Goodbye, Keyword Stuffing: How Content Marketing Requires a More Strategic Approach

This Important Practice Requires Insight into the Minds of the Internet Audience

In the early years of SEO, businesses could fill their content with a series of keywords to appease search engines. This tactic manipulated the search engines into boosting their content towards the top of search engine results, which in turn improved their online reputation.

Now, SEO is not simply a matter of stuffing pages with keywords in the hopes that Google will notice. This process requires a more intelligent approach that hinges upon fresh, relevant content that will offer value to visitors while attracting Google and other search engines.

Although high-quality content is in the eye of the beholder, Google holds an enhanced algorithm that filters out bad writing and focuses on the good. In determining the quality of content, Google will concentrate in areas such as grammar, spelling, text formatting, images, videos and links. These links are either links to high-quality sites or inbound links from high-quality sites.

Google’s algorithm continues to gain in sophistication, so users are required to step up their efforts. In the end, content must be relevant to its source. Search engines will observe whether or not there’s a consistent theme on your website. If not, you could be penalized for adding content just for content’s sake.

Diversity Is Key in Content Marketing

Writing is a vital aspect of online marketing and SEO. If you communicate clearly and effectively to your audience, you can drive their purchasing decisions. However, content is an all-encompassing term that applies to photos, videos, text and much more. Varying the type of content that you present to the audience will keep the reader engaged in the material while also proving desirable for Google search rankings.

Visual content will likely impress your readers more than just text-only messages. Graphics can grab the attention of an audience and engage them in your content.

Blogging Is Beautiful

Your business should maintain a blog that will allow you to publish long-form content related to your products and services, as well as your industry as a whole. Blogs satisfy Google and other search engines while also serving your audience with informative and entertaining content.

Social Media

In terms of your social-media strategy, you must learn to evaluate the landscape and adapt accordingly. Some tactics simply won’t lead to the results you’re looking for. Be willing to make a change and your audience will appreciate it.

Social-media usage has become such a staple in our lives that it can overwhelm our better judgment from time to time. An inconsistent social-media strategy will severely damage your online reputation. The collection of your social-media profiles - Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, to name the three major examples – will provide you the opportunity to offer a clarified message about your products and services and establish yourself as an industry leader.

Create an Eye-Appealing Visual

Due to its visual nature, the infographic stands a far better chance of going viral than a simple blog post. The infographic is a large image that contains a series of data points combined in a convenient and easy-to-read format. They often receive more shares, Likes and reposts on websites and social networks. As a result, you will receive more traffic and expanded audience reach. Many users prefer the infographic because it’s simple to understand and imparts a significant amount of information in a visually stimulating format. 

Organizing a content marketing strategy requires more than one day's work. By taking stock of the Internet landscape, you can then turn your attention inward and do what’s best for your business.