Increased website traffic is the aim of most businesses.
An increase in website traffic can provide greater opportunity to convert these leads into customers and sales. In general, the most effective website traffic is the organic traffic that is directed to your website based on customer query results through a search engine. Meaning that the search engine has determined that your website has a solution to the customers search enquiry.
One of the best ways to increase your search results and keyword rankings is through content marketing. Content marketing is the creation of numerous forms of content around the key messages/services of your business.
Here are three key reasons why content marketing is beneficial for all businesses
1. Increase website traffic, rank and overall visitor stats.
Articles and blogs are a great tool to help increase your organic website ranking by providing more avenues for search engines to find ‘relevant’ topics where your business information is the correct answer for the search. For businesses offering services, creating location-based content showcasing previous projects will help improve your relevance for local searches. It will help to increase the pool of keywords that you are targeting and continually advise the search engines that your business is associated with specific keywords.
In addition to this, statistics have shown that:
- Companies with blogs will generate 67% more leads than those without (source: Demand Sage)
- Companies that blog are likely to have 434% more indexed pages (source: Hubspot)
2. Establish credibility and consumer trust
Articles and blogs can help your potential customers understand your business and your skills. It is an opportunity for you to showcase your knowledge and abilities, to show why potential clients should choose your company. For professional services this is extremely important. You can become a thought leader in the industry and often prospects will determine your expertise or ability based on your blog content. Potential clients could also be more likely to utilise your services if they have found your blog insightful/helpful. It is a good way to show that you are on top on new trends while offering an opportunity to leverage key market topics (and keywords) within your site.
3. Build Rapport
For consumer services this is an opportunity to provide a value add and a reason for someone to go with your brand over your competitors. Your blogs/stories can also be used to build rapport with customers by helping to build a brand story, a reason for them to follow you or to trust you. It can also be useful as a way to find out more about your customers. What drives them, how can you service them better?
4. Long Term ROI
Content marketing is a vital strategy for today’s businesses. According to Hubspot in 2021, 82% of marketers were actively investing in it. Collaborating with similar businesses or influencers within your industry are ideal ways to create content and receive reciprocal backlinks. When done well, being diligent and posting content regularly will increase your brand awareness along with search and keyword rankings. Better still, content provides a long-term return on your investment as it will continue to drive leads to your website, months and years after you initially created it.
Coming up with ideas for content marketing can be challenging, and while AI can be a useful tool for keyword or blog suggestions, having a marketing consultant optimised at understanding SEO;
skilled at creating the content; inserting relevant keywords and writing in a suitable style for your audience is valuable.