For SEO and online marketing, content is king. In fact, content, in any form, be it articles, blogs, webinars, podcasts, e-newsletters or brochures, is the foundation for every successful online marketing strategy. Understanding content is king is one thing, building successful content marketing process is another. Here are some tips to help to build a content marketing process to keep your clients happy.
1. Build a keyword strategy
Think from your customers’ perspective to understand what type of questions, keywords or keyword phrases they would use to search for your clients’ products and services.
To test, enter these keyword/phrases in the search bar and study the results.
You can also read through the content on your competitor sites to identify the keywords they are targeting. It is a good SEO web copywriting practice to highlight keywords in bold and in case your competitors are following it, you will be able to identify them easily.
Make a list of list of the keywords you have shortlisted. Then go to Google Keyword Planner (formerly the Keyword Tool). Paste the list of keywords into the tool and let Google generate more keyword ideas.
Evaluate the list and then choose keywords that are relevant and provide the right context to someone who is searching for what your clients are offering. Build the content of your marketing campaign around these words.
2. Find the best copywriters/content writers
You may have an in-house team of content writers or copywriters but it is important to match expertise with client requirement. For instance, you clients could range from IT to travel firms. A technical writer has to sell facts while a travel writer has to sell dreams (though based on facts!). The same writer may or may not do justice to both industries. Any inaccuracy in fact, or the wrong tone or style of the content can adversely impact your marketing campaign.
You can hire native English speakers to craft copy for your marketing collaterals or outsource your copywriting requirements. Many agencies also outsource their copy requirements to copywriting companies in India. There are some people who are apprehensive about the quality but understand India has 22 official languages, including English. For many people, English is their first (or native) language.
3. Develop headings and titles
It is important to understand what types of headlines create impact and drive clicks. Studies have shown that if your title does not grab and hold readers’ attention they will hit the back button. Creative titles do grab eye-balls but from an SEO perspective, they should contain relevant keywords. Also, studies have shown that direct, concise titles with numbers in them work best, for instance 5 ways to, 10 tips to, 7 step guide to etc.
4. Optimize your web content
This is the final step in the content creation journey. While it is humans that will respond and perform a call-to-action, they can do only when they see your content. To improve the visibility of your articles, blog posts, or web content, you have to first provide fodder to the search engine spiders. For this,
- Place keywords strategically throughout the text.
- Avoid over stuffing to avoid being penalized by the search engine
- Write short paras, with suitable headings/sub-headings, and where ever possible, add keywords
- Use keywords in meta descriptions, meta tags etc.
Once the content is optimized, it’s ready for publication and distribution. Can you suggest any other way to improve any part of our process? We’d love to hear your suggestions, so do leave us a comment below.