One of the main objectives of content marketing is to attract qualified leads.
Every piece of content you publish needs to not only satisfy the very specific needs of your target audience but also to be easily accessible and found. In other words, it must be search-optimised.
Consider the keywords your target audience uses to search for content as a shortcut that leads them straight to you. Each time you publish or update content with these keywords, you’re essentially multiplying the chances of your potential customers discovering your brand every time they search for anything related to your business. As soon as a doubt, question, or need arises, there you are with the right content that answers their questions and resolves their problems at the right time.
Should I boost traffic by investing in content marketing or SEO?
There’s a huge overlap with content marketing and SEO.
SEO focuses on increasing your website visibility in rankings by making sure your content is well-positioned in the search results of the search terms and queries keyed in by your target audience.
But with no words, there’s no positioning. SEO cannot exist without content marketing and vice versa. There’s no point in investing in content marketing if your content isn’t well-positioned and generating traffic. Content marketing is an extremely broad discipline and SEO plays a role in its success. It’s not about prioritising one above the other but about integrating them to get the best of both worlds.
Many studies and statistics have shown that publishing optimised content is the most effective way to generate visibility and qualified organic traffic. For example, websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages than those that don’t publish content regularly. Plus, companies who put in consistent effort in publishing content enjoy 3.5 times more web traffic than those who don’t.
Plus, the nature of content and how it incorporates itself into SEO and the web makes it the staple of any marketing technique used to generate traffic.
Generating traffic with social media content
Another important source of web traffic is social media. This requires patience. Time, dedication, and effort are needed to build up your profile and community on each social network before you’ll begin to see a real impact on traffic from social networks (excluding paid campaigns).
But in a world where an average person spends 135 minutes a day on social media, publishing content on these social networks has become one of the pillars of increasing brand awareness and making yourself known to new audiences. When done well, publishing and disseminating your content on social media can become one of your best alternative sources of traffic in the long run.
Get traffic with email marketing
Email marketing and content marketing are perfect complements for each other to generate traffic. Emails are one of the best distribution channels of content there is. In fact, statistics show that 93% of B2B marketers use email to distribute their content. Of these, more than nine out of ten consider it to be the most important outlet for their content marketing success.
But what’s email marketing without content? The design and segmentation are important, but the fundamental element of each email marketing campaign lies in the message.
In many cases, the subjects of email marketing campaigns come from the content strategy. After having published a great post, it’s natural to want to use it to generate traffic via email. This may be a small preview of the article is about in the form of a teaser, a statistic, an analysis, an opinion, or any other kinds of adaptation of the content.
There are many ways to craft an email related to a piece of content. Regardless of which you choose, remember that its purpose is to drive traffic to your website. This can be triggered either immediately upon receiving the email or in the medium term by keeping your message on the top of the minds of your readers, reminding them that your content is around to help them as and when they need it.
Get traffic with content for the digital media
Content produced for the digital media fulfils two main objectives: increase brand awareness and improve your website’s search ranking.
When your brand is featured or even simply mentioned by the media, what you gain is direct exposure to the audience of these channels.
This usually results in an immediate increase in your online visibility and brand awareness — two basic ways to increase traffic to your web in the medium term. All this stems from content specifically written and produced for the digital media, and the result is an increase in direct traffic and searches related to your brand. Plus, digital PR is one of the most commonly used techniques to improve a website’s online authority and its positioning in search engines.
SEO isn’t a standalone discipline. It depends on others such as PPC or social networks. That said, the common consensus among SEO experts is that having regular mentions by the media is one of the best ways for Google to perceive your site as authoritative, which has a direct impact on where you rank in search results.
The backlinks to your website from authoritative and reputable sites such as the media are interpreted by Google as signs of authority. SEO may have changed a lot in the past 10 to 15 years, but backlinks remain one of the most important factors search engines pay attention to. The greater the domain authority of the website that links to your site, the greater the organic positioning impact on your website.
In addition to the impact of these backlinks, the increase of brand mentions also has a positive effect on your SEO. In recent years, search engines have begun to pay more attention to other signs of site authority, including the number of times it’s quoted in relevant sites or search queries.
To quote Gary Illyes, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst,
If you publish high-quality content that is highly cited on the internet — and I’m not talking about just links, but also mentions on social networks and people talking about your branding, crap like that. Then you are doing great.
The content marketing nexus
Content marketing cannot flourish without SEO. SEO must be complemented with digital media relations. And digital media relations go well with, yes, you guessed it: content marketing.
Like it or not, every single aspect of digital marketing is inter-connected. When it comes to generating traffic, content permeates each and every one of the stages, actions, techniques and processes that you can do to drive traffic to your web.
Here’s a quick summary of how content marketing can increase your site’s traffic:
- Content marketing allows you to publish content aligned with the interests of your audience.
- SEO increases the visibility of your content in search results.
- Content for the digital media helps to increase brand awareness and as a direct consequence, generates visits and traffic to your website. Plus, such content helps with your organic ranking. The better positioned you are, the more visible you are, and the more traffic you’ll get.
- Email marketing and social media are great ways to disseminate your content. The more people know about your content and all it offers, the more they’re likely to tag your site as a useful resource, which ultimately leads to more traffic. Your content strategy is a source of inspiration for your social media and email marketing campaigns. With social media and email marketing, you connect with your audience in a more personal way and keep yourself at the top of their minds. When you begin to become part of your audience’s life, however small it may be, you’re essentially establishing a recurring source of traffic.
Conclusion: Content marketing drives traffic to your website both directly and indirectly, and in the short, medium, and long term. When done well, the impact of content marketing is clear for all to see. And that’s not all. This is just the first step of your relationship with content marketing as it’s also an efficient way to generate leads.
Don’t forget that content marketing requires considerably less investment to achieve results compared to other digital marketing techniques. Can you possibly get more for any less?
