Customers go through a full journey from unaware to interested to purchasing to advocate, and it’s important for small businesses to support them throughout their entire journey. Content marketing provides a way to nurture your customers while also improving website traffic and improving your credibility and ROI. Many people think that content marketing is the best marketing strategy for the next few years. Here are some tools that you can use to improve your content marketing strategy.
Key Takeaways:
BuzzSumo can be used to find high quality content so we can try to mimic the strategies of the top players.
Hotjar can map out our user engagement and show how our current techniques are panning out.
Zapier is a great tool for moving information from one app to another. It makes automation seamless. There are tons of other great tools available for free or low pricing.
“And when they do, you continue to nurture them so they become your brand’s advocates.”
Two-thirds of web content isn’t seen by consumers. Fortunately, there are methods of drawing attention to unseen content. First, don’t gate your best work. While it’s tempting to make consumers pay for the good stuff, the effect may be that they never see your best content. Another tactic is to stop using PDFs, which can’t be crawled. Consolidating posts around topic clusters is another smart practice. It’s also possible that consumers just can’t find some of your content, so build internal links to ease site navigation. Last, develop external links, using Backlinko’s guide for instruction. Following these tips can help to bring forgotten content into the light.
Key Takeaways:
Nearly seventy percent of all online content goes unseen, so it’s important for businesses to use proper practices to get the most visiibilty.
Although PDFs were commonly used in the past, this bulky file type is unnecessary in today’s world, and may actually deter potential customers.
Building both internal, and external links is imperative to build a network of followers who will consume your content.
“Content architecture is one way that search engines can better understand your site and which content to recommend to searchers.”
We hope to publish abstracts about content marketing and SEO. These 2 topics, we believe, are here to stay when it comes to digital marketing. (Pretty soon, we will be having some posts on the topic: paid search.)
Before I end this, kindly check out the post below. I find this very important for small-medium scale businesses (SMB).
For years, I have this as my action plan; and I am glad I am not alone in this thought.
Below is something that might not be for everyone, and a bit of introspection is needed.
Going big is a choice… You can stay small… Being small is not bad… If you don’t want a million-dollar a year business, then don’t build one. There is a lot of headaches that go along a much larger business.
If you have a very simple, very low-cost business, and (it) makes a hundred thousand dollars a year, you probably keep 80% of that or more. It is kind of hard to say that that is the wrong choice.
Leslie Rohde
Fulfillment can come in different sizes. It does not have to be BIG.
Optimizing your website to have the most critical parts generate leads is important. On page SEO is all about how your website communicates it’s information to search engines like Google. You will want to make sure you can get your site audited so you can see how friendly your page comes across to the search engines. This means that the engines are able to crawl your website and figure out if your content is valuable for viewers who search for key terms. You will want to optimize your URL titles and the titles of your pages so Google can index with precision.
Key Takeaways:
For those with an already established website, it’s important to perform a keyword audit on existing pages so they can be optimized.
In order to find the proper keywords for your website, you can use tools like Wordtracker or HubSpot.
Although keyword stuffing was appropriate in the past, nowadays, search engines have discovered how to detect it, so it’s best to avoid.
Social media and SEO can sometimes seem like the same thing. You should ask yourself a few questions. Does your social media support or help your search engine rankings? Does optimizing for search enhance the odds of your profile appearing to users? What does it mean if your tweets show up in search results? When people search on social media, they don’t want an answer, they want a conversation. This provides data for marketers to leverage to enhance keyword research. There are many ways to use social media to enhance keyword research. First, Facebook Ad Targeting can help marketers get data about their audience. Second, trending topics can be found on Twitter and used for data. Third, you can discover what shows up when you search Instagram hashtags. Fourth, marketers can look at content on Pinterest. Fifth, you can look at what influencers are saying on LinkedIn. This is how marketers can see the link between social media and search.
Key Takeaways:
Social media and SEO often seem like the same thing, to everyone from beginners to the more advanced.
Now when people go past a post about your business, they’re still adding to your SEO.
