Be it the website of an online e-commerce store or personal brand, content is the key to ranking on Google. Google values ultimate user engagement. When people have a great time on Google, they are more likely to stay and engage with it. This is beneficial because Google has the opportunity to then monetize this attention from the visitors. These visitors want value from Google. And if you can make the best out of their time, Google will rank you higher than other websites. At the same time, Google has created algorithms to monitor the quality of content on the web. These metrics use different standards to gauge a website’s quality in content.
Keyword density, quality, and quantity of links, use of images and content structure are only a few of the factors that search engines like Google use to identify quality content out of a pool of content. However, these algorithms are becoming stronger and stronger every day. If you were able to trick Google by creating a 500 words long blog post with a 2.5 percent keyword density a decade back, gone are those days. The same does not apply today anymore. If you want to put effort into creating high-quality content that ranks on Google, the key is to have a content strategy.
A content strategy will put things into perspective. If you want to be able to trigger the results that you are trying to achieve on the web, the use of content strategy will help you achieve just that as well. To do that, you must know what are your goals. Here is where you begin.
Defining your goals
Before you start creating quality content that adds value to the time that your visitors are investing in you, you need to identify what you are trying to achieve through that content. You should as yourself questions like are you trying to generate brand awareness or improve search engine rankings? Are you trying to attract your lost customers or are you trying to convert users into paying customers? Questions like this will help you in placing your finger on your goals.
You have your goals specified now. However, it is a bad idea to assume that creating a content strategy is, in fact, the best way to achieve that goal. Take for example the sales funnel. Whether you are trying to convert people at the topmost of the sales funnel or at the bottom of the sales funnel is going to make an impact on how you should go about achieving that goal. If you are at the top of the sales funnel, a content strategy can be helpful in lead generation and brand awareness. However, it may not be as useful if your target audience is at the bottom of the sales funnel.
Researching your audience
Once you have defined what your goals are, it is time to find out who will be reading the content that you will be creating. In fact, no, that is an overstatement. You want to find out who are you trying to make this content read. The people you want on your content are the people you need to start researching about exactly. On the web, to find out what is going on with the people of your choice, you need to look into the websites that your prospects are already visiting. You should know the type of content your prospects generally engage with. Look into the social media platforms your prospects generally try to share this content on. You can use Google Demographics and Interests to find out answers to questions like these.
Paying attention to your niche
When you make a Google search, the majority of all the times, you click on the top 3 links that Google shows you. This is the most relevant and probably the best out of all the content that has been created on the keyword you used to search on Google. That is great. However, there is so much content on the web that is a shame to read. But you don’t read it usually. This is because this content is ranked lowest on the later pages of Google. You want to avoid being part of this content at all costs. And to do that, you want to stand out. You don’t want to be just another blog writing in that niche. You want to have a distinct tone. Likewise, you want to create a unique structure. But the most important of these is to make sure that your content provides value.
When your content gets specific and focuses deeply on your niche, you grow as an authority figure in your niche. This is a great place to be. Likewise, you can’t overestimate the value of a loyal user base. You want to create a connection with this lot stronger than with any of your users. Your loyal user base is what is going to take you places.
Finding a way to measure your results
Having a content strategy and creating high quality content but not measure the results that content strategy yields are like putting efforts but in vain. You want to know what works the best for you and what does not. You should be able to point out what your readers enjoyed and what your readers disliked. Likewise, you also want to be able to put a finger on why your readers disliked what they disliked. There are a lot of metrics that you can use to find this out. Here are some of them.
Consumption metrics
This is where you gather the basic information to know how your content performed. And you can do that using Google Analytics. It should be able to give you information that will help you answer certain questions. You should be able to know if a particular blog post resulted in an increase in traffic. You will get to know if your visitors prefer a particular genre or section of your blog. If any of your blogs receive a relatively increased social media attention, this part should cover it.
Social sharing metrics
Your audience engages in various ways when it comes to your content. To find out how well this audience is engaging, you can use social sharing metrics. The number of shares you receive on social media, the better your audience is engaging with your audience on social media. Ask yourself what kind of content is being shared on social media in your niche. You should know the social media platforms your users use. And above all, point out the content that is converting the best. Again, you can use Google Analytics here.
Lead metrics
You can create your content based on various factors. One way to generate content is too specific segments of the sales funnel. Each segment of the sales funnel has different content requirements to push them down the sales funnel. You want to know how many leads your content is generating and how many leads it is letting go. If people are pushing at a particular segment of a sales funnel, there might be people dropping out of the sales funnel as well. You want to balance this out using your content.
Sales metrics
If your business is generating content, it has a certain goal in mind. And for your business, this goal has to be revenue generation. It is the goal of every business. You can measure how well your content is doing by gauging the increase in revenue.
Welcoming customer feedback
Data analytics are great at giving you information that can help form your opinion on how your audience is responding to the content that you are producing. However, one of the most genuine ways to know the same thing is by asking your visitors directly. Be it web or social media, you can reach out to your visitors and have them answer your questions. Use this information since it is coming through a source of great authority.
