10 Simple Tips for Better Content Marketing

Everyone tells you that if you want to have more visitors and a more successful business, you need to focus on your website, which really means improving your content marketing. Many people simply nod and start thinking about keywords and articles they can write.

However, there are more things you need to do to ensure you are creating the best content possible. It is not too difficult, though. The following tips should help to keep you on the right path when it comes to improving your content marketing.

Identify Your Target Audience

You know your audience better than anyone else does. Who are you trying to reach with the content that you are creating and the items or services you might be selling? What is the ideal customer? What types of problems do they have? The more you know about this demographic and ideal target audience, the easier it will be to focus on creating the right type of content for them.

Choose the Right Keywords

While keywords are certainly not the only element of good content marketing, they are still important. Once you know your audience and the type of content that they might want to read, it becomes easier to choose keywords. The keywords that you choose should cover all the aspects of your products or services.

Knowing the right keywords to use is only half the battle, though. You also need to make sure that you are using them properly. They need to be distributed naturally in the content. Overusing keywords and stuffing them into the content not only creates text that is difficult to read by humans, but the search engines will penalize sites that do this.

Good Content

Everyone says you need “good content”, but what does that really mean? It simply means that you need to have content that your target audience will find useful or entertaining. The content needs to be compelling enough that they want to come back to your site. It should help your visitors to see you as an expert or someone who is highly entertaining.

One of the ways that you can do this is to write about topics in your field from a different angle. You can create lists, do reviews, and add a bit of personality to each of the posts. This helps to set you apart from the competition.

Proof the Content

It is also important that you take the time to proof the content before you hit publish and send it out to the world. No matter how careful you might be, it is easy to miss some spelling or grammatical errors here and there. It happens to the best writers. Once you have gone over the content, you might want to have someone else on the team read it as well, just to make sure it is ready to go live.

Evergreen Content

While you might want to post news items and timely reviews, you should also strive to post evergreen content. This is simply a term used for content that will be as helpful and interesting today as it will be ten years from now. These are long tail pieces of content that can continue to work for you and help you get readers for years.

Not all the content needs to be evergreen, but you should strive for at least 25% of evergreen content. This percentage could be higher depending on the type of niche site you are running, naturally.

Post Consistently

One of the problems that many sites have is starting off strong and then sort of fizzling out. They might post daily for the first couple of weeks, and then find that they do not have as much time as they had wished. This leads to missed posts here and there, and that inconsistency means readers stop coming to the site. It also means your SEO is going to suffer if you are not posting regular, fresh content. Get into the habit of posting. Another tip below – working ahead – will help.

Watch the Competition

To create better content, check out what the competition is doing. This does not mean you should be copying them, though. Look at the sorts of content they are creating to get ideas on how to create your own better content.

Consider Using Different Formats

You can also consider working with some different formats to help increase interest in your content. Most of your content can still be written, but consider spicing things up with some videos or image galleries here and there. You might also want to create some infographics.

Work Ahead

As mentioned, it can be difficult to keep up with regular posting. However, if you work ahead, it can make things substantially easier. You can create full posts that are ready to go and that you schedule in advance. You could also create some rough drafts so that finishing them up is fast and easy. In addition, you should have a list of potential topics that you keep adding to, so you never run out of ideas.

Monitor Your Progress and Adjust

Content marketing is never a “one and done” part of your business. You need to keep track of your content marketing successes and failures, you need to check analytics to see what is and is not working, and you need to be willing to make changes and adjustments to improve your content marketing strategies. This is an ongoing challenge, but it is essential.

These are some of the easiest ways to help you improve your content marketing, and you can start with these tips right now. Get your site’s content up to par and impress your visitors.

You want to have a high-quality website, and that’s where Umbrella can help. Not only will you get a great site, but with Umbrella CMS’s blog extension and the integration of WebTextTool.com, it is easier than ever to market your business.