Improving your Content Strategy
SEO gurus and digital bods are forever banging on about content; how you should be churning it out faster than your competitors and creating content that sings. But does anyone know what it all means? Here are some dos and don’ts to help with content creation and navigating the digital content gauntlet.
First thing’s first – creating content for the sake of creating content is no good. If you’re writing or producing content just to please Google, you’ll be wasting your efforts. A Scattergun approach will cost you a lot of time, effort and money. You need a plan. A solid content strategy.
SEO experts will tell you what you should and shouldn’t be doing with your content. But not many can tell you how. And that’s because producing good content is hard. Whether you’re creating copy, video, images or audio, it’s about creating content that engages the user enough to act in some way – whether that be to pick up the phone and call, complete a get-in-touch form or make a purchase. Your content needs to stand out against that of your competitors.
Good content marketing requires a content strategy. Without this, your content has no objective or direction. The following dos and don’ts are based on a strategic approach to content production.
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Don’t make your strategy about pleasing Google
Yes, Google does expect you to consistently produce fresh content, but don’t engineer this just to boost volume. If your content is devoid of originality and purpose, it won’t work. It will neither engage nor convert. This will be reflected in your open rates, CTRs, bounce rates, conversions, likes and shares. All of these are factored in when Google decides where to rank you.
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Don’t copy content
Plagiarising or paraphrasing your competitors’ content is not ok. Google comes down pretty hard on offenders of duplicate content. If it spots a duplicate copy, it will delist the page. This also counts for content on your own site. If you have duplicate pages with identical copies, use canonical tags to tell Google which one the priority page is. If you need to reference someone else’s content, mention them and link to their content.
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Don’t overwhelm your audience with too much content
Volume is good but firing it out willy-nilly might irritate your audience. Plan your content in line with objectives and schedule it. Stretch it out so you have lots of pipeline content to publish.
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Do create content around your company objectives
Consider what you want to achieve, for example, a 10% growth in online clothing sales, or brand awareness of a new cake making service. Decide on which content mediums might work best, to help you achieve these objectives.
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Do create content for your audience
Even if brands are trying to attract new demographics, they will have a regular target audience in mind. Your content should resonate with your target audience first. This is where brand voice and tone come in. If your target audience is young and trendy, use young and trendy language, visuals or music they identify with.
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Do use dynamic content
We are in a digital age where content is consumed daily in real-time and in vast quantities. Users are used to consuming dynamic content such as video, gaming and even VR and AR. Get your message across using an array of different content mediums.
Need help with your content creation? Whitefish Marketing agency in Kent working with businesses in the South East to improve their online visibility. Call us on 01303 720 288.
