Content marketing is a sly, swift beast – challenging to dominate, and without guidance, it can easily lead its pursuers on a wild goose chase. Businesses don’t usually mean to use outdated modalities in their digital marketing strategy, but without a proactive schedule of audits and additions, the rut can and will happen.
If you’re not moving forward with your content outreach, you’re moving backwards, and wasting a lot of effort that could be much better spent. You’ve likely already read a great deal about what you should do, but here are three content creation ideas you need to take *out* of your toolbox:
Old School Strategy 1: Copy and Paste
It’s tempting to use manufacturer descriptions, especially in e-commerce upload scenarios with hundreds of SKUs. Be aware though, that whatever this move will save you in time and effort, it will ultimately cost you on search engine results pages.
Search engines like Google want to see fresh, new content to help inform searchers, not the same old information found on dozens of your competitors’ sites.
Likewise within your own marketing campaigns – even if you’re linking to a product page, make sure your anchor text and other surrounding content is unique, even if it eventually leads to a static page.
New School Tool: New content, every time.
Old School Strategy 2: Any Content is Good Content
A blog post is a blog post, right? Not necessarily. With each new update, As you may have heard in your last content marketing conference, Google is attempting to move closer to presenting nothing but fresh, relevant content for every query.
Rather than simply recognizing a block of text as a blog post or landing page, bots are actually parsing the content and matching up keywords to ensure it makes sense.
This sophisticated algorithm is the reason that “keyword stuffing” – using a popular keyword an excessive amount times within a piece of content – no longer works as a technique in a modern digital marketing strategy.
New School Tool: Carefully-crafted content with a unique central theme.
Old School Strategy 3: Scattershot Keyword Combos
Much as the emphasis on solid content has shifted to quality from quantity, the keywords chosen for each blog post, social media update or landing page must be organized around a cohesive set of keywords.
Using outlandish or even grammatically incorrect keyword combinations won’t pack the punch it used to, and hyper-localized content is receiving a lot more attention.
Your keyword choices should relate to one another within the same piece of content, and any outbound links should connect to sources that logically agree with the base content.
New School Tool: Select one or two related keywords or key phrases for each piece of content, not dozens.
With a few small adjustments, your digital marketing strategy can earn and hold a place in the fast-moving marketing arena. Online marketing is challenging, but not impossible, when you keep your content new, fresh and cohesive – regardless of where it’s being placed.
Want to know more hot marketing tips for revolutionizing your digital strategies? Content Marketing Conference is the place for modern marketing pros to learn their trade and network – don’t miss it in Las Vegas, May 17 – 19th, 2016!