By Anton Koekemoer September 29 2014
Many whitepapers, articles, and blog posts have been written over the last little while regarding content marketing and its impact on your digital marketing campaign, but in reality, this isn’t a new buzz word or trend.
Google has been saying for years that you should always focus on quality content with your website and this counts for your digital marketing campaign as well. This doesn’t just mean any type of content, but content that your users would like to read. If they find it valuable and informational, it does stand a chance to be shared so that you can reach more people with your content. This makes your content magnetic. So in truth, content might be king, but context is God.
Many websites has been penalised by all the Google Algorithm updates over the last few years. Most of these were hit by the Google update due to duplicate and poor quality content that was usually just written to attract Google and the other top search engines. Writing content back in the day for Google might have been a good idea, but in reality it wasn’t due to the fact that Google will not be the one that will become your next lead or sale.
The internet thrives on content and it’s getting more competitive everyday. If you are looking for ways to spruce up your content marketing campaign, find a couple of tips below that will guide you in the right direction. This is not meant to be a “hard core” content marketing tips article, but following these simple guidelines will yield you results.
1. Unique content
Every content piece that you publish needs to be original and not a copied or spun variation of the original article. Google is smart and will know if you are duplicating content.
2. Spell check and grammar
Do not publish any content with poor grammar. If you are using copywriters to write your content, make sure that they have a good grasp of the English language. Low quality content pieces using poor grammar will not yield you any good results.
3. Use proper word format
Many content marketing articles are usually copied directly from a word processor and it usually embeds a lot of extra code with the document. To get around this, copy your content into Wordpad, Notepad or any other simple text editor and then copy the contents of that file to the CMS (content management system) or other platform you are going to publish the content on.
4. Length of article
Google wants content to index and if you don’t have enough content, it cannot index your article to its full potential. In truth, there is no required minimum of words to be used for content marketing, but in my experience, longer articles (600+ words) work the best.
5. Links
Don’t include links in your content pieces just to gain a backlink to your website. Remember, you are writing your content for real people. How will they benefit from the link? Does it link to another content piece with relevant information? Does it provide value to your readers?
6. Proper format
Content marketing pieces needs to be written for easy reading using sub headings, lists, bullet points, etc. This makes it easy for your readers to scan the content piece to find what they are looking for. Make it easy for them.
The content marketing pieces you are using in your digital marketing, social media, and SEO campaign should always be relevant, readable and written specifically for the target audience it’s intended for. If you are only interested in top organic rankings for selected key phrases on Google, regularly publishing quality content will yield the natural by product of great rankings.
Image: Hans Splinter via Flickr.
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