How to boost traffic with content marketing?

Content marketing is of utmost importance because it serves you in generating leads and building a vast community. In addition, it will not make you look like a salesperson. Ignorance of the content is ignorance of the sales.

B2b markatering fact forbes

According to Content Marketing Institute, 70% of B2B marketers plan to create more content in 2017 compared to 2016.

The below-mentioned tips do not follow any particular order, but they all are a package that will give you success in your digital marketing campaign.

Use these tips to inflate your content marketing to boost your web traffic.

1.    Use various interactive platforms like Quora

Content marketing has a lot to do with social media and especially interactive platforms. There are multiple platforms where questions and queries are openly shared and millions of people truly attempt them to satisfy the query. Such platforms include Yahoo, StackExchange, Quora, and others. To boost your content knowledge and thereby raising content marketing results try to contribute to such sites and interact with people. Such platforms are growing rapidly and they can very well help you find a new audience. In addition, these sites will also help your target audience reach your website.

How to use Quora for content marketing

You can promote your content across these sites by following the simple course of action.

  • It is best to follow influencers. Read their posts and try to analyze the way they have written. At times, they serve as the best tutorials in finding out how to write and how to get more thumbs.
  • Start replying to a few relevant topics which are in line either with your services or with your blogs.
  • While replying to the relevant topics, you can include links to your blogs. However, in NO circumstance, it should sound self-promotion.
  • Initially, try to post succinct content so that anyone can read it even while surfing the page. Later on, depending on the question and comfort, you may even post lengthy content.
  • In case your readers will find your content interesting, engaging, and informative, they will surely follow you till your website to check out your own blogs.

2.    Makeover your old blogs

Though it is true that old content can also drive traffic, it is equally important to keep your old content updated and in line with the trends. Each blog listed on your website, be it fresh or old, should have valuable, relevant, and right content.

drive traffic from old content

Your main aim behind the blog posts is to convert your readers into your subscribers. When a reader visits your website for some information and what if they find that your content is stale and irrelevant? It will simply cost you by making you lose your audience. Losing a valuable visitor and subscriber is of course not a welcoming thing. On the other hand, search engines always update their algorithm. There are prominent chances that your site may get penalized if you are not up-to-date.

You can make a few amendments to your existing content in the following suggested manner:

  • Rectify all minor and major grammatical issues
  • Incorporate trends that are new and relevant to your blog title. At the same time, delete which is now not relevant based on the recent updates and algorithm workings
  • Only use images that are relevant and search engine friendly.
  • Identify the keywords that are actually performing well for higher rankings. You can use SEMrush tool for the same
  • Periodically moderate comments on your blog posts.
  • Identify the well-performing posts using blog analytics. Observe a number of views for the specific post.
  • Keep an eye on the number of shares of your blog on social media.
  • While updating the old blog post:
    • Do not modify URL
    • You may amend the blog title but ensure to retain the keywords.
    • Assess meta-description if it can be improved.
    • Provide internal links to your new posts for strengthening internal linking

3.    Use compelling infographics

infographic in content marketing strategy

A picture can portray 1000 of words. This is a sort of ‘not-to-miss’ in your effective content marketing strategy.

Infographics should contain no more than 5-6 statistics/ points of information. Research by KISSmetrics found that any more than 6 and it becomes too much for the reader to consume.

Keep these guiding principles handy while creating valuable info graph:

  • It should be easy to embed to enable more social media shares
  • Use odd numbers in your title to catch attention. E.g. 243% hike (instead of 250%). Odd numbers always do better than even numbers
  • Instead of writing long stories, present short, crisp, and catchy phrases/sentences
  • If your infographic has information in list format, e.g. “5 SEO techniques ”, ensure to label each point with numbers.

4.    Make your brand creative with a variety of content

No doubt content marketing is all about blogging, eBooks, articles, and other content in written format. These strategies are going to stay for long and probably forever. However, do not miss out on the new bud of content marketing; video content.

Content and video in content marketing

Video content will enhance revenue in 2017 and beyond. Marketers who use video grow their revenue 49% faster as compared to non-video users. According to Cisco, 69% of all consumer Internet traffic will be the result of a video. A video is for sure the future of both content marketing and SEO.

While creating effective video content that makes your brand more creative, do not miss out to ensure:

  • Your content voice is in line with your audience voice
  • The video has been designed corresponding to your goal and it serves the purpose
  • Video content contains the kind of emotion you need to drive with
  • It does have a strong CTA; it should provide a way to the user to take some desired action. Sometimes it is also better to have lead capture set up with the best possible minimum fields. For example:
e-mail video combo
  • Last but not least, it fulfils all possible SEO criteria, e.g. usage of relevant keywords, optimized titles, wise usage of tags, proper description, and others

Conclusion

So far, content marketing has grown from marketing activity to an approach of marketing. It is nothing but creating engaging content to inform your target audience about your offerings and drive them to your website. Follow the given guidelines and enjoy the boost of your search traffic and sales.

Most Important SEO Trends

Finally, we are in 2017! New Year, new hopes, new resolutions, but the same old passion! 2016 was a passionate year, predominantly when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) trends and Google in particular. With each New Year, search engine portals develop new algorithms and rules with a view to fighting spamming links and people trying to play the system.

The SEO industry is always poignant, so it rewards to be aware of these evolutions.