Many companies may dismiss the “About Us” section of their website, but this lowly section can be helpful in adding or converting traffic. There are two types of visitors to a page: those with knowledge of the brand who may have purchased previously, and those who are browsing, and don’t know about it. The “About Us” section should be memorable to both types of page visitors. Having a detailed section will improve Google rankings, and will increase customer confidence in the page.
Key Takeaways:
Your About Us page is for both an audience that is unfamiliar with your brand as well as those who are indeed familiar with it.
Your About Me page should tell the story of you and your brand, but make it succinct and not too wordy.
If possible, include a video on your About Me page because it can convey a lot of information without taking up too much space.
“If your brand has fallen into that default mode, pivot now with this advice”
Content marketing involves the creation and sharing of online material. These materials can be videos, blog posts, images, infographics, and social media posts. Content marketing is not direct selling. Content marketing is not intended to explicitly promote a brand. Its objective is to stimulate interest in prospects and customers on matters related to a company’s products or services. Its purpose is to offer free useful and informative content.
The core of content marketing is to offer value to its prospects and customers through useful content.
Content Marketing vs Traditional Advertising
Content marketing and traditional advertising have a common goal – to turn their audience into paying customers. However, they are different in such a way that instead of directly making a good sales pitch of the product or service, content marketing simply tries to get the attention of their target audience by providing relevant quality content consistently.
Content marketing also has a targeted audience compared with traditional advertising that has a general audience.
Other important differences between content marketing and traditional advertising include the audience and speed of reach.
Audience
Traditional advertising involves a general audience. Your advertisement is shared by the media to whoever is watching the television, listening to the radio, reading news, and more. You do not really know who it reaches. With content marketing, your content reaches your target audience. They get to see your content as they search something related to your content and your industry.
Speed of reach
Traditional advertising reaches the general audience as soon as your ads are aired by any form of media. With content marketing, results can be quite slow. You have to work on your page ranking so that your content will appear on the first few pages of the search engine results page (SERP). Appearing on the first few pages of the SERP will give you a much bigger chance of being visited by interested visitors, who can be your prospective customers.
In order to be successful in content marketing, you need to have an effective content strategy. This lies in the creation of the content itself before you share them to your target audience.
Content strategy acts as your blueprint in content creation. It contains your guidelines and strategies in content creation, reasons why you create your content, topics to include in your content, calendar, writers, content update (who will update and when), as well as the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that will help you evaluate your content.
There are many ways for brands to release content that works for their audiences. Shutterstock uses a creative trends report that collects data from searches and downloads from users over the course of the past year. Shutterstock uses this data to create relevant content. Coding Sans creates an annual “State of Software Development” report, which is an industry survey that enables them to find new trends in the field of software development and enables them to provide more relevant content. Colgate-Palmolive utilized AR and gamification to attract and engage with a new audience. Stewart Surfboards utilized user created content on Instagram to attract a new audience and help expand their brand. Florida Physical Medicine used a SEO marketing campaign to provide keyword-driven content. LogoMaker used a guide-focused content marketing strategy that was based on keyword research and data from their customers.
Key Takeaways:
Use data already available to you. Don’t be afraid to share proprietary data if it could provide insights your audience can’t get anywhere else.
Invest the time in creating content that provides value to your audience.
Create interactive content for audience engagement and brand awareness. In highly competitive markets, a new approach can make a difference.
“With the glut of content, how does a brand create and distribute content that works for it AND its audience?”
What do you do when your traffic numbers suddenly shift considerably? Along with the knee-jerk elation or despair, do you cast a disparaging due in the direction of the search engine? Human as the response may be, it’s wise to forgo it, because it pulls the reins right out of your hands. If you can figure out the precise reason behind the shift you can do it again if it’s a positive and avoid doing it again if not. In general, there are four forces that could be behind your SEO swing. Algorithmic changes could be at the base, including changes in rules that govern snippets or ad percentages.You may be able to use metric tools to get a timeline and from there do some research to possibly find a solution, although with algorithms there are no silver bullets. There could also be technical issues with your site brought about because you’ve been tinkering with your site, or possibly changed hosts. The solution is to keep a close eye on changes, be they campaigns, site changes, or domain and host adjustments. Sometimes seasonal Changes, or new competing markets, can affect results. In both cases, analytics are your friend. Figure out what happened, when it occurred, and you can devise a plan of correction.
