For over four years now, I’ve been learning hard lessons about what makes good copy, not just in terms of “SEO copy” but for the purposes of content marketing, through blogs, emails, and social media.
There is good copy, and there is bad copy – and just what makes it good or bad is something I’ll try to break down for you here, but there is one thing I need to make clear.
All businesses should, in some form or other, be investing in content marketing campaigns, whether you farm it out to an agency with experienced, grandiloquent writers (ahem) or hire someone in-house.
But before we get there, let me clear up a nagging myth in the world of digital marketing.
SEO Copy and Content Marketing, When Done Right, Actually Are the Same Thing
I’ve heard a million-and-one people make the argument that there is a difference between SEO copy and copy produced solely for the purposes of content marketing, but let me break down those walls.
When properly crafted, good copy will be both optimized for SEO and for content marketing purposes.
The big objection is something like this, “SEO copy doesn’t need to be as informative or engaging, as long as it’s structured properly and contains the right keywords and other optimizations.”
Well, that’s true, up to a point. But the truth is also that flat, repetitive SEO copy, even when properly structured, linked, and keyword-optimized, will probably not rank well.
And if it doesn’t rank well, no one will read it, and it will continue to fall down the SERPs until it is totally bound by the gloom of obscurity.
Which, guess what, means it really isn’t good for SEO, either.
As for content marketing, your goal should be to create interesting, shareable content first, then go back and make the keyword-based and structural optimizations that will make it practical SEO copy.
In that manner, effective copy fills both purposes.
So the next time someone tells you “SEO and content marketing copy are not the same” give them that.
Why Your Business Should Be Investing in Content Marketing Efforts (No “Ifs, Ands, or Buts”)
Now let me talk a little bit about why all online businesses should be investing in, and developing, a content marketing strategy, somehow or other.
In fact, if you have an online business, you can’t afford not to.
- Content marketing will increase your visibility
Even content marketing that is not properly optimized for SEO, if it is optimized for consumption, will increase your visibility.
If it resonates with potential customers, they will bookmark or share it and may even come back, which will increase your visibility.
And, as I have already made clear, all written content marketing copy offers excellent opportunities for search engine optimization too, so really, you’re killing two birds with one stone.
- It will engage and interest your customers
Content creation, whether in the form of written landing pages or recorded as video or audio for social media marketing purposes, if it interests your customers, is a good thing.
It can be used to advertise or promote new products or services, generate awareness of goings-on at your company, inform them of unique uses for your products, or simply give them tips for care or maintenance.
In each case, there is a distinct benefit for your organization, and it supports the sales cycle, too.
- It could potentially improve customer lifetime value
If you successfully produce blogs, videos, or images that your customers read, view, or share, you will improve the odds that they will visit your website again in the future.
You probably don’t need me to tell you that a successful content marketing strategy that brings back customers more than once can result in additional sales.
- It will help deliver an experience that customers won’t be able to easily get elsewhere
Content marketing is an extension of your brand, and it gives your products or services a human element.
In an increasingly digitized, automated, artificial-intelligence-generated world, copy and pictures that appear to have been written or taken by a person make a sharper emotional impact.
That experience is central to a brand, and it is one of the most valuable aspects that any business can cultivate.
- Successful, shareable content marketing will go a long way toward building brand authority, and E-A-T
Whatever you produce that your customers consume, regardless of the format, will improve your credibility. Imagine how much more favorable your brand will be received by customers that have seen it or heard about it before.
This improves not only exposure but also credibility. Blogs that rank and get read, social media posts that are shared and liked, and that sort of thing all have potential to improve your ranking signals.
This, in turn, improves your SEO – so once again, these things are interminably intertwined.
- Content improves leads and generates conversions
When visitors land on your website through your homepage or one of your category pages, or even a product page, that’s good.
Probably they got there through a generic search for a product that you sell.
But if they get there through your blog or one of your social channels, that’s even better. This is because these channels show how or why your products are used, or because you answered a question they had about them.
This means they will see you as an authority figure in your niche, improving your odds of conversion.
This is something I can say with certainty. The purpose of every blog should not be to conclude sales; that actually robs your content stream of credibility and gives your copy a hackneyed, sales-y slant.
But, at the same time, I have written many blogs that have page value, which means readers have come, read, and then made a purchase.
When done right, it works.
Content Marketing Tips: Suggestions for Success
Hopefully, if you’re still reading, you believe that investing in content marketing is worthwhile.
Maybe you want some pointers on how to produce content that is useful because people, you know, use it.
That’s a bit sticky because there is an inherent subjective facet to all of this, but there are a couple of things I’ve learned while writing for different clients in more than 20 different industries.
These pointers are more or less applicable across the board.
- Know your target audience
If you’re writing solely for content marketing purposes and you don’t know your audience, it’s going to flop. Period.
You know, as Sun Tzu said in The Art of War,
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
It’s true. You need to know what interests your users. What doesn’t interest your users. You need to know what gets them going, but more importantly (and sadly) you need to know what turns them off.
You are your brand. No one should be able to talk your talk like you can, but if you’ve done a bit of content marketing in the past and it hasn’t worked, it might be because you are not as in tune with your clientele as you ought to be.
Take some time to gauge customer interest, and what performs well and does not, and then proceed accordingly.
