The marketing landscape is constantly evolving and growing in sophistication – which means that marketers need to evolve with it or risk being left behind. The age of digital has made it much quicker and easier to get your message across to your audience but, on the other hand, it’s also increased the level of competition exponentially. Amidst all of the changes in the past couple of years, one thing remains constant – the need for engaging and unique content in order to attract new customers and retain existing ones. We all know that, these days, Google rules the internet and, what’s more, the Gods of Google are judging you or, rather, your content.
Google uses a whopping 200 factors to determine the ranking of your website and, your content has a huge influence on this. So, how do you create great digital content which will get you on Google’s good side? Here’s how:
Spelling out great content
When putting together your strategy for digital content, there are two important acronyms that you need to know about:
E.A.T
These days, marketers can no longer get away with churning out repurposed ‘fluff’ content thanks to Google’s clever little algorithms. As a result, E.A.T forms the taste test for content and stands for:
Expertise – If you’re publishing content online, you need to make sure that the information that you’re providing is accurate, relevant and fact-checked. Producing vague or ‘made up’ content can quickly send your site spiraling down the ranking.
Authority – Although it’s fine to offer opinion in your content, what you’re aiming for is to mark yourself as a thought leader regarding the topic that you’re writing about. This means that not only does your content have to be factually correct, it also has to offer something that is unique and not covered in countless other blogs and articles.
Trustworthiness – Expertise and Authority are the two building bricks which, together, encourage trust. Your customers need to believe that your content will be truthful and fair as well as an engaging read.
Y.M.Y.L
This incredibly important acronym stands for Your Money or Your Life and is, essentially, a quality rating for your content. This one is all about the correlation between your content and the possible impact on a reader’s wellbeing and, is used widely by sites dealing in health, financial and safety issues. Y.M.Y.L uses the E.A.T touch points to help you to ensure that your content is trustworthy and will have the potential to have a positive impact on your reader’s life by offering tried and tested information and advice.
Once you’ve got E.A.T and Y.M.Y.L locked down, you can then focus on getting creative with your content. While it’s super important to produce unique, interesting and high-value content you are, of course, ultimately aiming to attract customers. Here’s how that’s done:
Making a connection
Link building is vital for improving your ranking and attracting customers however, not all links are created equal. In order to be of value to your site, links must be high quality (not spammy) and must be relevant to your content.
Good intentions
As I’m sure you’re aware, keywords and phrases are essential for the SEO of your site and your content. Before you start merrily stuffing your content with keywords, however, things are no longer quite that simple. In 2020, SEO is all about understanding search intent rather than just plucking words out of thin air. This means that you need to drill a bit deeper so that you not only understand which words users are searching for but also why they are doing so. The three cornerstones of search intent focus on three different factors: Does the user want to learn something? Is the user looking for a specific website? And ‘Is the user looking to make a purchase’. By understanding the intent behind a search, you can then base your SEO strategy around this.
…….and engage
So, you’ve followed all of the above and you’ve put together some world beating content. Well done you but, it doesn’t stop there. The final stage of your content strategy is to invite engagement from your readers. This can be as simple as including hashtags for sharing, adding buttons to allow readers to rate the piece or, even just asking for feedback – ‘Hey, I’d love to know what you think!’
To sum up, content marketing is all about offering something of perceived value in order to gain followers, convert visitors to buyers and improve your ranking. Once you realise that your humble piece of content can do all that, you’ll understand the importance of this effective and affordable marketing tool.
