What is content marketing and how can it help to improve my company’s SEO?
Introduction
You may currently be asking many SEO agencies for a quote, often then the business will ask for a breakdown of what is included within that quotes.
A lot of businesses will then quickly spot that a lot of their marketing budget will be spent on something that is called “content marketing”.
That’s the say when you ask for a quote, around 50% of the quote might be spent on content marketing.
Therefore, as the business owner, you will want to know what content marketing is why such a large percentage of your marketing budget is being spent on this area.
A digital marketing agency we employ copywriters which write our content marketing, content marketing is a very important part of the organic and also local SEO process.
Without content marketing it is very difficult to optimise a website very hard to obtain good-quality backlinks.
This is why when we get provided with a marketing budget, we often spend a great deal of that marketing budget on writing content marketing.
Some of the content marketing might also include YouTube channels, which can be embedded into the content marketing to further help your customers.
We are now going to explain why this is such an important part of the SEO process, and why all SEO work should be undertaken in a white hat way.
What is “Content Marketing”?
Okay, first things first what exactly is content marketing?
Well whether you are looking for a local builder, or you are looking for a local solicitor, you will often spot that a great deal of effort will have been placed on writing what is called the evergreen content marketing.
The evergreen content marketing is simply on-site SEO that is placed on the each main page on the businesses website.
You may also see SEO articles that have been written to help the customer, for example the business might be frequently get asked the same questions by its customer, therefore to help the customer the business may write an SEO article which answers such questions.
Therefore, these articles will help the customer answer questions that they might have, and a lot of business owners quickly think well why is our business giving away free advice?
Obviously if you run a solicitor’s practice, you do not want to be giving away free advice. However by giving away free advice via the blog section of your website all through the evergreen content marketing you will be helping your customers, therefore this may reduce your businesses bounce rate, it might also help your business to obtain high quality backlinks which will help to improve your businesses organic SEO.
Now if your organic SEO is greatly improved, and your business ranks on the first page of, then you are likely to obtain more customers.
Therefore by giving away this free advice you are helping to improve your businesses organic SCO and this might mean that you obtain more customers.
What are keywords?
So, some SEO agency can sometimes make the mistake of focusing too much on optimising a website for keywords.
For example, a business that sells a brand of car, may write “brand of car + the name of the city where the car dealership is based, this could mean that the content marketing is deemed as low-quality” if this is mentioned too much.
What will happen if the work is deemed as low-quality?
Well, Google may drop that company’s website down the ranks, that’s because the content marketing and SEO is not high-quality, and is not white hat.
So, what are keywords?
Keywords are words and phrases which are important to your business, that you want your business to rank highly for on Google.
So for example, a Joiner may want to rank high for “bespoke kitchens + name of city” and “in-built wardrobes + name of city” and also “bespoke furniture” for example, these are all keywords which the business will want to rank high for.
However, if the Cardiff SEO company does not follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, that’s to say, doesn’t use white hat SEO methods, then the business could be placed lower down Google’s ranks, and may even incur a penalty.
So for example, if you run a car dealership, and you specialise in stocking a certain brand of car, then obviously you will want to come up on the first page for that brand of car plus the name of the city in which your car dealership is based.
Yet so many digital marketing agencies make the mistake of over optimising a website, that’s to say they sometimes mention the keywords too much, which can sometimes trigger an algorithmic or a manual penalty.
Why you should focus on creating content marketing which is useful to your customers
Instead you should focus on writing content marketing which helps your customers.
So, what are we mean by this, well let’s return to our example of a car dealership, often a car dealer will be asked similar questions.
Therefore they may wish to write content marketing for each vehicle that they sell, which quickly explains what the mpg of each car is, the features that your car can offer and also the hire purchase costs to own a car.
This is likely to be a lot more useful to the customer, then if a SEO agency was to just try and optimise that page for the brand of the car and also the city which your car dealership is based.
Therefore, the content marketing should always be centred around helping the customer.
Using internal links
Most businesses partner with an SEO company to improve the businesses SEO every single month, that’s simply because if the business was to stop investing then it is entirely possible that the company’s direct competitors quickly start to overtake that business.
This is why you hear SEO agencies quote a monthly fee in order to improve the businesses organic SEO.
This often means that the SEO agency will be writing a lot of content marketing, for example a solicitor’s practice might have four pieces of content marketing added to their website each month.
This means over the course of a year a lot of content marketing is being added to the website, and often the things that are being written about will overlap.