Key Takeaways:
Gather documentation from Google Webmaster YouTube channel, industry publications, or your SEO to identify the best solution.
Establish a timeline for technical (front-end or back-end) changes to the site. Annotations in Google Analytics or changelogs within your CMS can help you analyze this.
Google Trends will be your best friend in identifying seasonal search trends for your targeted topics.
“What was your reaction the last time you saw a dropoff or upwards spike in organic traffic to your site?”
SEO can be quite complex for e-commerce sites, but there are some tips to point you in the right direction. Check the technical aspects of your site, such as making sure it can be crawled, fixing pages with 4XX errors, and adding schema markup. Keyword strategy is central to SEO; be sure to target transactional, sales-driven keywords. Last, avoid duplicated or thin content, and make sure your site is optimized for mobile. Focusing on these areas will make your website an SEO success.
Key Takeaways:
Your site’s indexability, crawlability, speed, content, schema markup, and overall user-friendliness are all essential components of technical SEO.
Once your site is verified, your first step should be to address any pages that come up with errors.
Once your technical SEO is sound, you will want to evaluate your current keywords and see which pages are ranking for them.
“With a brand new decade ahead of us, now is the perfect time to reevaluate your ecommerce website’s SEO strategy”
SEO is important for any business that has chosen to operate online as well as try to gain consumers online. You might be thinking that you aren’t interested in just SEO, but there are other factors to consider when you take into account what goes into using SEO, and one of those is brand awareness. If you creating content, then you are doing something well, as long as it’s being done regularly. You will also gain leads this way, but if you want to focus on SEO then you will for sure want to do some keyword research.
Key Takeaways:
From a thought leadership standpoint, keyword research reveals questions your audience wants answered.
Linking related content into topic clusters not only benefits your audience, but also improves site architecture for SEO.
Optimize your blog posts by focusing on long-tail keywords and making the blog mobile-friendly
People often use content aggregation sites to find information from a lot of different sources on one site. Sometimes these types of sites are used to look into travel options. A content aggregation site is where a lot of information is put together all in one place, so it’s a good option for people who are trying to promote their brand. When someone uses this site, they will better be able to find the information that you have put out there.
Key Takeaways:
While content curators use people, aggregators use automation to gather content.
There are aggregators for blogs (Alltop, Flipboard, etc.) and news (Google News, Reddit, etc.).
Push notifications are different from conventional notifications, as they actually nudge a person to perform a specific action. These notifications have been shown to provide businesses with a ten percent increase in retention, as well as thirty percent more business value. You can utilize push notifications to inform your customers about new sales, provide them with early access to offers, or even as a way to prompt them to finish their registration process with your company.
Key Takeaways:
Push notifications prompt people to take action and they appear when a user isn’t on an app.
Most users have push notifications active on their iOS or Android devices, and they are known to create excitement for these users.
It is important to limit the number of push notifications because too many may prompt someone to turn them off completely.
“Here’s the thing: your newest market doesn’t remember a world where the Internet didn’t exist, and your customers have become jaded to all the noise in the online marketing space.”
Search engines are becoming more and more efficient at figuring out what the searchers intent is. The search engine used to not have much insight to what you were searching for and because of this people would type in just key phrases that they figured would get a hit in the Google search engine. We all do it, even those times we type in the name of a business instead of typing out the entire URL. Search results will give you a direct insight to what it is people are looking for and it’s up to different brands to be able to answer those specific questions.
Key Takeaways:
When a search term doesn’t have one dominant intent, the search engine provides a variety of results.
Using a private browser window, enter a keyword and analyze the results, focusing on intent.
If there’s a dominant type of intent and your content doesn’t align with it, you probably won’t rank.
