Recently, content marketing has seen a paradigm shift. Particularly in the last few years, consumer search queries have become increasingly complex, changing the way search engines understand the content on the internet. Therefore, the way we write content needs to develop in line with changing behaviours. Search queries have become more long-tail, so businesses really need to think about consumer intent and create content that can answer all these different long tail queries. Having a strong content marketing strategy is key to the inbound marketing methodology to attract, engage, delight and convert customers at every stage of the buying journey.
Focusing on certain keywords that you want to rank for is no longer enough. Instead as search marketers we must be focusing on having expertise, authority and trust, which can be abbreviated to E.A.T, in a particular topic area.
Connected content, not competitive
Developing your content strategy should be in achieved in a highly thought out and organised way, so that Google and other search engines can understand it easily. In order to organise your content in an effective way, topic clusters should be created so that visibility can be increased for that certain topic.
When organising and planning your content, have a look at what other content is already on your website; is it going to be conflicting or supporting? Producing content that is targeting the same keyword is going to dilute the content you are writing. Theoretically speaking, you will be producing content which is in competition with itself. It is important to think about how your content connects to other pieces of content on your website and create a site architecture that makes sense to the consumer.
Thinking about the topic cluster model will work to your advantage here. In the middle is the pillar content that broadly covers and summarises the topic you want to be a leader in. Your next steps are to create supporting content that you can use to link back to this main pillar that can answer a broad range of specific questions the consumer may have.
Let’s break this down to understand the process a little further. If camping was to be your pillar content or your central subject, what could the supporting content or cluster content be that links inward and back to that broad topic page?
Examples of complementary pages that you could create include:
Thinking about content in a topic specific way will assist you in creating content that really answers the complex search queries that your consumers are asking whilst enabling you to produce content that is valuable and isn’t repetitive, which will help search engine optimisation and in turn support your business goals.
Creating content in this way will help provide consumers with more detailed information and search engines will evaluate that you are an authority leader for that topic, leading to better rankings and a greater likelihood of your content being found, read and engaged with.
In order to develop a successful content strategy, there are some important aspects to think about and it all starts with the consumer. Here are just a few to consider:
Content is King and producing expert, authoritative and trustworthy content will help you succeed in achieving your business’ digital marketing goals.
If your company would like to find out more on how to create and implement a successful content marketing strategy that supports your business goals, then contact the Innovation Visual team today who will be happy to help.