Content marketing has a very broad definition, largely based on this:

“any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers.”

In the past when I’ve asked friends in the industry what they see content marketing as, they usually talk about writing useful content which naturally attracts links, ranks, converts. One source of ‘cheap’ relevant traffic is when a piece of content marketing material ranks on a given set of keywords on a search engine.

To rank there are a few important things to have:

  • Content on a suitably authoritative domain
  • The right keywords in the content and ideally within the title tag
  • Sufficient internal and external links going to the content

So if links are such a valuable part of getting visibility for your content marketing, then its important to make content ‘attractive’.

Typically content marketing topics can be segmented into:

Brand: Something which resonates with the reader and encourages them to think about the brand i.e. article about extreme motorcycle jumps & lots of pictures and video with Redbull in the background

Consideration: Something which has utility and answers a buyer question and ultimately steers a consumer to a purchase i.e. an article with a really extensive review about a phone

Buy: There isn't much content marketing here, because a ‘buy’ page is a landing page designed only for conversion and that typically doesn't have much in the way of words on it.

All of these parts of the funnel have one thing in common… they all need relevant traffic to have any impact on anyone. This is where Google comes in, because as we know, it is a massive source of new relevant users.

But to rank you have to have links.

Herein lies the ‘catch 22’ of content marketing...Content which naturally attracts links, is content people want to link to. People do not typically want to link to a salers page about i.e. online mortgages, despite this page being very valuable to a brand.

This means brands have done linkbuilding to ‘game’ the system in order to rank.

If Google has it’s way, there would be no such thing as ‘off-site’ SEO i.e. link building. Content would just naturally find it’s natural ‘linking’ level and content that is naturally most interesting would percolate to the top of the search results.

Of course, that is not what’s happening and Google is plagued with SEO’ers trying to game the system.

What is the answer?

In my opinion, It lies in producing content which will help persuade a user to make a buying decision. This content falls into the bracket of ‘consideration content’.

Then if the content has utility to others, it can be ‘socialised’ i.e. someone can do some Digital PR on the story and reach out to sites interested in such a topic. Then it will rank (assuming enough of the rankings factors are met).

You might not rank for a ‘buy phrase’ but you will have an impact on a user buying and as long as you have an easy path to a purchase i.e. Adwords, you harmonise with your customers, Google and your desire for profit.


Want to hear more? 

Nick Garner is CEO of 90 Digital and will be speaking at the Content Masterclass on May 2nd about how to make your content marketing work harder for you. Book your place now. 

To see more from Nick, take a look at the video of his presentation at the Digital Marketing Show 2013. 

PrivSec Conferences will bring together leading speakers and experts from privacy and security to deliver compelling content via solo presentations, panel discussions, debates, roundtables and workshops.
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