How to Develop Great Long-Form SEO Content
Great content marketing is not only the best advertising strategy but an essential investment all businesses should make. It is the most effective way to market to potential consumers and convert first-time website visitors to paying customers. Without sufficient information on your website to tell visitors why they should work with you and why your business provides the services to satisfy their needs, your business will never generate new customers online.
Content marketing is not only the most effective method to generate leads, but it is also the most profitable way to advertise your services. Learn why you should invest in content marketing and discover the best strategies to generate amazing results and increase sales.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is any form of informative or entertaining media to promote a brand and create interest and awareness for their products and services. The main objective of website content is to provide information that satisfies user queries or delivers engaging online material to create a positive association with a brand and explain the value of their business.
By distributing beneficial and relevant content, your target audience can find your brand on the web or engage with your content through social media or digital interactions (likes, comments, or shares) while developing rapport with your brand to drive action.
Creating entertaining or informative content around your brand’s expertise is valuable in a variety of ways. For instance, posting online blog content or videos that best satisfy your target audience’s queries will increase your rankings for relevant keywords in your business sector. If Google’s algorithm recognizes that your content satisfies the search intent of your website visitors, they’ll increase your keyword rankings around that topic.
Furthermore, if you provide new and informative research around a topic, other websites may use your content as a resource when they develop their content. Building backlinks to your site from reputable domains is the biggest influence to increase your content’s rankings and domain authority.
Distributing entertaining brand content can have a similar effect. If users organically share your content with their friends or colleagues, it is not only free publicity for your brand but will increase the organic reach for your content. The more likes, shares, and comments your content receives, the more social media platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn will show your content to other users.
Organic reach on social media platforms continues to plummet year over year, so creating entertaining content is a crucial strategy to increase your organic reach. Instead of investing in a budget to boost your posts, create great content, and your audience will not only want to share your content, but the social media platforms will reward you by increasing your reach without charging you a dime.
Best Types of Content Marketing
Content marketing comes in many forms, and each serves an important purpose. Whether your goal is to create content to directly generate leads or to promote your brand’s image, understanding the different types of content you can use to market your business is crucial to any successful business. Learn three essential kinds of content marketing and how to use them to bring your brand maximum value.
Blogging
Blogging is perhaps the most popular form of content marketing, and when it is done right, businesses gain valuable leads and increase traffic to their websites. Small businesses that invest in blogs receive 126% higher lead growth than small businesses without blogs on their websites, but more importantly, 61% of U.S. online consumers make a purchase after reading recommendations on a blog.
Blogs are crucial to build a relationship with your site visitors and help position your brand as an expert in your business sector. An effective strategy to identify great blog topics is to reverse engineer and research what your potential site visitors are searching for on the web. Although you can use online forums such as Quora or Reddit to find questions and topics, entering a common search into Google and navigating to the “People also ask” section is another easy strategy to gain insight on what your audience wants to know:
For instance, if you are a local pest exterminator, research common queries around customer pain points and provide expert solutions. This strategy will not only bring new visitors to your site, but you can position your services as a solution to guide the visitor to a conversion. If a common query around pest control is, “how do I get rid of fleas,” create a blog around flea extermination. Structure the blog around the common questions users enter into Google and align your business as the solution they need. Explain why trying to exterminate fleas without an expert will be a waste of money and ineffective and back up your claims with third-party evidence.
Drafting blogs without upfront SEO research and only pumping out a 300-word piece of content will not benefit your business. If you want to blog, do it right! Invest in long-form content that is optimized upfront with expert keyword research to increase organic traffic, build rapport with your customers, and generate new business.
Video
Out of all the different types of content that your business should invest in, video is the one that should be at the top of your list. Not only do 87% of consumers want more video from brands, but 97% of consumers and online marketers report that video helps customers understand their products. Detailing your brand’s services through video is not only the easiest way for consumers to digest your material, but it is also the most effective because consumers connect with visual media better than written text.
