Over the last few decades, marketers all over the world have been trying to discover the magic formula for using the Internet to build their brand and grow their sales. Companies were built, thrived, and sometimes folded, while promising to put brands on the map with search engine optimization (SEO) and link building.
In the meantime, Google and other primary search engines continued to preach relevance while improving the way they evaluated web pages.
Last year, Google introduced some big changes to their process, allowing them to better identify quality sites and reward them with a high ranking in their result pages. They called the update Panda. Since that time, Google continues to improve Panda, making it more and more difficult to get high rankings without quality content. The key word here is “content.”
While SEO – on and off the page – and inbound links continue to get traction with search engines, content has taken center stage when it comes to rankings, but the kind of content that ranks is the biggest change.
For most website owners, it’s time for a content reality check.
Today, what search engines like is what real people like. To get high marks for high quality content, your web content should have the same qualities you look for in the people you choose to have as friends.
8 questions you should ask yourself about your web content:
- Is it interesting?
- Is it honest?
- Is it unique?
- Is it clever?
- Does it deliver on promises?
- Does it only talk about itself?
- Does it repeat itself over and over again?
- Would you like to spend time with it?
If not, it’s time to make some changes. The message of today’s content marketing is simple: Keep it real. Keep it relevant. Make your visitors like you.
Making this change can be difficult. It means taking a good hard look at the content on each page of your website and evaluating the content from a human perspective. Create new content to replace what’s tired and uninteresting.
According to “The Content Marketing Explosion”, a recent infographic posted via Bluegrass, some of the most popular forms of content today are:
- Articles
- Social Media
- Blogs
- eNewsletters
- Case Studies
- Videos
- Whitepapers
- Webcasts
- Podcasts
This is the web content people want to read, talk about, and share.
Perhaps there is a magic formula for generating traffic. The right mix of good content appropriately optimized and created with human beings in mind is proving itself to be an effective way to build a brand, generate leads, and acquire – and keep – customers.
Leave a comment to let us know your ideas for generating compelling web content or just share your thoughts.