Search engine optimization (SEO) involves strategies and techniques that, when used properly, increases the amount of people that come to your website via search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Bing. Getting enough content, and more importantly the right content, on your site is your content strategy. As a business owner you always need to try new, interesting, and interactive ways to promote your company. And one of the best things you can do is to create a good content strategy for your organization's website.
A business owner, or marketing employee in a small business is likely to wear a lot of hats. In large companies, there are often teams of people creating, editing, releasing, and strategizing what content to create on a website. How does a smaller organization compete for a similar audience? A good content strategy at a small business can help keep you focused and provide a unique experience to your readers. You can get material out faster than if articles have to pass through multiple layers of approval before going public. Timely pieces can mean getting to audiences before the competition can catch up. And having a personable and authentic voice can keep readers coming back to your site.
Not only does a good content strategy allow you to take your business to the next level, but it also offers a wide range of other benefits, as you can see below!
You get to be a little more data driven
I've always started with Google, using Google Analytics and Google AdWords or terms used to locate your site and competitor sites. This provides you with the real words and terms that people use to find services like yours. This isn't to say to be inauthentic or tailor your content to a market you aren't interested in reaching just to drive up numbers (very specifically - don't do that); instead look to use a little market research to help guide the development of your product and reach a larger audience. You can also use this data to help inspire your employees to get behind your initiatives.
You offer a specific goal and meaning to your content
By creating a good content strategy, you will have the unique opportunity to offer meaning to your content and make it fulfill your business goal. The content will be branded and it will be offering you a better exposure in the online world.
You save energy and time
Once you have a content strategy in place you know how to create content as well as the content types that work best in your industry. You know how to save energy and time as well, something that will boost your business quite a lot in the end. But more specifically, a content strategy will enable you to focus your efforts in the places that reach your specific demographic and customer in a way that is meaningful to the both of you.
You understand how you can use existing content
I find that when people start writing content, the content can be disjointed, or confusing for readers. This actually helps you initially, by allowing you to see the search terms people find that content and have an initial starting point to research what words and styles to focus your efforts on for future content. But once you implement a good content strategy, existing content can be repurposed and edited to align with your new strategy. Aligning your content to the right audience with a good message lets you refine your understanding of how the content works as a whole.
You get a more unified marketing package
Smaller content pieces are hard to use as a marketing tool individually, but once you add them together you get a more cohesive and unified marketing package. You can use this package to get a better experience and a high quality result in the end, which is crucial to say the least.
You get an SEO boost
A good content strategy will benefit your SEO. With high quality and optimized content produced and shared regularly, your site will definitely be able to improve the search engine ranking and reach more of your target audience, or persona. While it's super-satisfying to search for a term and see your company at the top of the list, keep in mind that it's better to be a little further down for a search term that is pertinent to customers you want to reach than at the top of the list for visitors that will simply distract you from reaching those customers. As with a lot of things in business, leave the ego at the door and focus on results.
You get diversity
Using optimized static pages, blog posts, infographics, and video, you can reach entirely different people. There is a growing demand for ways to digest information more quickly than reading mostly text-based articles. Posting Infographics from your site on Pinterest or embedding videos from your YouTube channel can drive new types of traffic to your site. These are people who share interests that might become customers, but who don't access data in the same way you might.
It encourages you to create content more often
Writing content often can be a challenge for businesses, but having a content strategy will help push you more and more towards the idea of improving your content and taking your strategy to the next level. It's also a lot easier to write content when you don't have to think of ideas. If you sit down and plan a content calendar quarterly, weekly, or monthly, you will find inspiration in those random hours you accidentally reclaim when a meeting cancels.
Your product can take on a personality and style
Content can easily be tracked and managed. You can measure the success of your content by how it drives potential customers through a funnel. You can even see the amount of sales that each piece generates. But there are softer returns on the investment into content. When done right, your content starts to give your product personality. Maybe your a dentist for small children and your content is soft and parental, or maybe you're an internet startup and you want your content to be cheeky and fun. Whatever the personality is, make it intentional, and don't make it seem inauthentic, or you will end up disengaging your readers, watchers, viewers, etc. If your content isn't authentic but is meant for your audience, rethink your personas.
Your readers know when to expect content
You can look at the logs of your site and see when the optimal time to release new content is. Maybe you get a spike in readership on Tuesday at 10:00am. If you release new content then, your target audience is likely to be higher, as other similar people are engaging with that type of content at that time. Getting into a regular cadence with your content not only puts you in touch with people when they're likely to see your content, but it also lets them know that you're going to be there for them on a regular basis.
In conclusion, a good content strategy can really boost your business and take it to the next level. It all comes down to you to choose the content type and keywords, but based on the choices you make you can access some incredible results. Just try to experiment with a wide range of content strategies, then you are bound to have an incredible outcome!