Showcasing your product in a video allows a viewer to see your product in action, and it makes a much more meaningful impact than simply reading about the product’s features. For example, think of a great infomercial. A spokesperson like the great Billy Mays demonstrates the market superiority of their product and shows you why the product is the best on the market. Viewers don’t have to make any effort to digest the content, but they see the effectiveness and benefits of the product in action (no wonder why 64% of viewers are more likely to buy a product online after watching branded social videos).
Also, the most overlooked advantage of videos is that they appear at the top of search results. As you can see below, when I searched for “the best way to peel garlic,” YouTube videos appeared at the top of the search results before sitelinks. Beat your competitors by creating video content around popular queries and see if your video appears at the top of the search results.
Social media posts
Creating social media content for your company is a great way to build brand recognition, promote company updates, and expose your business to new audiences. The content you share should bring value to the user and demonstrate how your business can help solve your audience needs.
Sharing relevant articles that convey impactful data to validate the value of your business is an essential way to prime new visitors to want to work with your company. For instance, If you own a dental practice, sharing articles about recent accredited studies around proper dental care that promotes how often a person should have a dental check-up can help prompt the reader to schedule a cleaning.
If you sell cat leashes, sharing an article about how overweight cats have a shortened life expectancy or how regular walks can help a cat lose weight and sleep through the night, so he or she doesn’t meow due to restlessness. The numerous benefits you provide in your content should prime the reader to want to purchase a lease because they see your product as a solution to their problems.
Additionally, creating infographics summarizing recent accredited studies or listing the benefits of using a cat lease is an efficient and clear way to demonstrate your product’s value. Original infographics are a fantastic way to promote your brand. Include your brand’s logo as a watermark, so when other content influencers or social media users share your content, your brand’s logo will be displayed to a new audience.
You can also share pictures of your team at recent fundraising or charity events or a recent case study demonstrating how your company helped a client. This is a fantastic way to sell your services without directly pushing new users with an invasive message.
Finally, creating comical memes or satirical content relating to your business that resonates with users is a great way to promote your brand. Remember, people want to be entertained when they visit their favorite social media platforms. Sharing funny memes without any kind of selling message will increase the likelihood that users will like your posts, and more importantly, tag their friends in the comments or share your post.
The ultimate goal of great social media content is to let your audience advertise for you! Instead of spending money to boost posts, create and share great content and let your audience spread your message. This is not only a much better brand experience, but it’s the best way to attract new people and build rapport with your audience quickly.
Benefits of Content Marketing: Why is it Important?
Whether you are marketing to businesses (B2B) or consumers (B2C), there are many benefits to content marketing:
Increases Engagement
According to CMI’s digital content marketing research, 72% of marketers say that content marketing increases engagement and leads. If you don’t invest in creating content, there will be nothing for your visitors to engage with your brand. Developing content that showcases your business's services demonstrates value to your audience and advertises your brand is essential to any business.
Generates Leads
The data is clear. Long-form content is the most effective way to generate leads. In fact, long-form blog posts generate 9X more leads than short blog posts, and content marketing is 6 times more effective to rake in conversions than other marketing methods. Although content marketing requires patience, the payoff is enormous.
Builds Brand Authority
Positioning your brand as an expert in your industry through content marketing is indispensable to build a relationship with your web visitors and guide them through your sales funnel. The value of information comes down to the writer’s expertise on the subject or topic. For instance, a reader will believe the opinion of a dentist on the best ways to floss their teeth rather than their barber because they have a vast array of experience and expertise on the subject. By offering an expert level answer to common search queries in your industry and publishing them on your site, you can provide value to your potential customers and position your services as a solution to their concerns. If a dentist drafts a blog that answers common questions around an oral condition such as Temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMJ), they can not only inform the reader on the condition but can integrate their TMJ services in the copy as a solution to their readers’ queries.
