You must have heard that it is the content that rules everything online!
But does that mean that you can get more traffic only by creating more content?
Definitely not! You’ve come across various statistics online stating that content of around 1800 or more words ranks well on Google.
But it does not imply writing a long content that is more than 1800 words will eventually land you more traffic from the search engines. Often, content marketers keep on writing content, but, are not able to fetch enough volume of search traffic.
If the same is happening with you, I will let you know the solution. But before that let me tell you how content marketing is evolving.
Millions of Blog Already Exists:
Glancing at the current statistics will let you know that there are presently millions of blogs. And if you consider platforms like Tumblr and Medium, the number exceeds a billion.
What does this mean?
Since so many blogs already exist so it will be difficult to earn the desired results. And the fact is that the number of blogs online is growing at a fast pace.
This brings us to another question. Why others would read your blog and not of others?
Why Content Marketing is Not Working the Way it used to Work Before?
So many blogs online mean there is already intense competition.
No matter which niche you select for blogging, the possibility is that there is already someone blogging about it.
Even if you plan to write about current events and news, the possibilities are other blogs will already be there to compete with you. With the easy availability of popular keywords, which people are searching for, there are more sites competing with each other for the top rankings. And no matter which keyword you select, you will have lots of competition for it.
It’s true that you can use long-term keywords to earn huge traffic, but even those are becoming more competitive day by day.
It is Time to Change the Content Strategy:
As I have already discussed above, stuff you are writing about, chances are others will already be writing about it.
The blog I wrote earlier is not going to work today. It is because content marketing was quite diverse back then. Even, social marketing platforms like Facebook were not being used by marketers.
Hence, it did well. Simply, because it was something new!
At that time, rarely a few people used to read posts about winning search engine marketing. It was unique, fresh, and people were interested to know more about it. It didn’t matter whether it was short or long.
But presently, things have changed. When new content is published now, there are chances that people must have read already something similar. In this scenario, why would they like to link to your content, or share it?
The worst thing is that only 7 out of 10 people read headlines and only 2 out of 10 will click it. This means that people are not finding your content interesting. Moreover, they already have read similar stuff like it.
In simple words, if you are not writing anything amazing and new, it won’t perform well.
It does not matter even if your content is long and successfully bought some social shares. No one would like to read it if it is not unique and original.
For example, if you will search for ‘top web design tips,’ you will find hundreds of articles already listing there. The only difference is that they differ in a number of tips included in their post.
How to Generate Content that is new and fresh?
Unique and fresh content is one if you share your life experiences. If you are good at converting your personal experiences into content, you will perform better.
It’s better if you don’t create generic posts.
Might be there are some posts that may not rank high on Google, yet they are popular because they are unique. It can be data that people have not read before or it can be your personal experience from which people can learn something. The articles, which are unique performs the best.
So, if you want to get the love of your audience, you must write original content, meaning it is not anywhere on Google. Moreover, it must be able to solve the user’s problem.
Future of Content Marketing Predictions:
Therefore, you must implement some ideas to make your content stand out unique, original, and better than the others.
1. Create Evergreen Content:
Content that does not lose its value even after years is termed as evergreen content. Simply, it has no selling date. Alternatively, temporal content is one that has relevance for a short-time period only.
Both these contents have their own unique place in search engines. Temporal content is one that keeps things buzzy, fresh and with short splashes of interest. However, it is the evergreen content that can generate great compound returns and maintain your content valuable in the place.
Sure, you would be tempted and would try to keep up with this fast-paced life, and therefore, you would like to churn out a temporal content. But depending on such short pieces of interest is time-consuming and will not lead you to long-term sustainability. Even if your short post receives lots of buzzes initially, still, it would not benefit you in the long-run.
On the other hand, evergreen content will deliver consistently proven results and are best to drive the biggest volume of organic traffic with minimum effort. But you have to put in lots of efforts in order to create content that lasts longer.
2. Optimizing Historic Content:
This technique is popularly known as historical optimization and is the technique of refreshing old content, which has not been published anywhere else. It is practiced in order to increase traffic and lead generation.
Historical Optimization helps with:
- Creating content that has low traffic but high conversions.
- Creating content that has low conversions but high traffic.
- Using underperforming content relative to resources and time it took to create.
You must update the content to enhance freshness, comprehensiveness, and accuracy. The common areas to alter are titles, external and internal links, quality of the content, meta-description, call-to-action, and images.
All you have to do is resurface the content and make it brand new. To search for new keywords, you can check the online keyword search tool.
