Content Marketing: The Key to Getting Your Website on the First Page of Google
High search rankings. Everyone wants them! It makes sense to want your website on the first page of Google. We can proudly point at the result and smile. Ranking well satisfies the ego and, more importantly, can help improve the visibility of your business and attract more customers.
But, what does it take to get good search rankings? The short answer is that your site needs to be optimized for search. A more accurate answer is that many factors contribute to how a website ranks for any given search phrase: on-site technical improvements, inbound links from other websites, the actual content on your pages. Ranking well presupposes research and ongoing effort. This is why the term “optimization” is used, as you need to make incremental improvements in many different areas to rank better and continually measure and track the performance of the changes that are made.
Many people are fixated on achieving the top organic search result, which isn’t a bad thing, but search rankings are never static and fluctuate all the time to a greater or lesser degree. Search engines frequently change their ranking algorithms. Important factors like the location of the person searching, the preferences they’ve chosen, and the device they are searching from all contribute to how your site ranks in any given search. And, of course, your competition knows this and isn’t sitting idle either. Since everyone wants to rank well, and everyone can’t rank well for the same keywords at the same time, this creates a very challenging environment.
So, with all of these factors in play, where do you begin? Well, it’s important to set some initial goals and then do market research. You need to have a good idea of who your intended audience is and what you want them to do. Then you need to try and understand their search behavior and compare it with your offerings. For instance, just because you rank first for a given phrase, that doesn’t mean anyone is searching for that phrase. If people are searching for that phrase, does your company have a product or service or information that matches what the searcher is really looking for? The better informed you are, the more likely your optimization effort is targeting the right audience and keywords. While optimizing a page for a keyword is helpful, it's things like inbound links to pages, shares, and interactions that influence rankings the most.
What people and search engines really like is content: carefully crafted words, visuals, and tools that define and describe your offerings and anticipate the searchers wants and needs. These may take the form of written text, photos, infographics, video, data, statistics, games and other interactive gadgetry. Search engines really pay attention to new content, and content that people visit, link to, share, and talk about online. The goal is to capture the attention of your audience with information that they value. Industry experts refer to all of this as inbound marketing or content marketing, and if there’s anything you should take away from this article it’s that producing and promoting strategic content is perhaps the most important activity you can do today to rank well in search. It’s also very helpful in selling your products and services, too!
Content Marketing: A Simple Overview
A basic content marketing plan boils down to the following steps:
- Produce content that is useful or interesting to your target audience
- Publish the content online, preferably on your own website first
- Share and promote your content via various methods like social media and blogs
- Encourage others to promote your content, if they don’t do it on their own
- Measure, analyze, and gain insights from available data
- Produce more content and create more interactions
Now, consider the context of your business or industry. If your competitors are producing content, you need to do the same to keep pace. If your competitors are not producing content, then you have an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage. Your competitors are not the only ones to be concerned about though. Other people and businesses who you may not consider competition are producing content, too, so you need to produce quality content to capture attention and keep your audience coming back.
This all takes time, of course, and doing it consistently is a challenge when you are doing things like running your business. This is where both strategy and planning are important to make sure you are laser-focused and consistent in content production. Working with a marketing agency is often a good solution for a small business as they will collaborate with you and do a lot of the legwork that you may not have time to do. Perhaps you just need a strategy. Maybe you need project management to maintain momentum for a staff content creator. It is likely that outsourcing the content creation effort is a good option. It truly depends on your business goals and priorities to make the right decision regarding the best course of action.
Whatever path you ultimately choose, content creation helps your search rankings and helps your business at the same time. If you want to get on the first page of Google and stay there, strategically and consistently produce quality content and share it. You’ll be glad you did, and so will your customers.
The team at Crown Point Solutions can help you with your strategy, plans, and content creation. We can manage some or all aspects of the process in collaboration with your team (whose knowledge of your business, customers and industry is integral to any campaign). So let’s talk, and we’ll create together.
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