“We generally distinguish four types of searcher intent: informational, commercial, transactional and navigational.”
Content is constantly evolving, and if you don’t evolve with it, then you and your content won’t remain relevant. One sure fire way to stay relevant is to use videos as a way to communicate your content. People like videos, and would rather watch what it is they want to know rather than read about it. You’re also able to add a lot more details in a shorter amount of time with a video. Great content also answers questions, think about the questions people may have in their head when they view your content, think ahead and answer any questions you think may arise.
Key Takeaways:
Great content usually contains video content. Not only is this content interactive, it’s also more fun to consume.
A great content piece will usually answer questions and be useful to whoever watches or reads it.
One of the unique characteristics of a great piece of content is that it simply is an original content piece.
“Technology advances and content creation is becoming increasingly accessible to the average content creator.”
Content clusters are a great way to drive traffic. These clusters are essentially pieces of content that are all dealing with a similar main topic. They help improve search rankings and traffic with regards to your SEO. Some examples include things like blog posts on how to keep employees engaged through different forms of communication. It’s also very important to use links when you create a content cluster to help connect them. To create a cluster you simply plan your topic, think about subtopics that relate to the main topic, and then you just write the content. It’s as easy as that.
Key Takeaways:
Content clusters are simply a marketing strategy that organizes content around a specific topic.
Some examples of topic clusters include writing a blog on how to keep employees engaged or the best way to address your subordinates through email.
To create a content cluster. plan your content topic, think about some subtopics, start writing and make sure you link a website to build a reputation.
“According to ABG Essentials, content marketing has a 6 times higher conversion rate than other forms of digital marketing, making it an invaluable tool.”
To keep your account secure, you will want to follow the old rule of, if it’s too good to be true then it probably is. If you receive a link for something that sounds good, be aware that it could very well be a phishing link, if it doesn’t originate from somewhere that you trust. You should also make sure that your password is strong, easily hacked accounts are those that have passwords that simple to figure out.
Key Takeaways:
Never click on a strange link as the chances are a hacker is simply trying to trick you with that link to get your information.
Create a very strong password including capital letters, numbers and symbols. If you’re afraid of forgetting it, use a password manager or writing it in a book at home.
Use two factor authentication as it’s a very secure way to protect your account and prevents hacking even if they know your password.
“While on the other hand if you use an email address instead of a phone, no one can grant access to your recovery code because login into your mail account requires a password.”
Communication is crucial when you have a business where there is offshore communication as well as remote workers, you won’t want to miss out on vital communication between these two parties. One of the other concerns is language barriers on top of the distance. When you have a miscommunication between to people in a business, it’s easy to get distanced from what is actually going on and miss out. One thing that you can do to ensure this doesn’t happen is to remember to listen, not just hear people. Figure out exactly what it is that is being said.
Key Takeaways:
You should always be taking in the information that your development team is relaying to you, but ultimately your decision is final.
Schedule video calls on a consistent basis to keep yourself in the loop when it comes to all of the various projects that are ongoing.
Give feedback and ask for feedback as well because the more involved you are, the more beneficial it is to everyone.
“Along with fears such as language, culture, and time differences, companies are also afraid of missing out on communication, which is crucial towards establishing trustworthiness with strangers.”
Jonah Berger’s new book The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind delves into the topic of marketing persuasion. He points out that, in chemistry, catalysts don’t produce change through force, but by reducing barriers. Berger calls his framework REDUCE: reactance, endowment, distance, uncertainty and corroborating evidence. Reactance points to how people like to push back when being sold something, which can be neutralized by offering a menu of options. Regarding uncertainty, Berger notes that customers must endure switching costs when moving to new products and services. Freemium is one way to overcome this barrier.
Key Takeaways:
Jonah Berger points out that catalysts don’t produce change by force, but by making things easier to happen.
REDUCE stands for reactance, endowment, distance, uncertainty and corroborating evidence.
Th audience for your marketing isn’t thinking about how you’re right, they’re thinking about how you’re wrong.
