How Content Helps Your Business and SEO Rankings

Chances are, if you run a business, you’ve encountered at least one source of advice about producing content. Everywhere you turn, everyone has something to say about content, whether it’s a carefully-researched article or a low-effort TikTok. 

Though it has taken on an overused, nearly meaningless buzzword status, there is a reason why marketers seem so fixated on content creation. In today’s online space, content is how you connect and engage your audience. Surveys have found that consumers spend 20% of their time reading some form of content, so creating and publishing eye-catching content can be an extremely cost-effective way of making your business stand out to potential customers and SEO rankings alike. 

Let’s take a look at precisely why content matters and how it can have an impact on your success. 

Lee Odden

Content Marketing in 2023

For a long time, companies relied on paid advertisements to drive new traffic to their landing pages. However, consumers have wised up and grown weary of paid ad campaigns, so using advertising as your sole lead generator or customer retention method has lost its impact. That’s not to say that paid promotions have no place. Creating a harmonious blend of paid and organic advertising is still a powerful way to generate new leads and conversions. 

This is where content comes in. Contrary to popular belief, organic content isn’t just limited to blogs and articles. Images, videos, whitepapers, social media posts, how-to guides, and any other media that you create and publish can be a part of your content strategy. In fact, having a diversified content plan is essential to effectively marketing your long-form writing and other most valuable content in 2023.

Content Marketing Growth Outlook

What High-Quality Content Can Do for You

It has long been said that content is king, and this truth has only grown stronger with time. Recently, Zoominfo found that 91% of B2B marketers and 86% of B2C marketers include content in their overall strategy. Used in tandem with other marketing channels, content can bring out the true power of other common tools like social media and email. 

To further demonstrate how important content is, here are a few ways content helps your business and SEO rankings.

Build Trust

A significant part of successful marketing is building a relationship with your audience. When you create quality content and share it without asking for more than an email address, it can earn a potential customer’s trust. Plus, creating content also helps your readers learn more about your brand. More than 70% of people prefer reading blogs to get a good feel for who a brand is and its values versus an ad.

Improve Lead Quality

The tone and information you present in your writing can set the tone for how a potential lead interacts with your business. The more readers align with and enjoy your content, the more willing they are to experience more. 

This is especially true if you embed call-to-action (CTA) in your blog, encouraging them to take another action — such as signing up for an email list or downloading your branded app. This enters them into your sales pipeline, allowing your sales team the opportunity to guide them throughout their customer journey to conversion. 

Reduce Your Bounce Rate

A huge part of what makes a website attractive to both readers and algorithms is how much time visitors are willing to spend actually interacting with the content you put in front of them. If your writing and other content pieces are not interesting or engaging, people will click away and find another resource as quickly as they found you. 

Cultivate Loyal Fans

Leveraging the relationships you already have is just as important as generating new opportunities. Aside from being a more efficient way of garnering sales, if you do it right, you can turn your customers into evangelists for your brand. 

Providing an exceptional customer experience — coupled with having relevant and captivating content — can produce a die-hard brand advocate. As much as you can create an impression on people who visit your site, those people can have an exponentially greater impact when they share information about your brand with their friends and family. 

Strengthen Your Sales Funnel

When creating a sales funnel, you want to have an even balance of automated nurturing campaigns, testimonials or case studies, and a focused landing page. The goal is not to overwhelm your leads and existing customers as they move through their customer journey. If you notice you have gaps in your funnel, it is an excellent thing to fill them with content.

You can use this as an opportunity to reengage your leads and attract new customers as you approach common drop-off points. Remind them why they should choose you over a competitor. For instance, spike your blog posts with helpful infographics or add links to white papers or free informational courses. You can even send subscribers a cheat sheet filled with statistics and other helpful tips that provide solutions to their pain points. 

High-Quality Content Creation Checklist

Why Content Is Essential to SEO in 2023

Did you know that 93% of internet experiences begin with a search engine? Not only that, the overwhelming majority of web surfers don’t journey past the second page of results. This means that SEO rankings are absolutely key if you want anyone to see your content. 

Today, both content and SEO are equally important for online marketing success. Content marketing focuses primarily on how a company uses writing and other assets to entice a visitor or customer into profitable action. SEO, on the other hand, focuses on increasing the quality of traffic that comes to a company’s site and attracting as many visitors as possible. 

While these may seem like two separate areas, modern SEO efforts rely more heavily on content than ever before. 

In 2023, search engines have moved beyond simply evaluating your site by backlink authority and have placed an increased emphasis on the quality and reading experience of what you publish. This is especially true with Google’s latest algorithm update, targeting low-effort and AI-generated content. This means that the higher quality and more long-form your content is, the higher your SEO ranking potential will be. 

While updates from this year are significant, high-quality writing has held SEO value for a long time. In fact, Google added a section on expertise, authority, and trustworthiness to their search quality guidelines more than five years ago.  

Good Blog Content Builds Trust

Optimizing Your Content for SEO Rankings

Of course, effective SEO does require more than simply writing interesting posts and blogs. SEO-informed content marketers weave important keywords and phrases into their content to ensure that search engines take notice. Researching and including keywords in your writing without compromising readability is a cornerstone of today’s SEO rankings, but doing so takes knowledge and effort. 

Experience Optimization

The way we consume content is constantly evolving. These days, many consumers read and digest content on their mobile devices. And if they arrive at your site and it takes too long to load or doesn’t load properly, it can result in high bounce rates.

According to Impact, 8 to 10 customers would stop engaging with content that doesn’t display well on their devices. A negative customer experience can significantly impact your SEO ranking and, by association, the organic traffic that trickles in. Optimizing your website helps your business and SEO rankings, bolstering your conversion rate.

Freshen Up Your Published Content

Once you’ve created your content and uploaded it online, it’s easy to forget that it’s there. Leaving it to undergo content decay is a quick way to lose your hard-fought search engine rankings. Contrary to what you may assume, though, your catalog of past content can still be a major driver of traffic to your site. 

Refreshing your older content is an excellent way to boost your SEO rankings, as doing so shows Google your content is up to date. When you make tweaks like rewriting past blogs to include new information and updating the publication date, you can sometimes double the traffic that a particular page has been able to achieve so far. 

Making Content Work for You

When done correctly, pairing your content and SEO efforts can have a significant impact on your business. They can cultivate new and more targeted leads, help you retain your existing customers, and boost your presence in organic search visibility. 

If you’re looking for content that makes a splash with customers and search engines alike, look no further than Joseph Studios. At Joseph Studios, we pair our proprietary Deep Insight® methodology with expert market research, intelligence and analysis, customer profiling, writing, and design to create and implement a strategy to create and capitalize on the relationships your business needs to thrive.

Our team of experts comes from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds, collaborating to bring a unique set of benefits to your business. Want to learn more about how informed, multi-disciplinary organic marketing can transform your company? Schedule a free consultation call with our expert marketers today!