An exciting year for SEO, with the following trends heightening the limelight:

1. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) will rise

Over the past few years, easy access to mobile has restructured SEO. Mobile search is growing at a rapid pace. In addition, there is not any sign of its getting slow down in the near future. There is a significant shift in website traffic. Searchers are moving away from desktop towards mobile devices. There are many websites which attract major traffic from mobile devices. Google has experienced that mobile searches surpassed desktop searches.

how to set up AMP pages in SEO

The same was reported in May 2015. Since then, many steps taken by Google have indicated that mobile should be measured as the default user experience. In fact, Google has initiated measures to make its index mobile-first. Google favours the websites which have switched over to AMPs. AMP is an open source initiative that aims to provide mobile-optimized content. It provides the capability of loading sites instantly on mobile devices four times faster along with eight times lesser data usage.

15 of the 24 hours in a given day, more mobile search is performed on mobile than on Desktops or tablets. searchenginejournal.

Mobile optimization is already extremely important in SEO strategies. However, it will prove to be mandatory in 2017. Experts have anticipated seeing more preference for AMPs in search results. More and more brands are anticipated to take advantage of this option.

2. Intense content will mount

Don’t optimize for keywords. Optimize your content. Readers are tired of surfing the messed up content again and again. Initially, content marketing efforts were focused on producing as much crisp content as possible. However, over the past few years, the focus has also been laid towards comprehensive content.

SEO-content-strategy

Interestingly, the current market is flooded with both sorts of content. The trend in 2017 will have much focus on optimized and intense content. The users will receive maximum possible information in the minimum possible space. Epic content is surely going to appeal to the readers.

3. Video Content will enhance revenue

Approximately 64% of the consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. Video content is at its peak and it is not going anywhere soon.

According to Syndacast,74 per cent of all internet traffic in 2017 will be video.

In fact, the Facebook higher authority also stated that video will become the main type of content by 2020. Along with the development and increased usage of advanced technologies including, Snapchat, Vine, Periscope, and even Instagram, video content is going to last its impression in 2017 as well.

At present, marketers who use video grow their revenue 49% faster as compared to non-video users. Google is experimenting with video ads in the search results.

importance of videos in SEO

There are multiple types of video content including advertisements, webinars, tutorials, question answers, quizzes, and others. Marketers can implement such types of videos in their search marketing strategy.

4. Structured Data and Schema will have an influential role

Search engine crawlers need to understand the web content to provide the best search results. With a view to providing such information to the user, Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo! collaborated to form Schema.org. The inclusion of Schema markup in a user’s HTML improves the way his page displays in SERPs by improving the rich snippets that are displayed below the page title. Schema.org provides particular set shared vocabularies that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways that can be understood by the major search engines.Look for structured data and Schema are expected to have an influential role in SEO in 2017 and ahead.

5. Voice Search will mark a footprint

Voice search is definitely not a new thing; however, till recent past, it had no significant role to play in the industry of search engine marketing. Conversely, with the increasing usage of mobiles and other advancements in technology, voice search is gradually gaining drive.

The study, based on results obtained by 1,400 US residents, showed that 55 percent of teens use some kind of hands-free search on their smartphones every day, such as Google’s own solution, along with Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana. While voice search use is growing among older smartphone owners, 45 percent of adults in the survey claimed to fee “like a geek” when they talked to their smartphone.

 Google via PR Newswire

Obviously, to search for anything rather than typing out the word or phrase, it is a lot more convenient to just speak. Searching through voice is going to grow more in 2017.

how to optimize text for voice search

However, to optimize search engine marketing strategy, you need to ensure that you comprehend the searchers intent. Voice searches will usually be in the interrogative form and would be including question words like who, what, when, how, where, and others. The best way out to optimize if rephrasing headlines and make it look like a question rather than a statement. For example, “Tips for social media marketing” can be better rephrased as “What are the best tips for social media marketing?”

6. Influence of artificial intelligence on algorithm working

Finally, late last year, Google search algorithms got a boost on the release of Google RankBrain. Google RankBrain is a machine-learning artificial intelligence (AI) system which assists in processing search results. It is anticipated to make search smarter and more pertinent to the user. To get along with the flow, use taglines, compose compact articles and reduce the amount of the information you post.

Industry experts are expecting more machine learning updates similar to Google hummingbird in this year as well. Machine learning updates may get released in the areas of data interpretation or marketing automation. Though these are anticipations, they are unquestionably an important portion SEO trends for 2017.


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7. Optimization for user intent

Sites which lay emphasis on enhanced user experience are always favoured by Google and other search engines. To some extent, user experience matters when it comes to SEO. It is straightforward that users will spend more time on the site if they find it user-friendly. Even though keywords and phrases are vital; in 2017, brands are also required to place significance on optimizing their digital content on the basis of user intent. In your SEO strategy for 2017, three musts are:

three keys for optimizing content

8. Personal branding – an undisclosed SEO strategy

A social media platform like Facebook has refined its algorithms to favour individual posts over branded posts. In addition, it is continuing doing so. This indirectly places an emphasis on personal branding. Personal branding strategy is very similar to the strategy of corporate branding.

According to Forbes, with the help of a personal brand, you’ll have an easier time securing guest posts, building user trust, and driving more traffic to your website.

Surprisingly, quite a low number of brands have actual cash on it in their SEO activities. However, it would not be incorrect to anticipate that more and more businesses will attempt to cash on personal branding. At the same time, personal branding will bring in more opportunities and more competition.

CONCLUSION

Of course, it is not an easy job to predict what exact changes Google and other search engines are going to announce this year. However, it is not that tough to anticipate that the aforesaid trends will probably widen in some consequential way. As an SEO marketer, you need not to immediately refurbish your digital marketing strategy but need to factor the upcoming trends with a prolonged vision.

The year 2017 will be an influential year in many ways. Get yourself well ready for future challenges and future opportunities.