9 Stepping Stones Of Content Marketing
Is It Worth The Time? Are There Measurable SEO Results?
Dr. Joe Schaefer
1- Start Publishing Content NOW
Start a business blog and start giving away valuable content. Don’t hold anything back. Chances are the more brilliant you sound in the blog, the better your chances of turning readers into new clients. Don’t worry they will steal your ideas and do it themselves.
2- Post Content Everywhere
Get involved in the online conversation around your industry or service topic. Not only will this increase your exposure, but you just might learn some new stuff by listening to the ongoing discussion. Start putting comments, opinions and knowledge everywhere you can.
3- Be A Bookworm
Websites like Delicious, Digg and Reddit will help you organize the information you find on the internet as well as allows others to see the information you are sharing. In your blog. Again this helps you stay relevant as much as it brings you new clients.
4- Re-Route Current Traffic
Make sure to place social sharing buttons everywhere in your website and blogs. No one should have to search for a way to get involved with you at the social media level. This maximizes all the viral and current traffic your are getting, thereby constantly increasing your sphere of influence.
5- Become an Expert
Writing an E-Book is not as difficult of course as writing a real book, but it still takes effort and actual knowledge. However, once you invest this time, you will reap the rewards in credibility. Save this one until you are a solid part of the online conversationa dn you are filly versed in the topic and the current trends in that topic.
6- Create an Infographic
This relatively new information format is just another form of sharing your knowledge of a topic. Some people are drawn to these displays, while others still prefer the written word. Regardless, there are several free infographic generators out there that post your graphic on a page in their server, allow you to embed yours into another web page. The page ranks of these services are quite high and they are constantly indexed by Google. I have seen new infographics show up in the top position on a SERP within 24 hours of being posted.
7- Perseverance Wins (start a schedule)
The content marketing approach is a very powerful adjunct to basic SEO, but the relevancy of the signals and links fade fast with time. This means that your effort needs to be spread out and consistent. Once you begin, you must keep the effort going or you will lose all the ground you gained. This will happen frighteningly fast.
8- Write Guest Blog Posts
As you are becoming more and more well known, you can write blog comments that are meaningful and thought-provoking as well as write guests posts in other blogs. Both of these methods are great ways to get more reputation and backlinks to your site or other social media accounts.
9- Spend Time Building Relationships
Don’t just re-tweet anything you find. Look at the articles, look at the author and add some commentary periodically. Interact with influential people in the social media world and you too will become influential. Wait your turn, learn the lingo, bide your time and connect when the time is right. If you does this then people will listen and you will remain relevant for the long haul.
DOES THIS WORK FOR SEO?
Here is the data from tracking the SERP position for a competitive keyword. Moving this keyword from 5th to 2nd position equaled a 3 fold increase in organic traffic from that search. All other SEO work was halted for this keyword several months before the switch to Content Marketing.