“But in sales or marketing, we often end up trying to push what we have rather than being customer-focused. Rather than trying to make what we can sell, we often try to sell what we can make. We think about what we already have and how to sell that.”
The whole point of marketing through a website is to market to the correct audience and to deliver the right information to that right audience. You will want to give the front page of your website the most attention because that is where people go to find out more about your product or service. Make sure to fix any errors on your web page and streamline your tabs so that they are easier to navigate. You can also improve the shopping experience by defining each category.
Key Takeaways:
The user experience on a website is the number one reason to organize it properly
The landing page should immediately display your company mission and clearly identify your products
Ensure you thoroughly test and re-test your website to eliminate errors or bugs when being used
“On this page, everything should be extremely simple, clear, and convenient – especially the images of goods to make sure that the person got to the address.”
Every website out there is assigned a domain authority, which is a score that reflects your website’s authority in your industry. Domain authority is different from page authority, because while page authority reflects the importance of just a singular page, domain authority includes the entire domain. You can find out your website’s domain authority by going to a website called Moz. Once you’re on the site, you will be asked to enter your website’s URL, and the system will automatically detect your domain authority score.
Key Takeaways:
Work on both your off page and on page SEO as they can help you increase your search rankings and grow your domain.
Increase your sites speed by compressing images, trimming your programming code and enabling browser caching.
Apply good site navigation so that your site is both functional and easy to work around. Make sure that search engines know what pages are on your site as well.
“Domain authority refers to a score that indicates the authority of your website and predicts how well the site will rank on search engine result pages.”
Ridding your site of unnatural links can greatly improve your ranking and traffic. Unnatural links (e.g., link schemes, low-quality directories and injected links) can result in penalties from Google. To find unnatural links, use a tool such as SEMrush or Ahrefs. Manually look through your backlinks and decide which ones to place in your disavow file, then upload the file to Google Search Console. Only keep links that add value to your site or direct your customers to places they’d want to go.
Key Takeaways:
Link schemes, link exchanges and widgets are types of unnatural links that hurt you more than help you.
Links in forums and comments were once used to build backlinks, but Google has cracked down.
Add unnatural links to your disavow file and upload it to Google Search Console.
“You don’t want to lose 82% of your site traffic as these folks did after building 2,500+ unnatural links.”
Mobile SEO and desktop SEO both focus on using keywords that are searchable. It is critical to have a site that works well on mobile phones because research shows that people are more likely to make purchases on their phones than on the desktop. It is critical to make sure that the site also loads up quickly. Google is even basing their search results based on the mobile index, not the desktop. It is very important to make sure the mobile content is high quality.
Key Takeaways:
Having a mobile-optimized version of your website is essential to your business’s success.
Google has switched its algorithm to heavily favor mobile searches, based on mobile indexes.
Having quality SEO and content is increasingly important to quickly draw in mobile customers.
“It has been shown that people who use a mobile phone are more likely to make a purchase than those that use desktop.”
There is no way to make a landing page perfect because it will not be liked by every person who visits it. Unbounce created a great tool called Smart Traffic that reroutes each visitor to a landing page they’re more likely to enjoy. The Smart Traffic tool uses AI to know which page a visitor is more likely to like. There should be anywhere from three to five different variants of your landing page. Different pages can focus on five core things. The five core things are Unique Selling Points, Hero Image and Page Design, Features and Benefits, Social Proof, and Calls to Action. Those five core ideas are what each variant of the landing page should focus on.
Key Takeaways:
Having several different versions of a landing page can appeal to a broad variety of visitors.
Customizing variants of the landing page will help show relevant, unique, and personalized materials, and increases the chance of customer interactions.
There are several software tools that can help quickly create multiple page variants, and change specific parts of content to be more effective.
“You’ve only got a few seconds to capture visitors’ attention and assure them they’re in the right place.”
The human brain processes images much faster than text. This means that when it comes to data, showing is better than telling. The first rule, however, is to make sure your data is compelling and credible. Also be sure the data fits the story. Don’t force it. The purpose of data visualization is to convey information, so don’t overcomplicate things. Use color effectively, but don’t overdo it. Additionally, always remember to stay focused on the data and on what is of interest to your audience.