What do we mean by overlap, well for example let’s say that you are talking about questions that relate to the divorce process, often there will be questions which interlink, such as what will happen to couples house, or what will happen to the couple’s finances.
Therefore, instead of repeating what you have already written about, you may simply wish to use an internal link within the website.
Therefore, your SEO agency should help you to create internal links, and to write the anchor text in a white hat way.
This way you could help to reduce your businesses bounce rate, you will also be helping your customers because if they are interested say in reading about what could happen to the family home after a divorce, they are also likely to be interested in reading an article about what will happen to the couples finances after a divorce.
Therefore this is why a lot of SEO agencies, including hours, uses internal links and also anchor text.
However, internal links and also anchor text should be used in a white hat way.
Link to relevant sources
If you are to write a long piece of content marketing, let’s say for example a piece of content marketing which is over 2000 words, then you might wish to use backlinks to other sources which you have read.
So, for example, let’s say that you run a car dealership, and you are about to stock a new brand of car, and that model car has received many positive reviews from car journalists.
You may therefore wish to link to the website where a positive review of that model car has been left.
Therefore, your marketing agency may use outbound backlinks combined with anchor text to show where your business has obtained it’s references from.
For example, you might wish to say that a car journalist has given that model of car five stars, therefore you may wish to use an outbound link to link to that article, that you have read.
This is not going to massively improve the businesses organic SEO, however we think that if this is done in the right way, that is in a white hat way then this can help your readers.
Something to think about is not to use an outbound link right in the first paragraph, or within the first few hundred words of the content marketing which you are writing.
We say that because obviously you don’t want a customer to be on your website to click on the link and then go straight onto another website, this would mean that they will have left your company website in a matter of a few mere seconds, obviously you would like them to read the article quite a bit otherwise your company’s website bounce rate might increase.
How can it be used to improve a business’s organic and local SEO?
One of the most in essential part of the organic SEO process is the right good-quality content marketing, without it it’s unlikely that other businesses will link to your website.
And as any good marketing agency will tell you it’s important to have high quality backlinks leading to your website in order to improve your company’s organic SEO.
Therefore, when you ask an SEO agency for a quote in Cardiff, they may quote that a large amount of the marketing budget is going to be spent on creating content marketing.
Our agency employs copywriters, so that we can write our content marketing ourselves
What does evergreen content marketing mean?
Evergreen content marketing is simply the text that is placed on the main pages of your website.
This text might not change that often, that’s the say your agency might write the content marketing on these pages and it may not change for a very long time.
Also the content marketing that is added to your main pages is often the content marketing which is read the most, this is why it needs to be high quality and it needs to be written by a high quality marketing agency.
There’s no point in the agency just writing one or two lines of text, instead the work must be high quality and often it will need a good word count.
Also, the content marketing will need meta titles, meta descriptions, alt text, titles, internal links, anchor text so white hat on-site SEO will often be needed as well.
Sometimes when a business presents their company website to an SEO agency, the evergreen content marketing might only have a few lines of text per page.
This is where the marketing agency may recommend that they rewrite the content marketing and ad high-quality white hat content marketing to the main pages of the website.
What’s our blog posts?
You may hear your agency state that they are going to add content marketing to the blog section of your website.
For example, let’s say that you are looking to find a local company that can fit a new UPVC door, you may spot that they have a blog section on their website and that they have been adding blog posts for say the last 10 years.
This will help to also improve the businesses organic and local SEO if the work is implemented correctly.
Some businesses here in Cardiff make the mistake of thinking that quantity is better than quality, however our marketing agency would only recommend that you add high quality content marketing to your website.
For this to happen you should write articles which answer questions that your customers frequently ask you, they should have a high word count and offer information to your customers they will find useful.
So, for example, let’s say that you run a double-glazing business, you may wish to write an article explaining all the different styles of double glazing that you sell.
For example, you may mention the benefits of owning triple glazing rather than double glazing, you may also wish to advertise which types of double glazing have a greater energy efficiency.
You may also wish to write an article about different UPVC doors and different security features that these doors have, therefore somebody who is looking for a high quality door that has a lot of security features might therefore read this article and phone your company.
Why must the work be high quality?
The work must be high quality, if it is not high-quality and written in a white hat way and the business could incur an algorithmic or a manual penalty.
Some agencies will offer a very low price to implement SEO every single month, however if agencies only writing articles that have a few hundred words, and the articles do not offer any useful information to your customers, then this might negatively affect your businesses SCO rather than proving your businesses SEO.
