Content Marketing is Changing SEO: 3 Tips to Boost Your Traffic

Content marketing is the future of marketing and there is no doubt about it. By leveraging content you can sell (your products and services) without actually selling. Write a killer blog post or tweet and you can create a huge amount of awareness among your targeted audience. Content marketing has become an integral part of all marketing strategies and is set to become a $313 billion industry by 2019, according to PQ Media's "Global Content Marketing – Forecast 2015-19."

One question that many marketers still ask is whether content marketing and SEO are inter-related or two different branches of marketing? The answer is that they go hand-in-hand and are the two sides of the same coin. In fact, SEO creates demand and content marketing fulfils it. For instance, when a person asks, 'how to fix my electric oven?' it means the user demands content that will help him solve his problem. Content marketers targeting people facing problems with electric ovens can create high-quality content and try solving their problems.

For success with SEO, you need loads of high-quality links, which are impossible to gain without high-quality content. It is, therefore, clear that SEO and content marketing can't exist without each other.

How can you use content marketing to boost organic traffic for your website? Here are three tips to help you:

1. Research and Target Relevant Keywords

In order to get a constant flow of traffic, you first need to identify your specific niche and target audience. For instance, if you offer project management software, then your target audience will be online marketers who need to use project management software to stay in control of their projects. Further, you need to determine whether you want to target budding online marketers or seasoned marketers or both.

Once you have identified your audience, you can determine the keywords they may use to find useful information. Here is how you can do this:

Use a keyword research tool to get keyword ideas.

Choose the most relevant keywords and segment them according to your targeted audience.

Research about the keywords to determine whether or not its popularity will grow with time.

A comprehensive SEO tool suite such as SEMrush is ideal for this purpose. It gives you a set of related keywords and trends.

Once you have a list of the most relevant keywords, you can use them and start creating content. Make sure the content is high-quality and helps your target audience solve specific problems. In simple words, the content you create must offer value to your readers. If you readers find your content useful, they will return and also recommend your content to others in their network.

2. Leverage Visual Content to Maximize Traffic

When it comes to boosting traffic, you need to leverage the traffic that is most engaged. Research proves that video is the most engaging type of content, and marketers are using it to capture users' attention.

According to a research by HubSpot, video appears to be the most favored form of content by customers and prospects.

Moreover, according to KPCB, video will account for 74 percent of all the online traffic in 2017. Again, brands that use video for marketing see their revenue growing 49 percent faster compared to those who do not use videos. So, there is every reason why content marketers should leverage this form of content.

Videos also help with SEO. Including video sends signals to search engines that the page contains rich media relevant to the search requests. The transcript part of the video that uses keywords improves the findability of the content. By hosting videos on YouTube, the second largest search engine in terms of the number of search queries, you can easily boost the traffic on your website. You can also share the videos on social media to increase the website traffic.

Take the example of Dunkin Donuts that relies on video campaigns to sell its products. The brand took advantage of Valentine's Day and rolled out a live streaming video. The video showed how the brand creates its new products. As a bonus, the video also featured the creation of a gigantic, donut-themed wedding cake. The video attracted more than 36,000 viewers.

To increase traffic for your brand and attract attention, you can create how-to videos, DIY videos, product-explainer videos, and animated videos.

3. Become a Trusted Source of Information

Becoming a trusted source of high-quality and useful information is one of the best ways to increase traffic. Pages that offer useful and relevant content and have high demand among readers are ranked higher on the SERPs (search engine result pages). Sites that have lots of high-quality content focused on a particular subject tend to rank higher.

(Tip: If you have a broad audience and cover multiple topics, make sure the content is organized based on topics or themes to avoid content silos.)

One of the easiest ways to establish authority in a specific niche is by starting a blog. Blogging helps you create a base for your content marketing efforts. However, blogging requires a lot of investment in terms of time and effort. But when done properly, you can reap long-term benefits. Here are a few tips on increasing traffic by blogging:

Use a blog design that appeals to your target audience. Starting a WordPress blog is often a great idea as WordPress offers a number of inbuilt themes that can be used to create a professional blog. You can also integrate other themes, if needed.

Create a catchy title for your posts to attract attention quickly. Keep the titles short, use numbers within the title or use words that invoke emotions. Make sure the post offers exactly what the title says.

Choose evergreen topics to keep the posts relevant for a long time.

Include visuals to improve the level of engagement and offer a better experience.

Repurpose posts to increase viewership. Turn posts into short videos, podcasts, infographics, etc. and share on various channels.

Another way of increasing traffic is through influencer marketing. Identify the top influencers in your niche and request them to contribute on your blog. This way, you will not only get high-quality content for your blog, you will also attract high-quality backlinks and get the attention of all the users from the influencer's network. The trust factor also increases manifold, so you can establish yourself and your brand as a trusted source of information.

Take the example of Stonyfield Farms that specializes in organic dairy products. The company blog features a barnyard theme that is absolutely relevant to their brand and the target audience (which includes farming, families and organic living).

The blog features articles on healthy living and pictures of healthy families. They also feature videos, which are not professionally edited, but are helpful. In fact, this is their USP and it humanizes the videos. They also use soft sales messages to encourage their readers to buy their products.

Conclusion

As content marketing keeps maturing, so does SEO. There is no way you can win at content marketing without focusing on SEO and vice versa. Both go hand-in-hand, so you need to be good at content marketing as well as SEO to take your business to the next level. Do keep the above tips in mind when creating a strategy to increase organic traffic to your website. By leveraging the above tips, you can improve awareness, build trust and increase the traffic, and you will be a winner in every way!

Source: Content Marketing is Changing SEO: 3 Tips to Boost Your Traffic