Content Marketing - Why and How

The only way a webmaster gets to expose the services of his website is through the content on his webpage. Thin content was a norm before but now content has to be unique with rich information. It not only must be attractive but be worthy enough to keep a reader engaged. Quality content is a key to search engine rankings. In this case study, importance is given to Google since 83% of users prefer using Google to other search engines.

“You want to build great content, and building great content is often what brings you (organic) links”- Matt Cutts, Head of Web spam and Quality Team, Google.

Interest  over the time for "content marketing"

The number of search for the word content marketing has gained a lot of prominence in recent times. In the year 2013, the search trend has shown an increase in its results owing to the latest panda update that concentrated on quality content.

Hence creating quality content for your webpages has become the need of the hour. A rich content has the capacity to be informative and entertaining. This study is all about the importance of content, what Google expects from us and the ways to make content better.

WHY IS CONTENT MARKETING IMPORTANT? – A LOOK AT NUMBERS

27,000,000 pieces of content are shared every day.

Here are a few statistics that show how important a good content is. 

• 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared every day. 
• Content creation is ranked as the single most effective SEO strategy by 53%. 
• $118.4 billion will be spent on content marketing, video and social media in 2013.

Marketers stand on Content Marketing

• 79% of marketers report that their organizations are giving more importance to content marketing now.
• Marketers spend nearly one third of their budgets on content marketing.
• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing.
• 69% marketers say that branded content is superior to PR and direct mail.
• 86% of B2C marketers and 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing.

Social Media Significance 

• 73% of all industry- specific twitter posts include content sharing. 
• Clicks from shared content are 5 times more likely to result in a purchase. 
• People spend more than 50% of their time online with content and 30% on social media channels where these contents can be shared.

Consumer interests

• 70% of people prefer to know about a company through articles rather than from advertisements. 
• 68% of consumers spend time reading content from a brand they are interested in. 
• 58% of users believe editorial content. 
• 60% of business decision makers say branded contents help them make better product decisions. 
• 61% of consumers are more likely to purchase goods from businesses that offer custom content.

Blogs

• 329 million people read blogs each month. 
• 42% of consumers look to articles and blogs for information about potential purchases. 
• 57% of marketers have acquired new customers via their blogs. 
• 52% of customers say that blogs have impacted their purchasing decisions. 
• Companies that have a blog, have 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links than companies without blog. 
• Companies that blog more than 15 times per month get 5 times more traffic than companies that don’t blog.

Visual Content

• 90% of information that comes to brain is visual. 
• Articles with images get 94% more views than those without. 
• The response to persons for image is 40% better than plain text. 
• 75% of smartphone users watch videos on their phone.

Sources: AOL and Nielson, Content Marketing Institute, eMarketer, Blogging.org, Content+, Zabisco, Marketing Sherpa,

WHAT IS GOOGLE’S STAND?

Search Engines always focus on good quality content and user-friendly experience. The panda updates by Google are aimed at providing quality information to users. Hence creating original and unique contents for your web pages becomes a top priority. Good content with optimized keywords are sure to drive a lot of traffic to your site.

“Our site quality algorithms are aimed at helping people find ‘high-quality’ sites by reducing the rankings of low-quality content” – Amit Singhal, Google.

Google always insists on the fact that “Content is King”. Thus creating quality content for your webpages is a must. 92% of marketers say that content creation is either “very effective” or “effective” in SEO point of view. Here’s what Google has to say about content creation and its importance.

• Do not beat around the bush rather be crisp and unto the point. Always keep users in mind. If user finds the information irrelevant or non-informative, with the frequent updates in Google’s algorithms, be sure that Google will also rank you lower. 
• Content is far more important than trying to get backlinks. Because people tend to share content if it is of good quality and in this case you will receive backlinks naturally. Remember that 27 million pieces of online content are shared daily and your content needs to have quality to be one among them. 
• Google knows the difference between Natural and Unnatural links. If your content is worthwhile, obviously other sites would link to you thereby helping you to gain more traffic. 
• The content must not be stuffed with keywords. Over usage of keywords is a black hat technique and this will lead to the removal of your site from SERPs either temporarily or permanently. Instead maintain a good keyword ratio to be available to the users when they search for you. 
• Creation of blogs for your website is a must in the current scenario. According to a statistics by Marketing Sherpa reports, good content in your blogs lead to 2000% increase in blog traffic and 40% increase in revenue. 
• Concentrate on creating informative contents for your users. This may be of any form - how to articles, working manuals, product description, white papers and so on. 
• Multimedia elements are gaining lot of importance these days. Having a good image or video in your page gives the users a lot of information about you and hence positively affecting conversion rates.

HOW YOUR CONTENT SHOULD BE?

