The old adage “content is king” has been passed around the online marketing world for years now and for good reason. Creating relevant, informative, and engaging content is, hands down, the best way to achieve results in this digital marketing world.
Over the past five years, Google’s search algorithm has moved more toward rewarding sites for relevant, well-written content. For Google, it’s all about providing value to users (i.e. searchers). When someone searches for home care, Google wants its search results to list websites that contain relevant information on the subject of home care, and not a site that sells bogus products for seniors, or is trying to target seniors by stuffing the phrase “home care” into their pages. Today’s websites must produce terrific content that is of value to their target audiences or risk penalties from Google. Those penalties are aimed at thwarting black hat search engine optimization (SEO) tactics like keyword stuffing and shady link building techniques.
If Content is King, Your Blog is the Castle
Your website contains mostly static content, meaning that other than some tweaks for SEO improvement, the majority of the content on your website remains unchanged, and that’s fine. A website isn’t meant to change its look or its information on a daily or weekly basis. A blog, however, provides a space within the website where companies can update content on a regular basis without drastically altering their website each time.
Think of your blog as the castle for “king content.” It’s where your most up-to-date and informative content resides and it’s a vital tool in your SEO strategy. By blogging on a regular basis, companies also:
- Become a trusted source of information for potential clients
- Increase their brand’s reach
- Strengthen the connection that potential clients have with the brand
- Produce shareable material (that might just go viral)
Just having a blog, however, isn’t quite enough. A great blog takes some planning.
Strategize, Optimize, & Socialize
Every good ruler needs a strategy to stay on top! To truly rule your content kingdom, it is important to create a strategy for your blog and optimize it for maximum SEO potential. While a blog is a great content creation tool, you shouldn’t post just any old piece of information there. First off, agencies need to think about who their target audience is for the blog – elderly individuals, adult children of aging parents, referral sources, etc. – and what they want their blog to actually accomplish – inform, drive people to their contact form, gauge interest in a certain topic, etc.
Once you have a strategy in place, it is helpful to create a blog calendar. A blog calendar is a spreadsheet of your upcoming blog post titles, the category you have chosen for each post and the SEO keywords you will use within the post. This can help you create monthly themes with your blog, cover topics that you think will be of value to your readers, and optimize each post for SEO. For optimal reach, each blog post should also be shared across all your social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+. Include social share buttons at the bottom of each post to make it easy for others to share your content as well.
As Google continues to tweak and improve its algorithm, one thing seems certain – content will remain king. If you want to reign supreme in the content realm, contact the blog and social media experts at corecubed! We can craft a targeted strategy as well as optimized posts that will increase your rankings in search engines and SEO and establish your agency as an industry king!