Increases Organic Traffic and Keyword Rankings
It’s easy to overthink SEO and to try to figure out exactly how Google ranks content, but at the end of the day, it’s simple. When someone enters a question or a series of keywords into the search bar, Google wants to provide the best possible resources to the searcher. Therefore, Google ranks web pages, features snippets, and pushes videos based on how well they think the resource will satisfy the user’s search. How does Google decide? It crawls the web and locates the pages that have keywords that match the user’s search. For instance, if someone enters into Google “best way to plant basil,” you can clearly see that the featured snippet at the top of the results has keywords from the query bolded in context to prompt the user to see it as a match to their search:
Furthermore, the 3 top results below the featured snippet and videos all have keywords bolded from the online resource that matches the user’s search:
Therefore, you have to fill your site with content that uses similar search terminology utilized by your audience. Utilizing keyword and competitive research helps guide the outline for what type of content a business should produce.
Drafting long-form content that answers common questions your target audience consistently asks and aligning your services with the answers you provide will increase your chances to rank for valuable keywords, appear at the top of search, and display your website on the top SERPs so potential customers can learn about your business and how you can help them. If you don’t produce SEO-guided, long-form content for your audience, Google won’t reward you and your business will be lost in the web.
Content Marketing Statistics
The data doesn’t lie, and the ROI from content marketing is clear. Let’s dive deeper and review more content marketing statistics:
45% of marketers site blogging as the most important component of their content strategy.
91% of B2B marketers use content marketing by only 36% of B2B organizations are committed to content marketing. A lack of investment into content marketing as a primary marketing strategy is a huge mistake because if your competitors are committed to creating great online content, they will capture the traffic of the potential customers in your industry.
Better content drives traffic to a blog by up to 2,000%, because if users see your online content as valuable, they will share it and tell others about your services. Additionally, Google will reward your successful content by increasing your keyword rankings for your content, so it is shown to more people.
Millennials spend an average of 11 hours per day engaging with digital content versus the U.S. average of 8.8 hours. People continue to invest more and more of their time consuming online media, and if you want to capture some of that attention, it’s crucial your business invests in creating relevant media for your audience to consume. From compelling video content to informative blogs, a consistent investment in content creation will help attract more and more people to your site.
34% of consumers are more likely to make an unplanned purchase if a brand offers personalized content. Bring valuable and informative content and connect with your audience. Connect with your audience through your content to build trust so they will want to take the next step to become a customer. Remember, an individual has to have some level of connection, confidence, and interest in your services to become a customer and give you their hard-earned money.
73% of B2B and 76% of B2C markers say their marketing strategy treats content marketing as an ongoing business process and not only a one-time campaign. Treat content marketing as a long-term strategy and investment. The more you consistently create compelling content to your audience, the more your business will reap the benefits.
Long-form blog posts generate nine times more leads than short-term blog posts. Since long-form content consistently outranks short-form content, lengthy blogs generate more organic traffic if they focus on ranking for keywords that are built around lead generation. Furthermore, longer content gives the author more time to explain the benefits of their services so their audience can have sufficient information to see the value of the business. Also, since few bloggers invest in long-form blog content (more than 2,000 words), publishing long-form content will help capitalize on their lack of depth. Since the average content length of the first results of SERPS is around 2,450 words, consistently investing in long-form content will give your business the best chance to rank for the queries your audience would search for to find your business and make a conversion.
87% of businesses use video as a content marketing tool in 2019, which is up from 81% in 2018. People continue to invest more and more of their time-consuming video content, but still, few brands create video content. Most businesses think video content is expensive to produce, but even filming and publishing videos from a smartphone is better than nothing. Videos are the most accessible form of content for an individual to consume and speaking directly to your audience is pivotal to build a relationship.
