Brand, product, and service marketing can be done in many different ways. However, content marketing is still one of the most useful indirect marketing techniques. It focuses on creating, publishing, sharing, and promoting content that stirs interest in your service, product, or brand, ultimately resulting in better and increased customer involvement.

From solid keyword research to guest posting and everything in between, there are more aspects to SEO content marketing than can be explained in a single blog post. We will be focusing on tried and tested content marketing tips based on what our professional team uses here at Aloha Digital to get superb results.

15 Expert SEO Content Marketing Tips

You can find tons of tips for content marketing on the internet, but not all of them are valid in 2021. Here’s a list of the evergreen ones: 

Write for the Audience first, then for Google 

The most important tip for SEO content marketing is that your focus should be the audience and not the search engine’s algorithms. That’s not to say that it is not essential to focus on what the algorithm demands. Focusing so much on the algorithm as to compromise the quality and value of the content for the audience will not help you attain long-term goals. 

Do focus on the things that will get you ranked, but avoid practices like keyword stuffing that reduce the quality of the content. 

Focus on Business Goals, Not Views 

It might seem like a good idea to start producing and publishing large amounts of content, but it is not. Every piece of content that you publish needs to have a specific business goal behind it. Focusing on getting as many views as possible does not count as a business goal. Every blog post, video, or social media post you create must be tied to your business goals.

For example, if you want to use blogging to grow your business, you need to keep the analytics in check. Make sure that the content reaches the people with the search intent that fits your business model. Then, tie it to your products and services to get the best results from the content marketing effort.

Try to Solve Problems for the Audience 

One of the most valuable tips for content marketing is solving problems for your audience. Do not focus all of your SEO content strategies on conversions. Research your field and find out the issues that potential customers or clients face, and try solving them. 

This will establish you as a reputable and helpful name in the industry and give you the opportunity of embedding your products and services into the content, ultimately providing you business benefits.

The pillar-cluster model

One of the best practices in content marketing that has evolved recently is the pillar-cluster model. It is an excellent way of building great SEO content that brings value to the readers. 

To do this, you post a bigger umbrella topic, which acts as the pillar page and supports it with several cluster pages. All the pages are interlinked. It gives Google the signal that the information on all those pages is well connected, an excellent thing for SEO. 

Detailed Content Performs Better 

Research indicates that longer, more detailed content ranks better in search engine results than short content. So, it is a good practice to write long content, but do not make it unnecessarily long, make it valuable for the reader and do not stray too far off the topic. 

Your focus should be to solve problems for the reader. Spare no expense in including everything that is needed to solve the problem, but avoid unnecessary fluff. Focus on answering relevant questions and providing tips that make things easier for the reader. 

If you want to convert readers, link your products and services within the content in a way that feels natural. 

You can use the “People Also Ask” section in Google search results to see what people are asking about the topic you are writing on. 

Writing longer posts does not mean that you have to write on a general topic nor should you be adding words that don’t provide any value to your article, aka fluff. You should select a highly specific topic consisting of one to three keywords and expand on it.

Track Your Performance With Analytics

Good quality content is one of the most essential things in content marketing, but it is not the only thing by any means. What matters for your business is conversion, not views. By closely monitoring analytics and stats, you can see which content is performing well for conversions. 

Suppose one blog post on your website is getting 10,000 views a week but has a conversion rate of 1%, and another has 5,000 views but is getting 10% conversion. In that case, the second one is performing better for the business. 

Analytics can, hence, be the guide for your future SEO content writing and making an SEO content strategy that can bring the best business outcomes. 

Be Consistent and Up to Date

If your content is about something that changes with time, you need to keep updating it. When updating the content, make sure that it is consistent with what’s already there on the page. 

Here are some tips from our experts that can help you remain up-to-date and relevant for the search engines:

• Do not use the year in the URL when optimizing the content. Keeping the URL timeless is important. 
• If the content is time-sensitive, include the year in the main heading, add a published on date, or simply state that the information is accurate to a date. 
• Update anything like the title tag, meta description, or the content itself at regular intervals. 
• Avoid updating the URL. You’ll either have to earn the backlinks again or redirect the traffic; neither of those is a good thing. If you’re forced to update, make sure to 301 redirect to the new URL.
• Being consistent in updating your content will signal to search engines that the content is of high quality resulting in higher rankings in search engines and loyal returning readers. 

Determine the Keywords’ Search Intent

Prior to structuring your article, you want to make sure that the keywords you are targeting mean what you think they mean. Keyword research can lead someone down various rabbit holes that don’t always pan out. It’s important to always check that the search intent of the keywords you choose to base an article on match the main idea of your article.

