Content marketing is a good foundation for driving engagement with your business or brand as well as developing your brand’s identity. It also keeps you on the minds of former and prospective clients. When thinking of content creation, not many small businesses consider optimizing their content for search. But in fact there are ways to use content to improve SEO and different forms of content can benefit different small businesses.
SEO Is Fundamental to Content Marketing
Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a big part in establishing a small business’ digital presence, so optimizing different areas of your site’s content for search and improving your website’s visibility should factor in on what type of content is created.
1. Blogs Help to Rank for Relevant Keywords
Blogging is a good place to start for any business’ content marketing strategy. Through blogging, you are able to create relevant, keyword-rich content for your site. With a deep understanding of your business, your industry and industry trends, it shows people who are somewhat familiar with your business that you are staying current on what goes on in your industry. Quality content will help your website rank for the highly-searched terms for your industry.. In terms of a good blog length to house these keywords, a Hubspot study shows that 2,250 to 2,500 words is optimal for blog length.
You can create targeted content that appeals to prospective customers throughout the various stages of their buyer’s journey by incorporating relevant keywords discovered through keyword research.
2. Image SEO to Improve Your Site’s Presence
One of the more overlooked ways to better your content’s SEO is to add images with keyword-rich alt text. Google’s SERP will crawl the images on your site similar to how it crawls worded content. Doing keyword research to include relevant keywords in the image’s alt text will benefit your site. Whenever someone searches for the relevant keywords in Google’s search data — both for images and site — your site will be seen as relevant to what a searcher would want. This is also a good way to drive people to your site.
3. Use E-Newsletters to Drive Site Traffic
A quality e-newsletter that gains interest has the potential to drive people to further engage with your business. With the right combination of well-written copy and captivating visuals, an e-newsletter could bring in new visitors to the site, increasing your site traffic and, ultimately, your relevance in search rankings.
It is also a good way to keep your brand on the minds of those who may have, at one point, previously engaged with it. Having e-newsletters continually bring people back to your site will increase your site’s relevance and your brand will be seen as more of an authority in the field.
4. Social Media Can Improve Your Content’s Reach
Taking advantage of social media platforms is important. They serve as great avenues to improve your business’ visibility. An increase in content visibility through various social channels means that an increase in site traffic isn’t too far behind. If your social media content links back to your site, you drive more traffic and potential site engagement. Quality content — especially quality, relevant content — is always welcome. The more people want to engage with your content, the more your site is seen. An increase in new site visitors leads to a higher ranking in search as your site is seen as more relevant in your industry.
5. Video Content Keeps People Engaged
When it comes to content consumption, videos continue to lead the charge. Whether they are on websites or social media, more people are watching videos than ever. Having videos as a part of your content repertoire and on your site will keep people engaged on your site the longer that they watch your content. Even better if your content is quality content.
Through video content, you can convey a large amount of information into an accessible, digestible and even entertaining medium. Nowadays, more small businesses are using videos to show their brand’s personality and message. Through social media shares, video content is a good way to get people to your site and with social media shares.
*Bonus*: Take Advantage of Google Services – Google My Business and Google Maps
Optimizing your digital presence for search involves improving your site, its content, and its relevance to increase your visibility to be seen by Google. There are a lot of different approaches to take, but sometimes the simplest solution is right in front of you. Google has a host of services that it offers to small businesses to drive prospective customers to their businesses.
It’s essential for a small business to fill out a profile on Google Maps, so that their business can be found. Over the past few years, Google Maps has become deeply entrenched in how people find out about new businesses – especially small businesses.
Whenever someone is searching for a place to do anything – eat, shop, or spend their time – they often turn to Google. When they do, one of the first things that they see is a Google Map. This is a great opportunity for you to show up where people are searching. The more content – images, videos – you add to your main Google profile, the more that shows up whenever someone is searching for your business.
One of Google’s more underrated features is Google My Business (GMB), which displays submitted details about your company on the knowledge panel on the right hand side of the search page. GMB makes it easier for prospective consumers to find information about your business. The more information you put into your GMB, the more information Google shows when people are searching for your business.
Whether through starting a profile on Google Maps or Google My Business, engaging with Google’s services improves your business’ digital presence.
Should You Focus on Content or SEO? How About Both!
To say content and SEO go hand in hand is an understatement. Using one to benefit the other, while time-consuming, only strengthens your digital presence. As a small business, while time and money are large investments, it is well worth considering investing your time into developing a search-informed content strategy.
Speaking of content strategy … we do that! And we’d be happy to help you with yours. Reach out on our contact page for ideas on how you can improve your website’s SEO with content.