- Deliver the right format (not all good content is written copy)
As much as I hate to admit it, sometimes content marketing is not delivered best in written format.
There are many different types of content marketing and many formats as well, such as image, video, and audio, that are simply better for some consumers.
This really goes back to understanding your audience. If you’re writing a literary analysis or delivering a dissertation on a piece of art writing is almost certainly a way to go.
But if you are trying to educate your audience about how to maintain your products, trying to deliver a tutorial, or heavily rely on imagery to get the point across or make a sale, then video or image-based (like an Instagram post) may be much more beneficial.
- Give them something they won’t be able to find anywhere else
Content marketing is not just a popularity contest. Despite what you may have been told (or believe) it is not about going viral.
Virality is a thing that cannot be replicated easily if it can be replicated at all. Therefore, you should aim for consistency, not hope to “make it big.”
What I mean by this is that you should write about topics that are truly unique and not just cherry-picked from other blogs on the web with the intention of creating a viral post. That is exhausting and (mostly) pointless.
If you’re in eCommerce, as most of our clients are, write about the unique advantages of your products that you would only know if you used them. Write about common problems customers have had in the past and how to solve them. Write or post about FAQs or little-known facts.
All of these things – which can’t be gotten elsewhere – have inherent value.
Not to mention that viewers will have to come to you to get them.
- Cultivate a voice
I don’t have specific pointers for this because no two brands are exactly alike (differentiation is the point of a brand, after all) but it is very important to write in a fashion that is not like any other out there.
I am guilty of monotony and flat writing myself, sometimes, and more often than I’d care to admit. But personality is the spice of life (or writing, if you will) and it keeps people interested.
Think about how your brand mystique would write, if it were a sentient being, and bring that to life through your own writing.
Or hire a qualified agency that offers content marketing as a service. That’s a solution, too.
- Look at what your competitors are doing well, and do it better
I am well aware that this flies fully in the face of my previous point to produce content that is unique and can’t be found anywhere else, but this observation stands nonetheless.
For some industries, coming up with really new material is not always viable, given staff resources or competition.
What you can do, however, is look at what your competitors are doing and learn from that.
I’m not telling you to steal their ideas. I’m telling you to build on them. Take a look at two or three competitors and see what each is writing or posting about, then combine them all.
This strategy works best when you use the ideas of your competitors and add some of your own.
- Promote it
When you post, you can wait for organic traffic to your blog to begin, but unless your website has really high domain authority and there’s little competition for that keyword, that could take anywhere from 3 months to 3 years.
That’s a long time, even for SEO purposes. If it’s content for the sake of quality and is not keyword-optimized, it might never happen organically.
That doesn’t mean you can’t use it. Post it on your social media accounts, email subscribers to your newsletter, or post a link on your homepage. All of these are viable avenues to improve the visibility of your content marketing.
- Do not use stock imagery
I cannot stress this enough. Stock imagery might technically get the job done, but it’s hurting you in the long run.
Haven’t you ever seen a basic image with a white background that looked sterile and uninteresting? Sure, these might be alright for product listings, but they’re horrendous for everything else.
When you blog or post on social media, don’t use this stuff and don’t use stock imagery. Take your own, follow good artistic principles of photography (lighting, offsetting, negative space), and show your products in action. That will generate much more interest than stock photography ever could.
And here’s the worst part. Even with artistically valuable, relevant stock imagery, and even if your readers can’t tell that it’s stock, Google can. It will be seen as duplicate imagery, and, while it might not incur a penalty, will not be doing any favors.
- Do some GSC snooping
Stumped, at a loss for ideas? I have a very helpful trick for you.
Log into your GSC account, take a look at your current top content pages, and then look at the queries for which that page or post is ranking.
Some of them, you may notice, are keywords and search queries that are either tangentially related to the subject matter of that page, or even not relevant at all.
What does this mean? It means that users are searching for those things, and that, whether you deliver or not, your page is showing up.
It is also a golden opportunity for you to create a blog or video about that query that does directly meet search intent.
No need to thank me.
- Follow past user behavior, and learn from what you did well (and what you didn’t)
I will let you in on a little secret. Not every blog or Instagram post is going to be a slam dunk. Some might not even be average. Some might be downright terrible.
Don’t erase them. Learn from them. Think about why they didn’t do well.
Is it because it wasn’t optimized for SEO? Was it seasonally irrelevant? Was it not in line with what your customers were looking for?
It could be any of these, none of these, or a combination, but you need to take some time to yourself and figure it out.
Those posts that don’t do well are not a waste. They are a learning opportunity.
In content marketing, knowing not what to do is every ounce as important as knowing what to do.
- If you can, try to make it interesting
I know that is highly subjective advice that means different things to different content producers in different industries serving different target markets.
I also know that I set a record for the number of instances of my use of “different” in a single sentence, and broke from most grammatical conventions.
But it is, nonetheless, true.
Still, if you can try to make what you publish interesting to your target market, your content marketing plans will do much better, no matter what.
Try Content Marketing on for Size
I know it’s a lot more difficult than writing basic SEO-optimized copy, but copy that is optimized for SEO and UX will do much better than copy or other content that isn’t.
It’s a short list of pointers, but it’s a start, and getting started is the hardest part.
Ten years ago may have been the best time for your online business to have started a content marketing initiative, but you know what? Today is a close second.