You can check it Realtime > Events and should get something like this:
Let me know if it works for you.
There are many reasons why you need to track outbound link or banner clicks. This could be for affiliate links, sponsor links, etc.
Track specific types of link clicks or link clicks for a specific URL whether outbound or not
If you want to track, specific types of link clicks or even link clicks for specific URLs — you can do this under trigger in your tags manager.
Here is an example of how track a link click in our entry category found at the end of each post.
Below, we use This trigger fires onClick Element because we want to track the CSS selector .entry-categories a.
If you want to track a specific outbound URL, then you can simply use This trigger fires on click URL. Depending on how you want the specific URL triggered, you may use equals, matches, or starts with. I use starts with when I use parameters within the URL.
Many people believe that email marketing is a thing of the past, but statistics have shown that ninety-nine percent of people check their email everyday. So, marketers should not ignore these potential customers, and invest in their email marketing campaigns. The content they provide should be engaging and personalized. They should get feedback from past customers and help generate traffic to their website. On top of that, these email marketing campaigns should be periodical so that people will continue to engage with the brand.
Key Takeaways:
Create personalized content so that you can make content specifically for your target audience and give them information that is relevant to them and their needs.
Communicate and network with your audience. Ask for feedback and figure out what they like and dislike with regards to the content you’ve been putting out and then adjust accordingly.
Email marketing can improve sales as 59% of people in a survey said that marketing emails influence their decisions to purchase specific products. You can use these emails to promote sales/new items.
“As marketers, we can’t ignore these statistics. That’s why it’s important to develop a strong email marketing strategy.”
In today’s world of marketing and content creation it is easy to become overwhelmed or lost in the creation process and lose sight of the overall message or goals with your work. An editorial calendar will help shape your overall content strategy over a long timeline like a year. It is an outline with dates of what you want to say with your work. An editorial calendar is sometimes confused with a content calendar where the form is more high-level and the latter is focused on day-to-day strategy and creation. To create an effective calendar one should ask a few questions like what should the calendar look like? How often will it be updated? What will be included in the calendar? If you are lost on where to begin it may help to use one of the many tools like CoSchedule to build a basic calendar.
Key Takeaways:
An editorial calendar can be essential for marketing teams to outline the overall strategy on releasing content over a standard period of time like a year or financial quarter.
There is a different between a content calendar and an editorial calendar although the two are often used interchangeably. The content is day to day while the editorial overall narrative arc.
One should think about how their editorial calendar will look, what is included, how often it will be updated and whether to use a tool to create and maintain it.
“Think of the editorial calendar as the blueprints for your content responsibilities—it shows where you need to go and how to get there.”
A press page is a key component of marketing that creates a central location for formal and informal media to connect to your brand. There are often several important components to a press page on a brand website like linking leads, instructions, and brand control. There is some debate on whether to have an entire site or just a page devoted to press which usually scales with brand size and diversity. A good press page or site will have components like past mentions in the media. It will have organized contact information depending on the media source. It will have a brand narrative or behind-the-scenes story. It will offer brand style guides like font and logo descriptions and downloads. It will publish all the brand’s social media presences.
Key Takeaways:
Many companies do not have adequate contact information about themselves online.
Having detailed contact and “about us” information about your company can make it much easier to connect with others.
Having an entirely separate company information site can help with Google rankings.
“Featuring various stories around your brand gives journalists more ideas of possible angles for their own articles.”
SEO is search engine optimization, which is key in marketing to getting consumers and other businesses to find your site on the web. There are several steps to make your SEO more friendly. First, focus on searchable phrases especially if there is little content already available. Second, once you have settled on keywords make sure to use them in target locations. Third, perform analysis with Google to make sure your content is optimized towards searches. Fourth, if you haven’t already you should move beyond just text content and into images and video. Fifth, your site should have some sort of SEO monitoring like Google Search Console. Sixth and finally, one needs to pay attention to how their site is connected through content links as this can affect Google rankings.
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