Let’s stay on top of our marketing game in 2022. First order of the new year – planning goals. When thinking about SEO content marketing in relation to your business goals, it might not be clear how important it is. Yes, good content will take you far, but good SEO-enriched content will take you even further. Companies that fail to tie their content goals to their business goals are what Rand Fishkin, a marketing expert and the co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, calls “one of the biggest problems in marketing.”
Tying your goals will not only give you more clarity on your specific marketing strategy needs and the tactics to get you there, but will also help you figure out which areas of marketing you may want to invest in. Since marketing is a costly investment, you need to ensure you’re getting the most for what you pay for. According to a marketing report done by Hubspot, in 2021, 63% of marketers planned to increase their budget. To no surprise, SEO was also the second-most prioritized approach. You might be wondering— how can I incorporate SEO to reach my goals? The following tactics will help guide you in the right direction.
Tactic 1: Make Your Headline Engaging
It may seem simple, but it’s surprising to see how frequently content authors miss the mark on the headline of an asset they have invested heavily in – only to make it less appealing for users to click on. In a recent SparkToro webinar led by Rand Fishkin and Amanda Natividad, they advise writing the headline of the content piece first. Headlines are the first negotiation tool to win over your audience. The people that click on your title and stay engaged in the article, are assisting Google in deciding where the content piece will rank in a search result. Start with having the goal of your article in mind. For example, in this article, our goal was to increase traffic from a company’s “decision-makers” by informing them how content marketing and SEO could be worth the investment. Thus, the title, “Score A 2022 SEO Content Marketing Strategy That’ll Meet Your Goals,” would be fitting.
At Saltwater Collective we recommend including the following in titles:
- Your targeted keyword(s)
- Emotion-evoking words
- Clear and easy to understand
- Encompass the overall goal/spirit of the story
Remember, headlines are “the face of the business,” so make sure it catches the attention of your audience without being spammy and still balances the importance of integrating the right keywords to drive the success of your SEO campaign like awareness or traffic generation. One of the first things we do at Saltwater is to find keywords that a targeted audience would be searching for. An in-depth keyword analysis will further lead us to a selection of the right keyword based on the goals we’re reaching for.
Tactic 2: Writing Readable SEO Content
After you have thought of the perfect title, use an outline for your content. In the SparkToro presentation, Fishkin provides an effective content outline called the hook, line, and sinker. The purpose of this outline is to grab attention, deliver a promise, and leave something for the reader to ponder or take with them. This will help deliver great content while improving SEO ranking. Below, you will see we even used the hook, line, and sinker in this article.
Hook:
Let’s stay on top of our marketing game in 2022. First order of the new year – planning goals. When thinking about SEO content marketing in relation to your business goals, it might not be clear how important it is. Yes, good content will take you far, but good SEO-enriched content will take you even further.
Line:
You might be wondering— how can I incorporate SEO to reach my goals? The following tactics will help guide you in the right direction.
Sinker:
Notice what we did here? We used the tips within this blog post to create the post you’re reading.
At Saltwater Collective, we like to use the following method to increase readability:
- Use bullets/lists to help skimmers.
- Posts containing at least one list per every 500 words of plain text get 70% more traffic than posts without lists. See what we did there? (A recommendation by Semrush.)
- Use descriptive subheadings (H2-H6) for hierarchy.
- Use images to break up the text.
- Use simple words that everyone can understand.
- Use short sentences and paragraphs to avoid “walls of text.”
- Use a large font to help readers avoid eye strain.
- Write as you speak to make things more entertaining and conversational.
Tactic 3: Leverage All Page Optimization Opportunities
In addition to an enticing headline and readable content, the meta title, meta description, and heading tags go hand in hand with winning over your audience. Ensure these elements reflect the style and tone of the heading you worked so hard to craft. At Saltwater Collective we suggest that the meta title tag be descriptive and include your primary keyword in a meaningful way. As for the Meta description tag, make it informative and compelling enough to entice searchers to choose your page above all others. Within the content, use descriptive, relevant, and keyword-rich headings to help break up the page into sections and ensure they are tagged appropriately (H1 – H6).
Tactic 4: Delivering Your SEO Content
Notice what we did here? We used the tips within this blog post to create the post you’re reading. And LOOKEY HERE – our post made its way to the exact audience we wanted – YOU (hopefully). The same can be done with any topic you choose to write about. You can find opportunities to increase content marketing efforts by adding your perspective on specific topics that align with your business goals. This can be done by leveraging tools to create an alert that will send you a notification when a topic you’re interested in is mentioned in the news. We also suggest sharing the piece on social media with others that could build on it. The article, “20 Places You Should Be Sharing Your Content” offers additional content-sharing ideas.
Tactic 5: Monitor Your Performance
Once you’ve applied this new content marketing strategy and dispersed it to your ideal audience, check the performance of your efforts in relation to the KPIs selected. SEO and content marketing are long-term strategies, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t see immediate results. At Saltwater we like to allow at least two months for search engines to fully interpret changes to a site or new copy added. Based on performance, tweak old content if needed and remember to apply this strategy to new content.
We hope you see success with this strategy and that next year you find you’re creating even bigger goals! Looking for additional marketing insight? Check out the Saltwater Collective blog for the latest and greatest on industry trends and marketing wisdom.
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