Content Marketing vs. Digital Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing
Content, digital, and social media marketing all work in unison, and each part is integral to a successful online marketing strategy. Content marketing involves creating valuable and relevant media in the form of written copy, video, and images to attract and retain your audience. It can come in many forms, including videos, brochures, eBooks, blogs, and billboards.
However, digital marketing encompasses all channels a company uses to market its services, including PPC, SEO, social media, and press releases. Digital marketing connects with audiences exclusively through digital channels and provides massive benefits to businesses at an affordable cost. Although there is overlap between content and digital marketing, digital content marketing is focused on strategizing and creating valuable and consistent content to an audience based on aligning their problem-focused queries with your service and solution-based content.
Social media marketing is any content that is published on digital platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Snapchat. It overlaps with both content and digital marketing. Posting an image with an intriguing campaign is not only content marketing but also digital marketing. The best social media advertising campaigns utilize content writers to craft a condensed “sales pitch” of an enticing offer to generate interest. However, social media marketing can also be distributed organically.
How Does Content Marketing Work? ROI and Benefits
Effective content marketing works by providing answers to user search queries and aligns their pain points with your service solutions. For instance, if a user searches in Google “hair loss treatment,” a business that provides a hair loss treatment would craft a piece of content centered around explaining their solution. To ensure maximum value and increase organic traffic, include similar queries and topics into your content to add considerable benefit to your audience and further align your services as a solution to their problem.
For example, including a section titled, “why do men lose their hair” and identifying the factors that contribute to hair loss while explaining how your product combats the identified factors is essential for your reader to gain confidence in your solution. Let’s say a reason men lose their hair is because of a particular vitamin deficiency and as you establish your premise; plug that your product includes the essential vitamins that contribute to stronger and healthier hair.
The most significant content marketing ROI is that it is 62% less expensive than outbound marketing, yet it generates 3x as many leads, and 72% of marketers say content marketing increases engagement. Content marketing is also the most cost-effective, long-term marketing strategy since a successful piece of site copy will generate organic search traffic to your business versus social media or PPC advertising where your reach is contingent on your monthly marketing budget.
For instance, a blog Jack Scullin drafted at a previous agency generates $15,700 worth of traffic in terms of PPC costs. By ranking organically for more than 450 keywords, the blog is visible in a variety of search queries aligned with the business’ objectives, so instead of bidding on expensive keywords, the client generates traffic for free:
Also, since the lion’s share of web visits are gained from organic search versus other channels, SEO content marketing is the best advertising investment.
How to Measure Content Marketing Results:
Organic traffic
number of people who found your website after using a search engine not influenced by paid ads.
Traffic Cost
Estimated value of your organic traffic based on keyword rankings and PPC costs.
Keyword Rankings
Where your site content appears on a search results page for a given keyword search. The value of a keyword is based on its volume of monthly searches, estimated PPC cost, competition, and how the keyword search aligns with your business’ services.
Average Session Duration
Length of time a visitor stays on the content page.
Goal completions
The total number of conversions.
Depending on the goals for your piece of content, other valuable metrics should be evaluated to determine the success of a web page. The most significant return on a content marketing investment is that your business can clearly explain your business’ services and align them with your audience’s pain points so they understand how your company would provide them value.
A website with a sparse amount of content will not be able to sufficiently explain the benefits of their services and build adequate rapport with their audience so their audience will feel uncomfortable investing in their services.
Example of Marketing Strategy for a Product
Let’s say that your business sells bottled vegetable juices. Start by doing some keyword research to discover popular queries in your market space. Searches may include green juice recipes, detox plans, benefits of vegetable juices, or vegetable juice benefits for weight loss.
Once you have sufficient queries that you have found with adequate monthly search volume and low competition, create an outline that organizes your content based on the topics you will cover in the piece of site content. Having your headers as close to the search queries you found will increase your chances to rank for the targeted keywords.
Next, draft your content and provide outbound links to resourceful pages that help validate the claims that you make throughout your article. For instance, if you claim that incorporating vegetable juices daily in your diet significantly aids weight loss, provide a link to a reputable study and provide informed statistics on the topic.
