capitalize on the power of long-tail keywords is to use them as a roadmap for your content. Using secondary keywords as subheadings in your content is a great way to draw traffic to your site and provide your readers with satisfying and beneficial content that will keep them returning for more.
Step 3 – Find Your Niche: Guide Using SEO and Content Marketing for Traffic
When creating content, you want to avoid rehashing what is already out there. This is key for a couple of reasons. First, it is harder to benefit from SEO when older content has the same title or subject. Second, there are untapped topics in which you could develop a more significant market share. There are a few exceptions to this, one of which we’ll cover later.
The first step to finding your niche is to be aware of what your competitors are doing, what they are doing poorly, and what they aren’t doing. This way, you can build your content marketing strategy around filling in these gaps in the market and backing your content up with SEO research to find the right audience. As a result, tips on ways to use SEO to grow organic traffic.
Recreating resources and content can already be ineffective in driving traffic to your site; however, there is one key exception. Above, we mentioned being aware of what your competitors are not doing well. If you believe you can provide more valuable content on a topic your competitor has already covered, make your own and do it better.
If their content is weak, and you can back up your new and better content with SEO, this is a great chance to hijack existing traffic and divert it to your site.
Step 4 – Make your content: Guide Using SEO and Content Marketing for Traffic.
Now is the time to combine the steps above to create high-quality content with a pre-established audience. Use your primary keywords to inform your title. Build your content around your secondary keywords. Finally, fill a gap in the market or replace something that already exists with an improved version.
You may have struggled with producing high-quality content but not experiencing much engagement with it. Don’t worry. You can make a few minor tweaks to make your content shine. Or, if you’re the reader-and-research type, check out this content marketing guide.
The easier to digest your content is, the more engagement and traffic you will experience. Make your content more digestible by using shorter paragraphs, regular headings, and subheadings, and avoiding large text blocks.
Linking to relevant posts within your content is a great way to drive traffic across all website areas. Showing your readers how much you have to offer is a great way to drive returning traffic. This also goes a long way in building trust between you and your audience. You want to make yourself the go-to source for content in your market.
One of the most powerful methods of generating traffic is ensuring your content is easy to share. To do this, you should include appealing pictures and infographics as part of the content. You should also install widgets that make sharing your content simple. In conclusion, make sure your audience has the option to share your content on relevant social media (Linkedin if you’re a B2B business, or Facebook and Twitter if you are a B2C business). The more comfortable you can make this, the more likely they are to do so.