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There’s dozens of different ways to go about marketing a small business’ website on the internet, ranging from SEO to PPC to email marketing and everything in between. But even if we target in just on search engine optimization (SEO), there are still dozens of different SEO strategies that can be implemented, with each strategy having its own pros and cons. However the most tried and tested method of SEO that will withstand the test of time, Google updates, and yield the best long term ROI is content marketing, yet in our experiences it is the least used method due to the amount of time, money, and resources that need to be dedicated to it.
What Is Content Marketing Or Content Based SEO?
Content marketing or content based SEO is when a large amount of high quality content is produced over time and published on a website’s blog or news section. First an SEO company will work to research specific keywords to be targeted based on dozens of factors including traffic levels, competitive nature, and chance of a visitor converting. Once a list is established, the SEO company will write articles based on those phrases and target them through proper article structure and keyword structure. From here the article is posted to the website and fully optimized (title tags, page coding, headings, and other elements). Upon publishing the SEO company then promotes the article through link building, social media, and other means to build strength to that page on the website. And finally, if all is done right, that article will rank well in search engine results for the key phrases associated with the article.
Example 1: Content Marketing Done Right
We’ll go out and use our own website as a fantastic example of content marketing done the right way. Everything mentioned above about the process of writing, researching, and promoting an article is done on our own website’s blog and has been done on an extremely consistent basis since late 2011. The graph below from our website’s traffic report clearly shows the change in traffic prior to taking a content based marketing approach and since taking a content based marketing approach:
Since being consistent in producing high quality content targeted at specific long-tail keywords, not only has website traffic increased over 250%, but it has been an extremely stable and consistent increase that is not nearly as prone to Google updates as traditional SEO. This is the strategy we are adopting for nearly all our clients who are open to it and have seen success story after success story with this type of approach.
Example 2: Increasing Sales With Content
Due to our company’s privacy policy, we will not be able to name the specific company used in this part of this case study:
We have a client whose website we redesigned about 6 months ago and immediately got started on an SEO campaign surrounding several competitive keywords as well as dozens of long tail keywords we wanted to rank them for. After extensive research, we identified 15 core keywords we wanted to rank the site for through long-tail based content production and set out to produce high quality content that would not only rank well, but would convert well.
About 3 months ago we completed the content production and published the content, and after consistent promotion of that content we’ve achieved page 1 rankings for over 80% of the keywords, top 3 rankings for 50% of the keywords, and #1 rankings for 20% of the keywords. Keep in mind this happened in just 3 months.
More importantly than the rankings are the increases in revenues. While we don’t have access to this client’s specific revenue stream via their e-commerce platform, in numerous conversations with our client he has reported seeing 200-500% increases in revenues for the specific product categories we have promoted via content marketing. He has also reported seeing well over a 500% ROI on his investment in SEO so far, and this number will continue to improve as we go after more long tail phrases for his website.
The Bottom Line
Blogging and producing content is great, but not when you do it without the help of an experienced SEO company. Spending hundreds of hours on producing content that is not targeted at specific long tail phrases will never produce the same amounts of traffic as highly researched and highly specialized content aimed at ranking for specific keywords that will not only drive traffic but will also convert well. To learn more about how we can help with content production, topic suggestions, and actual SEO work to promote the content, contact us via the form on the right or call us directly at 888-918-1665!