In Band Marketer’s opinion, Content Marketing is the only marketing that is pure, unadulterated, and has any impact. My digital marketing profession began back in the early 2000s. Believe it or not, there was no Facebook, MySpace was very annoying, Orkut barely saw the light of day, and Google was still “competing” with Microsoft, & Yahoo! for Search Market Share.
Things were so ridiculous at that time, Google AdWords was gaining momentum, Bing had no PPC platform to speak off, and Yahoo! the very company that first started the Pay Per Click model on a commercial scale was completely lost with a far more inferior product compared to Google AdWords.
Why are we going down memory lane?
Back then, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) was as good as your keyword stuffing skills, pay per click was as good as your budget and your Cost Per Click (CPC) bids, Social Media was alien, & laws were being made against Email Marketing and being classified as Spam without permission.
The common denominator that has lasted over the last decade and has actually become the deciding factor for anyone to buy anything from you, is Content! Even back then, content was the gap between connecting a window shopping into a lead, and a lead into a buyer. Albeit the content was in your face sales pitch with discounts, buy now, click her to order and so on… it was content nonetheless.
Fast forward a decade later and we are now have two Internets. One being the world of Google (and other search engines) and the other world being that of Facebook (and other social media platforms). The common denominator remains the same i.e. Content! Your target audience will search on Google when they are researching or when they are directly ready to buy, where as your target audience will engage with your content on Facebook irrespective of where they are in the buying cycle.
Ultimately you are trying to capture their attention either with limited title/headline space on Google Results, or slightly more sophisticated presentation of the same content on social media platforms. We would like to point out, when I say content, I am being form neutral i.e. article/blog post, video, podcast, book, eBook etc. etc.
Further more, Google has caught on every time sneaky marketers and webmaster have tried to beat their algorithm, and now it seems there is no beating them at all! Google does not take content that isn’t good quality (according to their algorithms) and Facebook audiences seeing your content will be merciless with their reviews if it is bad. Put the two together, and search engines take into account your social score as well. The more your content is reviewed, liked, shared, engaged with, the more search engines and social platforms will love it.
We think there are more than enough technical blogs out there talking about the nitty gritty crawl rates, indexing, and how to increase and improve that, but this blog is not about that!
Here is how to make Google Love Your Content:
# Reputation
Manage your reputation online, i.e. social media sites and review sites. Even if your reputation is bad, Google will love you and so will other search engines. I am not saying manage and maintain a bad reputation, that is just bad Online PR.
# Relationship
Your target audience and your customers should be your primary focus. Service them well and they’ll feed into your reputation always!
# Nurture Your Relationships
Engage with your audience and your customers online! Now, there is the kicker, you have to use Google+ as well. Even though it is nowhere close to being popular as Facebook, it is owned by Google and the content from your business pages on Google+ will always help your website.
# Numbers
The amount of content you publish, determines the amount of brand engagement, and therefore helps build your reputation, relationship with an opportunity to nurture your relationships with your audience and customers.
