Content marketing optimization is a process that allows business owners to improve their content, so it generates more traffic.
How businesses optimize their content varies depending upon the type of business. For example, an athletic shoe manufacturer might want to increase sales in smaller cities, while a law firm may seek to attract new clients and generate leads.
Why is content marketing optimization important?
There are four main goals for optimizing your company’s content:
- Engage – Connect with consumers by providing information they find interesting or valuable
- Educate – Provide details and instructions about products and services
- Influence – Persuade customers to purchase related goods or services
- Convert – Encourage action through purchases, contact forms, or registration on your website
The success of achieving each goal will be dependent upon the quality and relevance of your content, the format, and the number of your presentations (e.g., social media posts).
To improve the efficiency of your company’s content marketing strategy, you may want to consider including some or all of these SEO services in your operations:
Keyword Research – Create a list of relevant search terms that will likely bring customers to your website. This article will make keyword research easy.
Content Creation – Write articles for websites and other locations such as blog sites, ezines, press releases, and online magazines. Read this on how to develop a content creation workflow.
Link Building – Increase traffic by developing hyperlinks from other websites to yours.
Social Media – Develop an active presence on various social networks with customized descriptions that complement rather than compete with content elsewhere on the web. Here are 21 social media marketing strategies.
Why you need a content optimization program
Content optimization programs are usually designed to benefit online retailers and services providers by improving customer experience, increasing conversion rates, and reducing returns.
A program that is tailored to improve e-commerce results might include:
Email marketing automation – Develop customized campaigns based on behavioral data points such as pages viewed or purchases made by customers
Customer experience optimization – Make information available to customers in the most efficient manner via self-service portals and other digital resources
Analytics software – Monitor traffic through websites and apps to spot emerging trends and respond rapidly through ongoing optimizations.
Content marketing optimization helps you improve your online presence by carefully managing the distribution of information on specific channels.
The process begins with keyword research, moves into content creation, monitors competitors’ communication efforts, and finally monitors results over time.
There are few decisions that will have as much impact upon your online success as optimizing your content.
By carefully crafting messages about goods and services, you are more likely to gain the attention of potential clients and boost sales in the process.
Remember – no matter how good your website or other marketing materials may be, they can only achieve their maximum benefit if they reach people who genuinely want to read them.
This is where a program that combines keyword research, content creation, link building, social media integration, and analytics can help improve your online presence and increase revenue at the same time.
Optimize content marketing for social media
In order to optimize your content for social networks, you will need a basic understanding of what is possible in each environment.
Facebook – The most popular network with over 2 billion active users will also be the largest source of information about interests and habits.
The key here is finding out where people who are likely to have an interest in your products or services hang out online so that you can directly promote yourself to them.
LinkedIn – This private network has more than half a billion members, making it a relatively easy way to market yourself and share information within specific industries or sectors. You can also buy ads on LinkedIn if necessary for more exposure.
Instagram – As one of the newer players in this space, Instagram has over 300 million users and is one of the most powerful platforms for sharing visual information.
Snapchat – This free social network encourages its members to share images, videos, text, audio messages, and other media for up to 24 hours after they are posted. This environment is well suited to companies with a very specific or limited time offer. It has recently been valued at $25 billion dollars.
Twitter – While this platform may be less effective as far as marketing goods and services through direct engagement, it is still one of the top resources for sharing information about events, breaking news, and other topics that will appeal to customers.
Twitter also offers Promoted Tweets as a means of spreading your message in an environment where people are already inclined to view short messages from businesses.
YouTube – While this is not exactly a social network per se, YouTube has proven to be one of the most popular channels for providing video content – especially since Google purchased it in 2006.
Some companies use it as an additional website or blog rather than as a standalone social media platform. For others, it may be more effective at direct marketing due to its higher level of traffic and engagement.
For most online retailers, it makes sense to focus on Facebook initially, then consider branching out into other platforms to see a measurable return on investment.
Optimize content marketing for search engines
One of the most important things you can do to optimize your content for search engines is to practice effective keyword research.
You need to analyze a given market and consider which keywords potential customers are likely to use when they’re looking for products or services like yours on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
For example, online merchants that cell phones may look at the most popular devices in different categories (Android vs. iPhone) and then differentiate their advertisements by adding titles such as “Android phones” instead of just “phones.”
It’s also helpful if companies monitor changes that occur over time regarding trends in searches, local searches, those that contain certain words (e.g., free shipping), those with specific phrases, new words, etc.
It’s a good idea to keep in mind that you want to optimize your content strategy for branding purposes and SEO.
While there is no official definition of “branding,” it typically refers to how customers talk about and remember your company or products.
Keeping this in mind, it makes sense then that the more recognizable your brand becomes (and the more people are discussing you), the better chance you’ll have of getting found when people search for products like yours — or even those related to them.
So why not try writing articles for other sites?
These can be found on popular content aggregators where large amounts of traffic are available via their RSS feeds and get shared virally across social networks (Facebook, Twitter).
Having backlinks to your site will improve your search engine position.
This article will help you get to grips with the different types of SEO.
Optimize content marketing for email
Email marketing is still one of the most popular ways to send your message directly to customers, In fact, in my opinion, email marketing is king of digital marketing.
That being said, there are specific requirements that provide a better chance for success than others: You need to gather an email list from visitors.
Preferably this should be done with an opt-in form on your website pages or blog post in order to avoid violating spam laws.
You must also make sure that you have permission from subscribers to share their information with third parties.
The key metrics to keep an eye on are:
Open rates – How often your email is being opened.
Click-through rates – The chance that someone will click on any links in the message.
Response rate – This shows how many people are taking action (e.g., buy, download, sign up) after viewing the email.
Experiment with different formats to see what works best for you and your customers, and be sure to track results over time so you can evaluate which types of content are working best and why.
To see which emails perform best, use A/B testing. This refers to showing more than one version of an email and then comparing the results.
Using tools like MailChimp or Constant Contact are often the best ways to accomplish this, so you can monitor and measure the most effective content (subject lines, images used in email, etc.).
Study your website analytics
Keep a close eye on your website analytics to find out which content is performing best, especially in traffic, visitors, time spent on site, and engagement.
You can also use analytics for other platforms as well to measure how much attention you’re getting and where your target audience is coming from (e.g., Facebook).
One of the secrets of marketing is to find out what works and do more of it.
Using analytics, you can then make smarter, more informed decisions about what types of content to create and how to do it.
It may be that a popular format (e.g., blog tutorials) is only effective at getting people in the door for the first time.
But another format, such as video tutorials, ultimately convinces visitors to purchase something from your site or subscribe to your mailing list.
The key is to provide value first, then leave them with a CTA link pointing them in the right direction next and then track those results too.
Conclusion
Content marketing requires a lot of planning and ongoing effort, but the payoff can be well worth it. The most important thing to do is experiment with different styles and formats to see what works best for you and your business.
Using these strategies can create higher quality content that stands out against those created by others in the industry-leading to greater awareness and increased sales over time.
I have a follow-on article on the best content optimization tools here.