3. Resurface and Distribute:
It is important to distribute as well as resurface the content. With dedicated efforts, you can reach a bigger audience and avoid churning out new stuff consistently. This technique can help you achieve great traffic.
Resurfacing the content includes lots of things like new stories, evergreen content, temporal posts, and other pieces of information that holds renewed relevance. You have to create content that helps the audience find the right content at the correct time.
By assessing the present online scenario, you can identify whether the content is worth resurfacing or not. You must keep a check on the target audience and check posts that are highly viewed on a website.
4. Intelligent SEO Techniques:
At present, many big companies control the content distribution channels, particularly Facebook, YouTube, Google, Alphabet, and more. Hence, in order to gain success from your content, you must pay attention to the following aspects:
- The algorithms of Google are not updated to prefer real experts on a specific topic. There is not much place for students or newbies practicing copywriting.
- Most of the search engines, including technology such as Amazon Alexa have become more sophisticated and complex. Now, they can efficiently understand semantic concepts.
- With increased personalized search, keyword rankings have become unpredictable and difficult to assess.
- Google now prefers to display featured snippets on the search engine results page.
- Facebook updates the News Feed content to get organic search with the intent to navigate users to various websites.
All such changes confirm a shift in the classic SEO functionality. Hence, to make sure you avail this advantage, you must create educational and engaging content that ranks high in search results as well as entice readers from the SERP.
5. Create Content Around a Specific Topic:
To present yourself as a ‘real expert,’ you must create consistent and accurate content around a specific topic.
The clusters of the topic are considered as the future of content and SEO strategy, but it is time to strike more. Clusters of topic mean creating a group of interlinked pages crafted around a single page.
The cluster pages and main page must link back to each other by using the same hyperlinked keyword. When any one of such pages performs well, the overall topic earns a boost in the ranking resulting in more visitors, positive conversions and traffic.
Also, this improves the search ranking of the content on your website. Eventually, this results in you owning numerous SERP positions for a specific keyword.
Incorporating topic clusters clarify the architecture and organization of a website. Also, it creates a more deliberate approach to content posting.
6. Featured Snippets:
If you are still not aware, then Featured Snippets are search results with the highest rankings and those featured in the box at the bottom of Google ads. In simple terms, featured snippets are an answer to questions of the users.
Featured snippets can result in more exposure. As confirmed by Ahrefs report, 99.58% of pages featured in Google ads rank already in the top 10. And if you are already earning high ranking, your chances are better.
There are ample numbers of ways of getting your content featured. Some of these practices are on-page SEO, keyword research, structure, Twitter monitoring, imagery, and formatting.
Also, you must try answering as many same questions as possible. Consider the relevant snippets already existing and owned by other companies to gain a mention. Additionally, ‘People also ask’ is another handy tool that lets you gain insights into what is being linked by Google together. You can explore this in order to identify the hidden content opportunities and use them in the future.
7. Consider Facebook:
Facebook has combined PPC with suggested algorithms and ultimately has altered the online advertising value-generating process upside down. The new algorithm of Facebook depends on three prime interactions –
- Sharing
- Commenting
- Liking
But it is essential that you receive such actions as per genuine interest and not only on the basis of consumption. This algorithm places great emphasis on content, which has been shared both publicly and privately.
The referral and reach traffic for most brands will decrease over time. Hence, it is worth to re-evaluate the resources and investment dedicated to Facebook. However, the content must be authentic, emotionally driven, and logical.
8. Video Marketing:
As per the experts, video is one of the rapidly growing and highly in-demand platforms for content marketing. With increasing automation in the world, video emerges as an important channel for communication, which cannot be faked.
The video claims to get more than 80% of online traffic. More than 90% of clients report that videos related to products help them make a viable buying decision.
Video marketing is highly powerful as it is auditory and visual, and makes it convenient for users to remember as compared to textual content.
9. Conversational Marketing:
This kind of marketing implies having a one-to-one conversation with lead or customer. Most of consumers intend to use messaging to interact with businesses. Intercom and Drift are platforms that make it possible to scale such conversations.
This technique has altered the way of distributing content and making it possible for the customers to receive the right content at the correct time.
10. Emerging Technology:
It is predicted that emerging technology will go mainstream in the coming years. The widespread availability of the content will generate opportunities to optimize content.
As per the experts, VR and AR will generate billion of revenue by 2020, indicating that the creation of visual content will become must-have. While VR still showcases unexplored territory, a rise in it can serve as a great reminder to continue experimenting with content such as imagery, apps, videos, and interactive graphics.
It is essential to transform content marketing by depending on higher-quality content based on extensive research and futuristic technologies.