Reasons why businesses fail in their content strategy.
Content marketing has become a popular online marketing tactic over the last few years, with many businesses incorporating it into their larger digital marketing strategy. Unfortunately, content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) aren’t always integrated well — or at all — within an organization.
Content creation strategies should be based on a thorough SEO analysis, including advanced keyword research. Without SEO, content marketing efforts can’t reach their full potential with regard to online visibility. Even content that is well-written, attractively presented and expensive to create will underperform without careful preparatory research.
Following are seven common mistakes businesses make by not integrating SEO (and other digital marketing disciplines) into their content strategy.
1. Not doing proper keyword research
Some content marketers imagine keyword research is only about keywords and search volumes. But it’s much more. Keyword research is a tool for planning your content strategically, not just from an SEO perspective, but also for branding, communication and public relations, with the overarching focus of achieving business goals.
It’s astonishing how many content creators don’t undertake keyword research at all, instead going by gut feelings and instinct. They don’t map out a topic to uncover all the relevant keywords. They use guesswork and random brainstorming to find some relevant phrases and trust that that is good enough. But if your content strategy is not based on real data from thorough research, it’s not going to perform to its potential.
Smart keyword research lets you predict what your audience needs — before they tell you, or even before they know it themselves! Guided by a properly prioritized set of keywords, your content team can be creative while anchoring their ideas to data.
Your role, as a content marketer, is to play matchmaker between content and the people searching for it. Look at their intent, needs and wants. Apply that intelligence to create content which converts visitors into buyers.
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