3 Things You Should Know About Content Marketing for the New Year

As we move into the new year, many will notice that content quality is becoming extremely important to Google rankings. Over the last year or so, Google has began to put a lot of weight on the quality of content that a website provides for its users. Whether your content is in the form of a video, article, blog post, or infographic is completely up to you. What's important is that you create unique content that will provide value to your visitors, while also increasing your search engine rankings.

Why Content Marketing?

These days, Google's primary focus is to satisfy user intent through search results. Google's goal is to understand exactly what its users are searching for and show them exactly what they want in the search results. Businesses that understand Google's goals can use this to their advantage and put themselves ahead of the game.

There are plenty of advantages to creating quality content. Quality content helps businesses promote their knowledge and brand themselves as experts in a given field. Customers want to be reassured that you know what you're talking about. Writing great content to show them you're an expert helps establish authority and increases the chances of them picking you over a competitor. If you have bad content on your website a customers' first impression may be that you also provide bad service.

Businesses can also use content to answer questions that customers have while promoting products at the same time. Content gives businesses the opportunity to educate customers by addressing common questions and issues that they may have. Once these questions are addressed you can begin to promote your products. We recently used this concept for one of our clients who was trying to push kids birthday parties in the area. We did a good bit of keyword research and brainstorming and decided that when searching, "birthday parties Cincinnati" and related phrases, the intent of that search is to find possible ideas and venues for a birthday party. So, we created this article: 30 Incredible Kid's Birthday Party Places in Cincinnati, designed to satisfy that intent exactly. Of course our client is listed at the top of the article, but it's also an incredibly useful resource.

For years Google has been saying the key to great rankings is great content, but that's only what Google wanted to be true and not what actually was true. Over the past couple years Google's been using machine learning to recognize quality content and quality websites, and it's worked incredibly well.

The key to great rankings hasn't completely changed, but the focus has shifted much more in the favor of quality content. Now, that doesn't mean you should just go creating all kinds of content without the proper due diligence. But it does mean that, combined with SEO, effective content can help you win the rankings battle.

What Type of Content Should I Use?

There's a variety of different types of content that can be created for a business. No matter what type of content you end up using, be sure that it is creative and provides value to your customers. Remember what I previously said about user intent. You want to create content that answers questions that users are searching for on a regular basis. Below are a few examples of content that can be used for SEO purposes.

Blog Posts: This is an easy way to post new and exciting content that is relevant to a certain industry. Blog posts can also be pushed and shared via social networks.

Infographics:  These are images that can be used to represent information or data.  Businesses can use infographics to present information to people in a fun and creative way.

Videos: Videos are a great way to promote your business. Businesses can create "how to" videos explaining how different products can be used, or how services can benefit potential customers.

Product Pages: These pages can serve as SEO content and can be used as landing pages for your website. Providing information about specific products helps increase the chances that a site visitor will turn into a customer.

Who Am I Writing For?

Create content for people who are most likely to become future customers. Use customer personas to figure out exactly what your customers are searching for and create content based on their search queries. Things like age, location, gender, and interests should all be taken into account when creating content. Keyword research should also be done in order to figure out exactly what your customers are searching for. Once you identify these factors, you can begin to create content to solve customer problems and get them to take action.

These days, it is important for businesses to create high quality content that satisfies the needs of internet users. There are tons of ways to create this content and the benefits are just about endless. With search engines focusing on user intent rather than keywords, you want to be sure you do your research and create content that helps ranking while encouraging customers to take action. Content that is valuable to customers should be of primary concern and it may be determined that this customer friendly content will be rewarded by Google.