Why must the work be white hat?
The work must always be white hat, otherwise the business could incur an algorithmic or a manual penalty
Why must the work follow Webmaster guidelines?
All SEO work should follow Webmaster guidelines
What are H1 through to H6 titles?
Once your agency has written content marketing, it might then be handed to another person within the marketing agency the start adding on-site SEO such as meta titles and meta descriptions, internal links anchor text for example.
Also, the marketing agency may then start promoting this piece of work on Facebook or Twitter so that more people can read the content marketing that the marketing agency has just written.
What does anchor text mean?
You may have already read within this article, that we have mentioned anchor text quite a few times, that’s because often a lot of marketing agencies will add anchor text to each article that the right.
So for example let’s say that your company sells luxury candles online, and within the blog post you mention beeswax candles, and you remember that you have already written a blog post about beeswax candles so you want a link to that article.
Therefore, you could use the anchor text beeswax candles, and then the link to that article.
The SEO benefit from doing this is that you may keep a customer on your company website for longer.
For example they might be reading about one article that explains that you make candles from a hundred percent natural ingredients, they may then want to read about your beeswax candles that you sell, so they may click on the anchor text, read the article about beeswax candles and they may even make a purchase from your company.
So therefore, your marketing agency may use anchor text within your evergreen content marketing and also on your blog posts as well
What are internal links?
We would recommend using internal links in a white hat way, as these can help your customers to easily find products that your business sells.
For example let’s say that you run a business that sells running trainers, you may review 10 pairs of the latest running trainers, then because you also sell these items, you might use an internal link and anchor text to then the link to the page that sells that product.
Therefore, you are helping your customers to easily find that product and to make a purchase if they want to.
Therefore somebody might read about a pair of trainers that you have reviewed, they may read the review and see that you are selling high-quality running trainers, therefore they may click the anchor text then follow the link to that page and then purchase that pair of running trainers directly from your business.
What are meta titles and meta descriptions?
Your agency should add meta titles and meta descriptions to every piece of evergreen content marketing and also to your blog posts.
Adding meta titles and meta descriptions should only take a few minutes to do but it is worth doing because this will explain to the customer what that page is about.
So, let’s say for example that page sells a certain brand of car, and that you specialise in selling used cars.
Therefore, in the meta title you may wish to write the brand of car and also the model of cars that you sell in the meta title.
Then in the meta description you may wish to add some more detail about that page such as that you offer 0% hire purchase for example
How long should the articles be?
This does depend on what you are writing about, however we would recommend that each article is over 2000 words and that it is well written and written also in a white hat way.
We say that the work should be well written, because it is not well written then your website could obtain a high bounce rate stop
we say that because let’s say that your business sells Power Tools such as electric cordless drills, and somebody is looking to learn about the different features that cordless drills can have, such as how long it will take to charge drill, whether you offer additional batteries and also what the manufacturer’s warranty is on each drill.
If the customer can find answers to these questions, then they may purchase from your website.
However if the content marketing has not been written in a white hat way, and the marketing agency has just concentrated on writing “cordless electric drills” too many times then this is likely to be deemed a low-quality piece of work and could damage your businesses SCO
Why our agency recommends that you don’t just focus on improving your SEO?
Too many digital marketing agencies, and SO company’s focus too much on just improving the businesses SEO, that’s the say you might now be thinking well surely that’s what they are getting paid to do?
However the really good marketing agency’s know that if they offer really high quality advice to your customers, they will be helping your customers to find the product or service that they want, and this will help to also improve the businesses SEO.
So what do we mean by this?
Let’s say for example that your business sells televisions, and there are now so many different types of television, therefore if you explain what the different product features mean and somebody is more likely to purchase from you because they understand now the benefits of owning say a 4K television
for example you could explain how the picture quality is better, and you can also explain the other benefits of owning such a TV
however on the other hand, if your SCO company just focuses purely on trying to optimise the website for 4K televisions without writing any good quality evergreen content marketing then this is unlikely to improve your businesses SCO.
That’s to say the really good SEO agency’s focus on helping your customers by supplying high-quality and useful information, and this will therefore help the businesses SEO as well
Analytics
Your business should also use analytics to see how well your content marketing is doing.
This is not the right approach
Instead what a good SEO agency will do is write a piece of content marketing, then see if this piece of content marketing has a low bounce rate, is obtaining good quality backlinks, and also how long a customer is spending reading the content marketing.