User Experience is the Key 

While this does not fall strictly into the realm of content marketing, it is too important not to include it in this blog. User experience is the most critical element concerning your website. No matter how well-written, researched, or authentic a blog is, if the user experience is not good, the reader will either leave or not come back again. From an SEO point of view, it is one of the most prominent negative ranking factors. 

The most important things that make the user experience better are quick loading, optimization for mobile devices, and easy navigability. 

Standard accessibility features like alt text for images, video captions, high-contrast settings, and read loud options are also good for better ranking and user experience. 

Back Your Claims With Data 

People have no reason to believe a blogger when they say something, especially when the internet is the biggest source of misinformation these days. When you are writing content, you need to back it up with data from reputable sources. 

When you use data in your content, do it subtly, rather than presenting many stats to a potentially non-technical reader. The data needs to be backed into the content so that it does not look like you are quoting it, just to quote it. Lastly, and most importantly, link the data back to the source. 

Do Not Copy Content 

This seems obvious, and anyone with a basic knowledge of SEO can tell that copying is not a good SEO practice. What’s important is the definition of copying. Let’s say you have to create a blog, and you decide to copy it from your competitor. You take all their blog posts and rewrite them to escape plagiarism and think it will work; it will not. 

The key is to come up with new content that has never been seen anywhere else. You can get guidance and inspiration from the established names in your industry. Still, the content needs to be created specifically for your website rather than a sophisticated copy of a rival/competitor.

Analyze the Competition 

Put in the simplest words, if you want to outrank the number one page in Google search results, you need to be better than that page. Many things go into a successful SEO content strategy, and you have to beat the competition in all of the metrics.

Compare your page with the one you want to beat. If that’s hard for you (it’s often hard to find faults in what you have made), ask a friend to do that. Ask them if they had to choose one page from the Google search, which one they’d prefer and why. Then analyze where your page lacks with respect to that one and try to improve in those areas. 

Answer the Questions 

As mentioned before, you should always try to answer your readers’ questions in your text. A different way of doing that is to include an FAQ portion at the end of your posts, including the hot questions on the topic. This will increase the chances of your website being featured in the snippets or People Also Ask section, which will get you organic traffic and establish you as an authority on the topic.

Create Content that Creates Backlinks

Getting backlinks manually can be time-consuming. If you play smart, you can create content that gets passive backlinks for itself. There are a couple of ways that you can do this. 

One of the many ways is to create statistical content. Many other websites need stats to quote, and many of them tend to quote one of the top three results from Google. Such content can earn you free, organic backlinks. 

Additionally, Take inspiration from articles that have high amounts of referring domains, Ahrefs is a great tool for finding this data.

Target Specific Keywords With Your Content

Now the tip you’ve been waiting for. Google’s algorithms are designed so that no content creator needs to be worried about SEO. All you need to do is to create valuable content for the audience, and you’ll get lots of traffic; that is, however, not the case.

It would be best if you supplied keywords to the algorithm to get ranking. The topic of keywords’ importance and proper use in SEO content strategy is too vast to be covered here, and it needs a whole separate post. 

In short, keyword research is the backbone of content marketing, and you need to set primary and secondary keywords for the topic. The art is to strike a balance between keyword stuffing and going keyword-less. 

Conclusion

Content marketing is the art and science of creating, publishing, and promoting content that your potential customers/clients are looking for. It is quite hard to get noticed by the people who matter for your business in today’s competitive market. 

The key to content marketing is to create value for the audience, and everything else will eventually follow. However, you do need to take care of the technical aspects of SEO to make sure your efforts bring the results you are looking for. This article has covered the timeless tips that will always be valid for SEO content marketing.

Frequently Asked Questions 

What is the best way to do content marketing?

The best way of doing content marketing is by creating content that brings value to the audience. With that in mind, a successful content marketing campaign starts with extensive keywords research progresses to creating useful and valuable content based on the keywords and includes getting backlinks and much more.

What makes content marketing successful?

Content marketing is made successful by reaching out to as many relevant people as possible, providing what they need, and converting them into customers. A lot goes into achieving that, but the main thing is to provide the best possible user experience at all levels.

What is the role of content marketing?

The role of content marketing is to get traffic consisting of people who can be converted into customers and then successfully converting them. Content marketing makes a brand, service, or product known and convinces people to decide in favor of them.

What are the advantages of content marketing?

The advantages of a successfully implemented content marketing strategy include expanded brand awareness, higher expertise, authority, and trust, increased organic search traffic, and better conversion rates, among many others.

How do you measure content marketing SEO success?

The best quantitative measure of the success of SEO content marketing can be divided into a couple important metrics that every SEO Company should know about, the amount of keywords a website is ranked for, the growth of said keywords and of course, organic traffic.

What are some content marketing methods?

The main content marketing methods include but are not limited to blogging, podcasting, videos, emails, infographics, e-books, and visual content.