In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, companies are always trying to find the next big thing that will increase traffic to their website and improve their rankings in online search. But the secret to creating a successful digital marketing strategy in the modern world actually might be more straightforward than you’d think: simply improve the written content on your site.
You might think of content as just words on a page describing your products or services. But high-quality written content does so much more — beyond the fact that it’ll help your site rank better with Google and other search engines, engaging, informative content creates interest around your brand and engages potential customers, so it can have a quite direct effect on your bottom line.
In fact, writing great SEO content is arguably the most important part of your overall digital marketing strategy. Here are five tangible ways writing high-quality content will improve your site.
1. Develops Your Brand Identity
When it comes to developing a cohesive brand identity, honing in on a consistent voice for your brand is vital. Brand voice will come across in a lot of different contexts — in social media captions and ad campaigns, to name a couple of examples.
But visiting your website is the primary way many customers will learn about your brand and what it stands for, so it’s key to ensure the written content across your site is consistently in line with your brand identity and voice. Great written content is one of the most effective ways to tell your brand’s story, and having a clear story is key to building loyalty amongst both new and existing customers.
2. Improves Keyword Optimization
While targeting the right keywords is still important, most businesses don’t realize that in order to actually improve your site’s rankings in organic search results, the quality of the content surrounding those keywords is just as important as the keywords themselves, if not even more so.
After all, Google and other search engines are designed to help people find the content they’re actually looking for. Search engine algorithms are smarter and more sophisticated than ever, so trying to trick them by feeding them lots of keywords won’t get you very far if the content on your site isn’t actually what people are looking for when they search for those keywords.
On the other hand, placing a few thoughtfully-chosen keywords within content that readers actually want to engage with will earn you higher SERP rankings, more backlinks, and more overall traffic to your site than stuffing a bunch of keywords into thin, poorly-written content ever could.
3. Establishes Authority & Relevance
Authority and relevance are two of the most important ranking factors for Google and other popular search engines — and when it comes to convincing search engines that your site is authoritative and relevant, trying to take shortcuts simply won’t work.
Instead, you’ll need to write thoughtful, informative content that’s truly useful to users. If your page is genuinely relevant to what users are searching for, search engines will take notice, and your page’s rankings will reflect that.
This ties into the concept of keyword targeting outlined above — while keywords definitely serve as a signal to search engines that your content could be relevant to searchers, today’s search engines are smart enough to know which pages are actually relevant to user intent when it comes to the keywords they’re targeting.
4. Earns Backlinks
We mentioned it above, but it definitely bears repeating: content that people actually find useful is much more likely to earn backlinks from other authoritative, relevant sites.
High-quality backlinks are not only one of the most important ranking factors for Google and other search engines, but will also help increase traffic to your site and introduce your company to new potential customers.
5. Improves User Experience
User experience is another key ranking factor for modern search engines, and better content will certainly improve users’ experience on your site, for obvious reasons.
Factors like the number of time users spend on a page and bounce rate (the rate at which users view a page on your site and then leave directly afterward) don’t always have a direct correlation with how well your site ranks. Still, it’s certainly true that high-quality content is a great way to keep users interested and ensure they spend as much time as possible engaging meaningfully with your site.
6. Creates a Call to Action
Clearly, having high-quality content on your site is important in its own right. But great content also provides the perfect opportunity to create a call to action for your customers.
A call to action could range from an inter-site link like this one that leads a reader to a different page you want them to visit, or it could be a contact, subscribe, or buy button within the page itself.
Whatever type of call to action makes sense for the page and for your company, good content means readers will be much more likely to follow your call to action.
So, what next?
Writing high-quality, optimized copy is easier said than done — especially when it’s only one small part of your responsibilities as a business owner!
That’s exactly where we come in. As a results-driven, ethical digital marketing agency with expertise in SEO content marketing, we’ll take the guesswork (and the hassle!) out of creating rock-solid written content for your site.
Reach out to us today to set up a free consultation so you can see firsthand how a smart content marketing strategy can help your business thrive.