Therefore the marketing agency may then further improve the article, they may make changes so that they can further improve the work so that they can either improve with that piece of work ranks, or to improve the bounce rate by lowering it for example.
Therefore an agency will often have a piece of content marketing and then continually improve it
bounce rate
You may have heard us talk about bounce rate quite a few times within this article
That’s because if your article has a very high bounce rate, this simply means that people are landing on your content marketing and then leaving more or less straightaway without visiting another page on your website.
So for example let’s return to our example of selling running trainers, you will obviously want to write an article and to possibly promote that article that you have written about running trainers on Facebook and Twitter.
You may then notice that the piece of content marketing that your SEO company has written has a very high bounce rate, this simply means the people are looking at the article and then leaving your company website.
Therefore this should be an indicator to your agency the start improving the article, so that people land on the article and then this is another page and hopefully purchase a product directly from you.
So for example the marketing agency might improve how the text is written, they may also add more information they may also add a special offer such as offering a discount code for example.
This might make people start to browse the running trainers that you sell and this may help to increase your company’s sales
High-quality
All of the work should be high quality, all of the content marketing that your business rights, or your SEO company writes for you must be white hat.
That’s to say whichever SEO agency that you choose in Cardiff that writes the content marketing for your business must use white hat methods
research
As you can imagine, an SEO agency will serve many different clients, for example one agency in Cardiff might work for a hundred different businesses.
Often those businesses will differ greatly, for example one might be a construction business and the other business might be a dental practice
Therefore you should make sure that the SEO agency has a good understanding of your business sector, so when they write the content marketing it is clear that they understand what they are writing about.
If you have instead 500 words written which do not offer any useful information at all your customers and this is likely to increase your website’s bounce rate.
However on the other hand, let’s say that you run a fencing business, and you explain all the different types of fencing that you offer, and that the writer of the work clearly understands the different types of fencing, then this is likely to help somebody is looking for a garden fencing company.
As they might not know whether they require a feather edge fence, a hardwood fence or a hit and miss fence.
Therefore they may find this piece of content marketing very useful.
However if you have another marketing agency which does not do its research, and just keeps writing about garden fencing without offering any useful information then the reader is likely to leave that article and it is likely to mean that the website has a high bounce rate
why you may wish to pick an agency which understands your business
When you pick an SEO company, that business might work for hundreds or sometimes thousands of different clients.
For example sometimes you will have a marketing agency that just work for dentists or solicitors or sometimes for estate agents for example.
The benefits of choosing such a business is that they are more likely to understand your business sector, whereby an SCO agency might work with such a broad range of different companies that they might not have the knowledge about your business to write the content marketing
must not just be a few hundred words
Some marketing agencies write content marketing which is just a few hundred words long
However we would strongly recommend that the content marketing is made longer, often right content marketing that is over 2000 words.
However irrespective of the length of the text, it should be high quality hand written white hat way.
Must offer useful information
The information must be useful to your customers, a lot of marketing agencies just concentrate on writing content marketing so that it reaches a certain word count.
Therefore copywriters might be tasked with writing blog posts which are 500 words, so they just write to hit that word count.
However irrespective of how high the word count is, the work should be high quality and useful to your customers.
Often takes a great deal of time to create, this is why we often believe that cheap SEO is often a total false economy.
In order to write high quality content marketing, often this takes many hours and sometimes many days.
For example, let’s say that your company specialises in selling electric cars, and you want to review the 10 best selling electric cars here in the UK.
Obviously to write such an article is going to take a great deal of time, this is why if a company offers you a very low quote in order to improve your SCO you should be sceptical.
That’s because a lot of time needs to be spent creating high quality content marketing so often it cannot be done cheaply
are you implementing local SCO here in Cardiff, or are you implementing national SEO?
Another important factor is to consider whether you are implementing a local SEO, so you are improving your website here locally for Cardiff.
Or are you rather improving your website so that you can implement national SEO?
Don’t focus on quantity
A common mistake that a lot of businesses make here in Cardiff, is to look at a direct competitor’s website, and the spot that that business has written say 80 blog posts.
The marketing agency or the business then sometimes thinks that they also have to write 80 blog posts if they are to get their business to rank on the first page.
However as any good SEO company will know, it’s not about quantity it’s about quality.
That’s the say it’s far better to have 40 really well written pieces of content marketing than it is to have 80 pieces of content marketing which are not well written.
