content_marketing_tipsIn today’s world of intelligent search engines and social network distribution channels, content marketing is the way to get significant traffic to your site.

Producing quality content has always been a top priority in Google’s eyes, and now it’s absolutely essential. But what, exactly, is “quality content,” and how can you make your posts stand out from the crowd?

Here are 10 Content Marketing Tips to help you increase and retain traffic.

Content Marketing Tip #1: Target a Keyword

One of the most important aspects of content marketing is to always have a relevant, targeted keyword you’re using for your posts. You can source these keywords manually through Google, or use a keyword tool to make the analysis faster and easier.

Remember that “keyword” is just an internet marketing buzzword to describe your post topic. So, pick a topic you actually want to write about first, and then use a good keyword tool to refine the exact phrasing of that topic. Real, readable content always beats out optimizing a keyword.

Content Marketing Tip #2: Do NOT Overuse Your Target Keyword

There’s a reason I’m placing this tip immediately after the point about using long tail keywords. Once upon a time, marketers spent a lot of time and effort trying to optimize where and how often to include a target keyword, and they came up with a number of rules, referring to somewhat obscure terms like keyword density, or the number of times your keyword should appear, as a percentage of the post length.

Today, the bigger fear isn’t including the keyword, but overusing it. Search engines have gotten good at detecting when webmasters are trying to game the system by overusing a keyword. Your best bet is to pick your keyword, use it once in a title or subheader, and once or twice in your post. Then forget you have a target word, and simply write normally.

Content Marketing Tip #3: Include Images

Readers like images. The way we read online is different from the way we read offline, and anything to help break your on-page content into bite-sized pieces is going to help retain users as you go forward. Images may also be picked up in search results, which can help get traffic on your site more quickly.

Content Marketing Tip #4: Add a Video

Video marketing is one of the greatest untapped opportunities for content marketing, for two reasons.

  1. Users are consistently and overwhelmingly drawn towards video-posts than text-based posts, especially if the text and video are complementary.
  2. There are tons of highly competitive keywords that do not yet have corresponding video posts. Google often includes a video result in the first page of results (usually in the top 3!), so having a high quality video can help you reach first page status much more quickly than text and images alone.

Content Marketing Tip #5: On-Page SEO Optimization is Key

How to optimize your page for SEO is a huge topic with a lot of subtleties, but the important thing to remember is that if you have a target keyword, a few primary areas of your site should support that keyword.

The most important elements to consider are post title or subtitle and header tags. A well-placed keyword there can do wonders for your results, but if you’re a more advanced marketer, you’ll also want to consider meta tags, navigation, and internal links. Remember: while placement is key, DO NOT overdo it. If you have to ask yourself if you’re going keyword crazy, chances are you already have.

These first few tips were all about getting new traffic, with a primary focus on search results. Continue reading for Part 2 of 10 Content Marketing Tips: How to Get Repeat Visitors.