The digital content space is an ever-changing landscape and with the recent disappointing demise of literally hundreds of community newspapers, magazines and industry publications across the nation – everyone is talking about the need to generate their own fresh and relevant content.
Never before has there been a more perfect opportunity for organisations and businesses to find creative ways to capitalise on their own newsworthy, interesting, reliable and highly sharable content. Everyone needs to be a publisher now. But once this content is created, how do we get as many people as possible reading it? A sprinkle of SEO I hear you say… Unfortunately, it just isn’t that simple!
Fresh’s digital marketing and social media advertising partner-in-crime, the talented Clint Wright from Converge Marketing, recently sat down with the Fresh team and shared some sound advice and guidance for our clients.
“Creating digital content is always a balance between clients telling their own unique and authentic story and also understanding their customers’ needs and how they specifically search for products and services on Google,” Clint said.
“It’s really important that these two objectives are considered whenever creating digital content.
“Once we know what our clients’ customers are searching for, we can optimise web pages with target keywords to make sure websites are accessible to both search engines and humans, have other websites link to their sites, and also most importantly, measure SEO success.”
The number one lesson to be learnt is that SEO isn’t something you offer up as a value-add on the side, like a set of steak knives. You can’t “do” SEO and then tick it off the list. It needs to be treated as an important part of your long-term digital marketing strategy because it can take months or even years for the full effects of SEO activity to become apparent.
There are more than 200 ranking factors Google uses to determine how a website ranks across the areas of technical build, user experience, quality of on-page content on your website, off-page content on other websites that link to your site, speed of your site, reviews, time people spend on your pages and many more.
As shown by leading SEO software tool, Moz, through their survey of SEO professionals, there are a multitude of factors that impact where your website ranks in Google for any given search (see the diagram 1 below).
Diagram 1: SEOmoz Biennial Search Ranking Factors (https://moz.com/)
When it comes to creating SEO friendly content for your site, two of the most important things to focus on are:
- Understanding what your current and potential customers are searching for.
We use SEO tools such as Moz, SERank and Google Keyword Planner to determine this. - Create content that answers the question they are seeking through their Google search.
For example: “Who is the best compensation lawyer on the Sunshine Coast?”. This answer is not a simple ‘we are the best’. The potential client is seeking to understand why you are the best. The content needs to provide an answer to all the reasons that make you the best. Who you are, what you do, how to choose a lawyer, what makes you different, what’s your positioning in the market compared to your competitors, awards you have won, reviews from happy clients etc.
Every business needs to be a digital publisher
As mentioned earlier, with the demise of local media outlets, there has never been a better opportunity for all businesses to consider themselves as digital content producers and publishers.
Though with such an array of content publishing platforms available for businesses to use, it can be confusing about where to spend your time: your website, email marketing, Linked In, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, podcasts, blogs, video and so much more. It would be easy to spend all your time producing content for all these different channels.
When thinking about the content channels and how best to structure your approach, there is a simple model called ‘Paid, Owned and Earned’ that explains where each area fits in. The idea is that an effective digital marketing strategy employs all three types of digital media (paid, owned, and earned) which act as a powerful tool to build both brand awareness and increase sales (see diagram 2 below).
Diagram 2: Paid, Owned and Earned Model (Stream Creative – https://www.streamcreative.com/blog/the-digital-media-trifecta-3-essential-strategies-for-your-brand)
To understand the three digital marketing areas, you can think of it this way:
- Paid Media = Any channel that you must pay for your content to reach an audience. Such as Facebook, Instagram, and Linked In advertising and Google ads to name a few.
- Owned Media = Any channel that you own and fully control such as your website, CRM (customer relationship management) or email marketing.
- Earned Media = Any channel that your content can be amplified to new audiences such as an industry blog, social media shares or media articles.
SEO sits in the Owned and Earned sections of this model and is an important strategy for being found and gaining eyeballs to your business product and service offering. However, as mentioned earlier, SEO is a long-term strategy that can take significant time to achieve organic rankings. A media strategy to promote content through paid advertising is a fast way to achieve quick wins and immediate results and should always be considered as part of your content marketing program.
So let’s bring this all together in 3 easy steps and you’re on your way to a winning digital content marketing strategy:
- Through a good dose of empathy and research, understand your potential and current customers Google search behaviour and the questions they are seeking to answer.
- Develop unique and authentic SEO optimised content that answers their questions – this is how you serve your customers – it’s your brand story.
- Choose the right Paid, Owned and Earned channels to reach your customers.
As the famous business strategist, Peter Drucker, once said ‘strategy is the foundation of every company and execution the key to success.’ In other words, execution eats strategy for breakfast.
If you are looking for a trustworthy and gung-ho creative team who understand strategy and have a reputation for exceptional execution, don’t hesitate to get in touch for a chat about how we could bring the ‘fresh factor’ to your content needs.
Call 07 5351 1010 or info@freshprm.com.au.
