Growing traffic to a website is the goal of any business owner. More visitors can mean more conversions. As the pandemic showed, eCommerce is on a steep upward surge, and competition therefore can be fierce.
In 2020 more than 2 billion individuals made purchases for goods online, according to Statista. These customers made purchases because they had either used a particular vendor before or had found one through a search on the net.
Organic traffic is the desired way to increase visitors and to do this content and keywords are crucial. Content marketing is one key way to grow organic traffic, but what is it exactly, and how do you get into it?
What is content marketing?
This basically refers to the creation of online content for a website. It could also refer to social media posts.
However, for it to work effectively, the content must be of relevance, and it has to engage. The content doesn’t necessarily need to promote any specific brand, but it should be a topic that holds an audience’s attention and helps to generate traffic and leads.
There are points to consider when building a content marketing strategy. You will surely have competition in your niche, and it’s important to see what content they are creating. Links are important, and quality backlinks can boost your content’s audience.
Keywords and the content itself are vitally important. Performing keyword research and optimizing this area will help improve how effective your content is on SERPs.
Effectively, content marketing is a form of SEO and is designed to help generate more organic traffic.
Why do businesses need content marketing?
Businesses need content marketing to help them appear higher in search rankings, attract more visitors, and then reduce their bounce rate.
A report by the Nielsen Norman Group shows the average user spends less than 20 seconds on a webpage. This statistic shows how hard it is to keep the attention of the average web user.
Posting regularly on social media, and improving the content of a website can help to keep visitors on the webpage longer.
If you can hold a visitor’s attention then they are more likely to visit again, and hopefully, make a purchase. The point of content marketing is to keep a business’s brand in someone’s mind for when it comes time for them to make purchases online.
Good content with quality backlinks can help to promote brand awareness and to increase trust and loyalty.
How can you get into content marketing?
There are a couple of possibilities for getting into content marketing. If you have a website yourself then you can perform some SEO on that.
This means writing content that is suitable for your target audience and making adjustments to optimize it for search engines.
Long-form content is more desirable than shorter blog posts, but relevance and quality are key. If you have old content on your site then revisit it and check that the facts are still accurate and the links are working. Perform some keyword research and freshen up the content a bit.
Another way to get into content marketing is to purchase existing niche websites. Firms such as Content Marketing Plans basically purchase, service, and then flip websites in this manner.
Purchasing older websites that have some authority is a great way to get into content marketing. Once you have improved the content and made the site perform better you can then use it for generating leads, or for affiliate marketing. By doing this you can monetize an existing website instead of building up a brand new one.
What advantages does utilizing content marketing give?
Digital marketing takes on many forms, and working on SEO and content is just one of them. The usefulness of content marketing is as you can see here.
- Increased brand awareness
- Retention of audience
- Increased organic traffic
- Increased revenue and conversions (hopefully)
- Higher rankings on Google and other SERPs
Are there any negatives to content marketing?
Content has and possibly will always be king in regard to SEO and rankings. However, that doesn’t mean it is perfect.
The main problem with content marketing is that it doesn’t offer a quick solution. It can take months for the positive effects of content marketing to take hold.
This is why some people turn to black hat SEO techniques for a quick fix. However, this always turns sour over a long period. So if someone cannot wait for a new website to grow, purchasing an existing niche one is a better option.
Summary
Digital marketing in all of its forms can help a business to grow online. Ecommerce is only going to expand, and attracting visitors is vital to remain viable.
Quality content can help a site to rise up the ranks of the search engines, and to improve organic traffic. Good content marketing will improve the website’s performance, and will also increase a brand’s presence online and its reputation.
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