17 Smart Content Marketing Techniques Used by Top SEO Experts
It’s been said many times.
I’m saying it again.
“Content is King!”
You need good content to engage a visitor.
Right content marketing assures you get the right kind of engagement as per your goal.
After all, most of the B2B and B2C purchasers see content before making a buying decision.
Bad content isn’t just useless; it harms your brand.
That’s why you need to use content marketing techniques to get the most traffic and best response.
In this article, I have shared 17 content marketing techniques that are recommended by leading SEO experts.
1. Getting Goals Straight
This should be the first thing you ask yourself when planning your content.
Content marketing is basically promoting a brand something without vividly expressing it.
Do you just need views or a better conversion rate – or leads maybe.
Create your content marketing strategy accordingly.
2. Create Pages for Target Audiences
It’s a good thing to have traffic.
It is best if that traffic is targeted.
Let me give you an example.
If your site is about men’s clothes, you need to target men and only from the area where you can deliver your product.
Building targeted pages using targeted keywords will bring quality traffic to your site which will result in more leads.
Neil Patel increased his traffic up to 3 times by creating targeted landing pages.
3. Divide Your Audience into Segments
According to Alli Berry, SEO & Editorial Lead at The Motley Fool, you shouldn’t limit the understanding of your audience to just keyword research.
You can’t create one piece of content that suits everyone.
Different people have a different level of maturity in a field.
Same also applies to the age, gender, and persona of your audience.
Your words are more effective when they speak to one segment of people.
You can also apply this content marketing technique to your emails to increase response. Here’s a great guide by HubSpot on Segmentation and Buyer Personas
In their National Client Email Report 2015, DMA reported an increase of 760% in ROI using segmented campaigns.
4. Update Existing Content
Updating your existing pages is a great content marketing technique with many benefits to it.
Google prefers fresh content.
Updating old content makes it more credible and in the run with new competition.
This content marketing technique makes you more resistant to Google updates.
Brian Dean of Backlinko has been using this tactic in his content marketing strategies.
He got 260.7% More Organic Traffic in 14 Days just by updating his existing content.
He updates all his articles according to new updates and years.
5. Study User Behavior
You need to change your content marketing strategies if you are not learning and adapting according to your visitors’ behavior.
Just getting traffic is not enough. You have to get a better conversion rate.
If you are getting a low conversion rate or if your bounce is increasing, this indicates that you need to make some changes.
Look for the things that visitors find attractive and adapt them.
Monitor:
- which countries are your visitors from,
- what their age is,
- and how they interact with your content.
For example, bloggers mostly use the reference to researches conducted in the USA.
While sharing research results is a good thing, there are 194 other countries that may not be very comfortable with statistics of just one nation.
6. High-Quality Content
Creating high-quality content that offers value to the reader, is a must follow content marketing technique.
High-quality content is not just about long articles with keywords in it.
It has to be engaging, informative, and comprehensive.
If possible, you should hire a content curator for data gathering. This helps you create original and well-searched content.
7. Creating Emotional Titles
Creating titles using emotional keywords is a content marketing technique used by many marketers.
Such titles connect to readers on a personal level.
Titles play an important role in blog marketing strategies.
How important you ask?
Headlines equal 50% effectiveness of your entire article.
An emotional keyword is the reason behind a user’s search.
For example, emotional keywords for abdominal exercises would be:
How to get fast abs
Get killer abs in 1 week
Here’s a normal SEO title.
10 Best Abdominal Exercises for Six Packs
Here’s a title with an emotional keyword.
Get Killer Abs in 1 Week with These 10 Abdominal Exercises
8. Target Local Keywords
You don’t always have to create content for an international audience.
This may get you more traffic but it isn’t very effective for a good conversion rate.
People search for local products on the internet.
According to Think with Google, 76% of these searchers physically visit the office/shop of the business on the same day.
28% of these visitors purchase the product/service.
9. Watch Your Competitors
You know the proverb.
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”
Not exactly, but it is a similar case in content marketing.
You have a lot of rivals on the internet.
