What content marketing means for SEO

Instead of focusing on technical aspects like algorithms or on-page SEO, I am going to focus this article on what we refer to as “content marketing."

What is this “content” you speak of?

The content part of content marketing is the white papers, videos, blogs, presentations, newsletters, tutorials and infographics that you can create. The marketing part of it is the sharing of this content.

When you write white papers or develop a video, do you keep them to yourself and admire your great work? No. You push it out there by posting it, sharing it and encouraging others to engage and share it on the Internet.

For example, on your LinkedIn update you might post a link to your latest blog post. That’s content marketing. You put your videos on YouTube and share them on other social media pages, market white papers through places like Knowledge Hub and share your pretty infographics on Google+.

The key is to build enough followers on social media channels to get more marketing leverage.

In short, it’s about producing quality branded content and then sharing it. By branded I mean giving yourself credit in the content you create as well as a link to your website.

The new link building

Back in the old days in 2010, link building meant site owners, or companies hired by site owners, would purchase “backlinks” from other websites like 3rtyew.com. They’d buy these “backlinks” by the trainload to boost that site owner’s rank on search engine results pages.

Lots of incoming links that were posted on outside sites meant you were really important and that would boost your rank. Search bots were stupider and didn’t recognize junk sites from legit ones. Today, we still do link building, but we don’t buy them like bushels of corn. We earn backlinks.

This happens as a result of a consistent effort to publish good content.

If you publish quality content, others will tweet it, retweet it, repeat it, refer to it on their sites and otherwise build your backlinks for you. That’s what I mean by earning them.

Sites that push content out there and are active on social media channels, get greater rewards in terms of search engine rank. This doesn’t happen immediately but over time. And like a lot of today’s marketing, it’s more labor intensive, takes persistence and a leap of faith before it takes hold.

Content marketing strategy

Your SEO and content marketing strategy has to be in line with your business goals. Let’s say you are a lawyer and you want specialize as the “Pakistani convenience store operator litigator” in Virginia and North Carolina. And I’m not racial profiling or making this up; it’s a real niche.

You would then start to write blog posts, speak at events on that topic and perhaps do a 1-minute YouTube video on the subject that presents some examples of outcomes for your clients.

Once you put it out there, those looking for that niche will find you and other lawyers will refer you. As a result of your having put a lot of information on several channels, you start to “own” the Google page for that subject and low and behold a niche for your practice is born.

One of our account coordinators, Shelly, had a blog post idea for our client, Dominion Pallet, about re-purposing pallets. A representative of This Old House magazine was doing research, found the blog and called Dominion Pallet for an article about people doing DIY projects with old pallets that appeared in their March 2013 issue.

How much time should be spent doing what for SEO?

After a decade of currying favor with search engines, I’d apply about this much time to specific tasks.

• 5 percent on technical SEO fundamentals. On page keywords, adding title tags and hyperlinking. Don’t overdo it, or Google will banish you to page 50+.
• 10 percent on keyword and competitive research. Google is phasing out making keywords available but the best place to get keywords is your own company. What do your customers say? Have your receptionist write these phrases down.
• 20 percent on researching and analyzing what people are looking for in terms of information.
• 55 percent on creating a content marketing plan and the content for that plan.
• 10 percent on publishing and sharing your content, then paying attention to social signals. In other words, what are people saying and how are they engaging?

If you currently have someone doing your SEO and they are not producing content and marketing it for you, ask for a list of what they are doing. You deserve to know what they are doing each month.

So the secret to SEO? Consistently write and generate engaging content. Then share it!