Also if the algorithm spot that the work is low quality then this could mean that your business incurs a penalty.
Must aim to make the content marketing better than your direct competitors
You should aim to make the content marketing better than your direct competitors, that’s the say you should not just focus on quantity you must focus on quality.
So for example if a competitor has written a blog post that answers a question that your customers frequently ask your business, then you should aim to write a better quality article
For example, let’s say that you are a divorce solicitor, and you spot that a local competitor has written a long blog post explaining what can happen to the family home after a divorce.
Your business may then aim to write a better piece of content marketing, for example you might offer better advice and you might embed a YouTube video that has one if your solicitors answering the question
We recommend a high word count
We recommend that you write your articles to a high word count, however it’s not just about making your blog posts long in terms of the word count.
The work must also be high quality as well.
For example some blog posts that we have written are in excess of 6000 words, however we also ensure that the information is high quality as well.
Is an essential part of organic SEO and also local SEO
Content marketing is an essential part of improving a businesses organic or local SEO, therefore there it is like the cement that holds the wall together.
Therefore most marketing agencies will recommend that a large proportion of the SEO budget is spent on writing high quality content marketing
Whichever agency, freelancer or company you choose they must follow white hat methods
It’s really important that whichever Cardiff SEO company that you choose, that they use only white hat methods.
Penalties
If the business does not use white hat methods, then it’s entirely possible the business in Cardiff or whenever the business is based could incur an algorithmic penalty.
For example, a lot of businesses have incurred a Penguin penalty, because they have built backlinks in the wrong way.
Panda penalty
If your business was to write low-quality content marketing then your business could possibly incur a Panda penalty.
Algorithmic penalties
Many businesses throughout Cardiff have incurred algorithmic penalties simply because the SEO has been implemented in the wrong way.
For example let’s say that you run an Italian restaurant, your SEO consultant might have mentioned Italian restaurant plus name of the city too much throughout your website, they might have done this to try and improve your businesses local SEO however is might have had the reverse effect.
That is why we recommend that you pick a respected white hat agency.
Manual penalty
It is also possible that the business incurs a manual penalty, that is a manual penalty is applied to the business because the company has used low quality SCO.
Write the title so that it helps your customers
If you do not know what to use as the title for your article, we would recommend thinking about using a title which describes a question that your company gets frequently asked
For example let’s say that you build bespoke kitchens, you might write an article which has the title, how long will it take you to construct a bespoke kitchen.
Obviously every kitchen will be different, but you can offer rough timescales that will allow the customer to know roughly how long it will take you to build a high quality kitchen.
Therefore, somebody who is thinking about getting a bespoke kitchen built, might read this article so that they can gain an understanding of how long it will take you to build a bespoke kitchen.
Write the anchor text so that it helps your customers.
We would recommend using anchor text with in your content marketing.
for example, as we earlier mentioned within this article, often the lot of the blog post that you write will overlap, for example let’s say that you are a carpenter and you were talking one week about built-in wardrobes, then the following week you were talking about work that you have recently undertaken in the Cardiff area, you may mention that you have recently build a set of built-in wardrobes, therefore you might use anchor text to direct your customers to your built in wardrobe page.
Include useful backlinks
We would recommend that you use backlinks within your written work in a white hat way
Good-quality content marketing can mean that you attract high-quality backlinks
This is a really important point, that’s the say often an SEO agency does not just write content marketing to try and improve the businesses on-site SEO, it can also help to improve the businesses off-site SEO as well.
That’s because if you write a really good piece of content marketing, another website may choose to link to your website
for example, let’s say that you review the 10 best selling electric cars here in the UK, and that article is really good and it receives thousands of readers every single week.
Another website might link to your work, for example a car during a list might read your article say that it is really good at reviewing the 10 best selling electric cars and decide to also link to your work.
Do follow backlinks
it’s important that your business has a number of high quality do follow backlinks that are built in a white hat way.
No follow backlinks
It’s really important that your business also has high quality no follow backlinks that are also built in a white hat way
Can help to improve your businesses overall SEO
Our SEO company can help to improve your businesses organic or local SEO
How our agency can help your business in Cardiff
Our agency is based in Cardiff, our SEO company can help to improve your businesses content marketing, link building, on-site SEO, off-site SEO.
We offer very reasonable prices, in order to obtain a quote why not give our company a ring today.
We work with businesses that are based in the city of Cardiff.
