As any marketer will tell you, when it comes to garnering traffic through online searches, visibility is key. Landing at the top of a Google search can net a sizable advantage in terms of click-through traffic to your site, and advocates of search engine optimization (SEO) will swear web-traffic metrics are the key to your survival. But what value do these clicks really carry, in terms of actual revenue?
If your site is loaded with SEO keywords designed to trick Google into delivering visitors, but bereft of any meaningful content, customers will quickly drift away to a competitor’s page, taking their dollars with them. So unless you’re measuring your return-on-investment (ROI) solely in terms of click-traffic, pure SEO marketing is a one trick pony, unlikely to move the needle financially.
To use a brick-and-mortar example, suppose you own a car dealership. When evaluating your overall numbers at the end of each month, which is more important to you: the amount of interested parties that walk onto your lot, or the amount that drive off in a brand new car? The former certainly feeds the latter, but it would be foolish to measure the success of your dealership just by the number of interested leads, and not actual sales.
Not surprisingly, many experts are drifting away from an SEO-centric strategy, and instead extolling the virtues of content marketing. By creating and distributing meaningful content on your site — in the form of articles and blogs relevant to your industry — you attract and acquire an audience interested in your expertise, and hopefully drive them toward profitable action.
It’s also important to note that SEO and content marketing are not mutually exclusive. At its core, SEO is the science of how certain keywords interact with a search engine, and a straightforward SEO strategy dictates that a website should be full of web copy containing those keywords. A content marketing strategy still utilizes the valuable keyword data from SEO research (which appeals to search engines) but features those keywords in high quality content (which appeals to humans).
So while creating meaningful content takes more effort, it generates the kind of engagement that actually leads to revenue. As Jason Amunwa, Director of Products at Filament put it:
“Engagement is a trendy term these days, but it’s also becoming critical to measure. High-quality content is expensive upfront to produce, but once published yields engaged visitors forevermore – and engaged visitors tend to do nice things, like subscribe, signup or buy stuff. If you’re growing your content engagement, you’re growing the number of people doing these nice things!”
If your content is relevant to the interests of your target audience, they’re likely to share it on social media, comment, or subscribe to an email list. These are the kinds of actions that lead to profit, and the ROI — in terms of actual folding money, not clicks —is very measurable.
Tools such as Google Analytics make it easy to track users that click on articles, and further track which of those users share on social media, subscribe, and comment. When those same users buy a product from your site, you can assign a dollar value to each of those engagements. Since writing consistent, engaging content takes skill and effort, many companies use outside contractors to handle writing and posting, and these metrics help measure the value of each posting. Iffel International is one such contractor, and has a strong track record of launching successful campaigns, featuring content that matters to your business and your customer base.
Bottom line: if you’re going to invest in boosting your visibility online, don’t publish content just for SEO’s sake. Take the time to write something constructive and valuable. If you don’t have time, hire someone to help. It will get more eyes on your website, position you as an authority in your field, and show your audience you can be trusted with their business.
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