Include images of your products and incorporate them into infographics with concise bullet points that sell your product. Let’s say you highlight a beet ginger juice. In the infographic, include points that explain your market superiority to other juices. Perhaps there are five beets per bottle, or your company only uses organic veggies. Make sure to include as many natural selling points that displays your product.
As you sufficiently answer your targeted queries, finish your page with a call to action to visit the pages on your site where visitors can purchase your product or learn more about your company. Make sure that after a site visitor finishes reading the content that they are guided further down your sales funnel to try and complete a conversion. Ultimately, you want to craft content that provides value to your readers, but it has to also align with your business’ services.
Create content that you would want to read but also clearly showcase your product as the solution to audience searches.
Content Marketing Sales Funnel
We’ve developed the ultimate content marketing sales funnel that expertly guides a user from an organic search to a conversion called the AIAO Funnel:
Attention
How can you create interest and curiosity? Do you have a tantalizing promise that will solve the user’s search query? Can we elicit a reaction and create an emotional attraction?
Information
Once the reader has clicked on your site link, you must provide intriguing data that sells your services. What will interest them in purchasing your products or services? Why do they need it? Identify their problem and give the solution and relief to their query. Use the information you find to prime your reader to want to purchase your product. For instance, if their query is “how to remove warts fastest,” position your wart remover as the remedy. If it has a medically verified ingredient that removes warts faster than competitors, explain why it works and provide a link to a reputable source to prove your claim. When it comes to long-form content, let the data and information sell your services for you.
Association
How do you want them to feel about your product? How do you want them to understand it? Like Pavlov’s dogs, what is your bell? Coke has positioned its product as refreshing, and their branding has deeply imbedded that concept into our subconscious minds. Find out how you want your audience to feel about your product to sell your services. Include testimonials of happy clients to create a positive association with your brand further and let their pleasant experiences establish a strong association with your brand.
Offer
How can you incentivize your product or services? Can you provide an exclusive offer to first-time users? Create scarcity and urgency if you can. Make it so your offer will expire soon to prompt the reader to act today. Include a money-back guarantee, if possible, to lower the reader’s action threshold so they are more likely to try your product and reduce their risk of investment.
Content Marketing Services for Websites
Scullin Media offers innovative content marketing services. The three-step process starts with understanding your business and the best way to contextualize your services to intrigue your audience, so they want to invest in your offerings.
Content Marketing Strategy
We first investigate your existing content, brand voice, and message to understand how you currently market your services. We identify hindrances that may impede your success and limit your organic visibility, such as lack of keyword research, depth of content, and customer journey from discovery to conversion. Ultimately, your online web copy acts as a digital salesperson and is pivotal to guide users to want to work with your business.
Without sufficient copy and a clear understanding of how to effectively frame your services, it will not only be more difficult for users to find you, but they will also be hesitant to sign up for your services. After reviewing your existing content, we will investigate the market to discover how your competitors are outperforming your website.
We will identify content opportunities with low competition and craft a long-term strategy to develop compelling content, rank for valuable keywords, and optimize your content for search.
Content Development and Distribution
Once content services are selected, we will use our innovative SEO content brief to outline your content, identify keywords we want to rank for, and what we want your piece of content to accomplish. Content will be drafted, edited, and sent for your approval. Once we have a completed draft, we will publish your content on your website and provide social share suggestions to share with your followers.
Content Monitoring and Reporting
After your new content has been published, we will submit it to Google Search Console so the content can be crawled faster. We will monitor the success of the content and evaluate valuable metrics, such as keyword rankings, PPC value, organic traffic, source traffic, bounce rate, and dwell time. Continuous monitoring is recommended to optimize your existing content to further improve performance.
From long-form blog content optimized for search to social media advertising, learn more about our content marketing services and how we can help your business grow.