There’s not a single client that we work on that we’re not continuously working to optimize their content marketing as part of their overall digital marketing strategy. At its core, content provides the breadcrumbs that lead the prospect to do business with you. While engaging content requires a ton of creativity to differentiate itself, it also should be based on concrete data that supports the investment in its creation.
If you’re a longtime follower of my work, you know that I continue to plead with organizations to stop writing endless streams of content that doesn’t resonate and to, instead, develop a content library that incorporates exceptional content across the topics that are important to your customers. This requires that you stop trying to sell and, instead, provide your prospects with an amazing resource for them to be successful. Here are some examples:
- Roofing companies don’t just talk about shingled roofs, they provide their customers with home maintenance tips, energy-saving tips, and how to get maximize the investment in their home.
- Hardware companies don’t just talk about their technical specs, they share how users can use their products in an entire ecosystem to help their users be successful in business, creativity, and life.
- Fitness companies don’t just sell gym memberships, they curate great content for tips on motivation, eating well, supplements, and recovery from workouts.
In each of these examples, the content created provides direct value to the audience. And, in the interim, creates a brand perception or relationship between the reader and the company. If I find your advice useful and see you as trustworthy, I then look forward to doing business with you in the future. Content marketing is what paves the pathways in the customer journey.
The first step, of course, is doing the research on who your users are and what content they’re searching for online. Search engine data provides all the necessary organic search data for you to understand the content that will drive engagement with your brand. A key platform that we utilize for this is Semrush’s content marketing platform.
Semrush Content Marketing Platform
Semrush’s toolset for content marketing enables companies to research, plan, write, and analyze their content in a single platform. Their platform combines competitive research, keyword research, content planning, and content performance all in an easy-to-use platform. Here’s a video overview:
Semrush Content Marketing Platform Features
The platform includes everything you need to research topics, plan your content, optimize the results, and monitor the performance of your content marketing efforts.
- Content Research – find relevant and trending topics with good potential, engaging headlines, and popular questions. You can even do a gap analysis between your site and your competitors.
- Content Calendar – collaborate easily with your team on content creation and distribution. The calendar enables you to manage several marketing campaigns in one place, set tasks, and keep track of deadlines.
- Content Optimization – assess and improve your copy before publishing it. Optimize your content from scratch and tweak your article to improve rankings on search engines. Ensure your content is original, easy to read, and has the appropriate tone of voice.
- Content Promotion – find backlink opportunities to promote your content with relevant and influential sites that would share it.
- Content Audits – identify the most successful types of content and articles to share, and track their performance.
Topic research in Semrush is outstanding… providing every angle that you can utilize to identify the topics that are relevant to your audience:
- Research the top content by headlines for a specific keyword.
- Research the top questions surrounding a specific keyword.
- Research the trending topics surrounding a specific keyword.
- Research the top content on your competitors’ domains.
- View the content in cards, explorer, overview, or in a mindmap.
- Mark the topics that you’re interested in as favorites.
- Prioritize the results by search volume, rank difficulty, or topic efficiency.
- See the top related keywords associated.
The platform includes an amazing SEO Writing Assistant that comes with a WordPress plugin, Google Docs Add-On, or MS Word Add-On. As you write, the article is scored on readability, search optimization, orginality, and tone of voice. It provides additional tips on how you can enhance your article – including external links, additional keyword combinations, and images to include. With the assistant, there’s really no need for you to have a deep understanding of technical SEO… the platform guides you with exactly what you need.
SEO Writing Assistant is an amazing tool for content marketers, helping them do semantic SEO in a way that’s just smarter and easier and more prescriptive than any other tool I know.
Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder of Orbit Media
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Disclosure: Martech Zone is an affiliate for Semrush and I’m using my affiliate links in this article.
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