You are working hard, but so are they.
Competition analysis plays an important role in the success of your business. Studying your competition gives you a strategic advantage.
Nathan Gotch from GotchSEO created an entire guide on Competition Analysis.
10. Brainstorm Relevant Topics
Don’t leave everything on just keyword research. There are many questions not asked on Google.
If you are an expert in your business, then you should know the questions your audience might be looking for.
Brainstorm relevant ideas and then see if you can find any keywords with search volume to adjust in it.
Topics should be the one that your audience cares about.
Rand Fishkin, Co-founder of Moz, discussed it in one of his Whiteboard Friday articles.
He believes we need to create a smarter hybrid of keywords targeting and new ideas for your articles.
11. Utilize Social Media
Social media platforms bring a lot of traffic to your site.
- Have a profile of your website on all big social sites
- Share all your posts there
- Keep your audience engaged
It is a great way to spread brand awareness while engaging and increasing your following.
There are many websites that get almost all of their traffic from social media sites.
12. Build Your Own Subscription List
While social media sites have their importance, Neil Patel recommends we shouldn’t just rely on them.
We need to create our own following and keep them engaged.
According to Neil Patel, we should invest in building a following of our site instead of Facebook and Twitter.
The real engagement takes place on your website, not on social media.
One great way to do that is getting your visitors to subscribe with their emails.
Subscribers are your personal following that don’t depend on social media.
13. Content Upgrade
This content upgrade is a little different from updating your content.
One thing similar is that this idea also escalated from Brian Dean of Backlinko.
According to Brian, he boosted his conversions by 785% in one day with just content upgrade.
His content marketing technique was to offer an additional resource as an upgrade to the content.
For example,
In his famous article of 200 ranking factors, he added a bonus download of a useful checklist for free.
Readers had to enter email and subscribe to download this bonus.
This increased his subscription which resulted in a boosted conversion rate.
14. Using Internal Links
Internal links shouldn’t be used just randomly.
They have a great value in the world of SEO and frequently used as a content marketing technique.
Internal links, if used properly, assure that the reader gets every relevant information and doesn’t leave our site soon.
Internal links should be relevant; otherwise, they may annoy your reader.
A right internal link should be pointing to a page that
- Is relevant
- And interesting for the visitor
Nathan Gotch pointed out several reasons to use internal links as content marketing for SEO.
- Sending equity from page to another increases authority flow.
- Internal links make it easy for search engines to index your
- It increases the average time spent on site and decreases bounce rate.
- You can make your pitch stronger by deciding which page a reader should visit next.
15. Set Milestones
One thing successful marketers have in common is that all divide their ultimate goal into small milestones.
This will keep you motivated.
Set realistic goals and work your best to achieve them. For example:
- Achieving a specific number of subscribers in a limited time
- An increase in traffic
- Setting a revenue target
A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan!
These short milestones work as your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
You will know how far you have come and how far you still have to go.
16. Create a Content Calendar
When learning how to build an effective content marketing strategy, make sure a content calendar is on top of the list.
Every piece of content should be published in an order on a specified date according to a plan.
You can use a tool like Google calendar or outlook to set and monitor your content routine.
It is recommended to use a professional editorial tool like CoSchedule or ContentCal for this task.
- This makes it easy to manage your content especially if you are working with a team.
- You can also track the effectiveness of each article and plan future work accordingly.
17. Content Marketing Techniques Should Be Persistent
Your struggle doesn’t end at utilizing content marketing methods and techniques just once.
It’s a continuous process that you have to keep practicing as long as you want your business to run.
Coca Cola was invented in 1886, and it is a huge brand.
You still see its ads everywhere.
It has maintained its position as one of the biggest brands in the world because of its persistent marketing.
Same applies to your business.
- You have to learn how to develop a content marketing strategy.
- You have to practice top content marketing tactics.
- And, you have to keep practicing them to achieve and uphold your goal.
I hope this content marketing strategy guide was helpful to you. Do you think I have missed any technique that leading SEO experts recommend? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section.