Good content is loved both by readers and robots. The content that you provide must have certain qualities so that it is acceptable and useful to your readers. A good content should be 

• Well Written – Your content should be free from grammatical and spelling errors. Formatting your content also plays a major role in retaining the users. Use headings and sub headings wherever needed. If you have a list, create it with bullets. 70% people look at lists with bullets more often than lists without bullets. 
• Unique – Your content should give something to the readers that they don’t get from any other sites. Make yourselves sure that you provide unique content so that the user is tempted to spend at least a few minutes on your sites. No one will love to read a content that they can get in a lot of websites. 
• Relevant – According to the Neilson Norman Group, the average internet user decides whether or not to leave a page within 10 seconds as users tend to scan a page rather than reading a page. So it is important that your content should be relevant of what they are looking for. 
• Original – The content you provide should be original. Copying from other web pages won’t help your cause and you will be penalized by the search engines as well. 
• Informative – A thorough research about what content you’re going to create is a must. The content should be highly informative and up to date. Respect the time spent by users on your web pages and be sure that once they finish reading, they don’t feel that it’s a waste of time. 
• Credible – People often look for contents that they can trust. This credibility can be increased by using a good writing format, using images, graphics and videos and by creating good out bound links. These links will convince the user that that the writer has done a good research on the topic and the content is credible. 
• Correct usage of Keywords – Think from people’s point of view and analyze which terms are more likely to be searched. Include these words in your content so that the search engine finds your useful document for the users. Be wise not to stuff these keywords unnecessarily.

 CONTENT – FOR THE MODERN DIGITAL ERA

It is often misinterpreted that content is text. Content takes a lot of forms ranging from animations to video. Presenting your content in an effective way in this fast digital age becomes the first and fore most criteria for your content to be valuable. Even if your content has a lot of information, if it is not presented in the proper way, your content will definitely be blown away by the fierce information storm that is hitting the internet daily. Here are a few ways in which you can create effective contents. 

• Product descriptions – A clear description about the product you sell is an important form of content. Only people who intend to buy a particular product will read the product description. Make sure that you give them the required information precisely.
• Guides and Manuals – They are the best forms of content to retain your customers and hence encouraging further purchases. They are viewed and downloaded more often and hence boost your online presence.
• Slideshows – In the fast moving world, people are more interested in contents that provide much information in a short time. Slide shows score 10/10 in this criteria and hence providing your content in a slide show is a very good strategy.
• News – Having a page for updating recent news about your industry is the need of the hour. This will increase the credibility of your business. Encouraging the users to subscribe for your newsletters will boost the traffic to a great extent.
• Surveys and Case studies – People more often tend to read factual information. Conduct surveys among people about your business field and prepare case studies. This will increase the trust people have in you and provide good exposure to your brands.
• White Papers – They attract lot of people’s attention as they provide information that can be trusted. 40% of marketers say whitepapers as effective strategy in content marketing. Preparing good and well researched whitepapers will greatly improve your authority in your particular niche.
• Interviews – Posting interviews with eminent persons in your industry on your pages or blogs is another effective way of content marketing.
• “How to” posts – A lot of people tend to search the internet with the terms “how to _______”. So preparing good “how to” posts attracts lot of users who are potential customers.
• Infographics - 90% of information that comes to brain is visual. Hence more importance should be given to visual media. Infographics is one of the best ways to convey statistical information in a crystal clear view. A good infographic image gets viral in the social media and this in turn brings you lot of traffic.
• Images and videos – Having an informative image or video in your web page retains customers more than plain texts. They are an effective way to convey information and can be used for brand awareness as well.
• Blogging – Blogs have become a very important factor in content marketing. 329 million people read blogs each month and these people are your customers. Provide quality content to these people and they will more probably become your customer.

Only a few important forms of presenting your content in an effective way are explained above. There are a lot of other ways to experiment and implement which will prove effective.

FINALLY

The focus is back on quality content. Search engines, primarily Google, tries hard to provide its users quality and relevant content. Having good number of backlinks from quality sites won’t suffice. Your content has to be informative to your readers. The look at statistics reveals the overwhelming importance of content in both users’ and search engine’s point of view. They also show how people are interested in quality content and hence a website’s duty to provide it.

Also, Google, the search engine giant updates it algorithms more too often to have a quality check on the content. This will directly influence a site’s appearance in SERPs. Therefore providing quality content to satisfy the robots as well has become a key factor. Looking your content with the robot’s eye is now a must for webmasters.

The traditional equation of content=text holds no or only a little value now. In a fast moving world, a good content with less attraction goes unnoticed. Hence presenting your content in the most interesting way to retain the users has become very important. There are numerous ways to present your content in a user-friendly way. Adapting these will improve the value of your content a lot and improves the readability. It is predicted that $118.4 billion will be spent on content marketing and video in 2013 which shows the importance content marketing is going to gain in the near future. Here we end with the most famous quote of Google – “Content is King” and will be.

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Additional resources:

Importance of Content Marketing - Infographics

Importance of Content Marketing - Presentation

This case study is jointly done by me and my colleague Asha. Special Thanks to her. :)

Have any queries or difference in opinion? Drop them as comments.