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3 tips for content marketing

01/30/202311/02/2021 by scmarketing

Content forms part of your inbound marketing strategy and plays a key role in helping your business be seen online.

Whether it’s a blog, social media post, email marketing or Google Adwords campaign, here we’ve compiled our tips for creating great content marketing.

Know your target audience

We always talk about the importance of knowing your target audience before starting any inbound marketing campaign. The only way you can create quality content is understanding who you are actually writing for.

It’s a good idea to take a step back and really take stock to understand the customer you want to attract. Knowing this means you can tailor content marketing to their needs and general interests.

Research your competitors and see how they are positioning their content to help you in your process. Then have a think about the person themselves and ask yourself some questions about their characteristics:

Age
Gender
Location
Lifestyle

We recommend creating an online persona of your target audience so that you can refer back to this when creating content in the future.

Take a look at our blog on creating an online persona to help.

Regular and relevant content

Your content should be shared regularly and be relevant to your target audience. This will help with search engine optimisation (SEO).

Part of creating relevant content is ensuring you have keywords and phrases that will help your website rise in search rankings.

Be insightful and make sure content is unique so that you can grab attention.

Always have a call to action

At the end of a social media post or email always include a call to action to encourage click throughs to your website.

A call to action may be about encouraging a reader to ‘call’, ‘book a consultation’, ‘download an ebook’ or ‘use a discount code’. This all helps with ongoing engagement and nurturing customers and prospects.

Digital marketing Croydon

If you need a hand with creating content for your marketing get in touch with the Smart Cow Marketing team, a digital marketing agency in Croydon.

Content – the foundation of search

08/19/202209/14/2021 by scmarketing

Just like a bricks and mortar shop you need to build a website on good foundations. There are numerous frameworks that allow website owners to maintain and add content. These are called Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress. The beauty of a CMS website is that it allows the user to easily update content especially blogs.

Hubspot says that: “Text will always be the foundation of search so making sure the text around your website’s assets is descriptive will help them rank well in search.”

In a nutshell, this means that the content you add to your website is a key element in generating leads via search engines. This is because if you have relevant content in relation to what someone types into search to find you’re making the search engines job in finding your business and returning you in the results page a lot easier. With this in mind, here’s some tips to consider to help improve the content on your website for search engine optimisation (SEO).

Great content

To get your message across to your target audience, and Google, keep content relevant and to the point. This is essential to help you be found in search engine results pages and it helps to position you as a thought leader in your field of expertise.

Potential clients and search engines need to see you as an expert. This is where a blog helps as you can add fresh content regularly. Your blog should have tips and advice that answer your target audience’s pain points and issues.

If you are writing the blog posts yourself and struggle to think of new content every week it’s worth noting that 51% of companies say that updating their old content has proven a great tactic for creating blogs (Source: SEMrush, 2019 via Hubspot).

There are more tips about writing engaging content in our recent blog which covers creating offers, developing case studies and topics of interest.

Keywords

When you embark on writing a blog or creating a new website it’s worth thinking about what you want to be found for in search. This will help define what is on your list of keywords or phrases to include in your content moving forward.

Working with a digital marketing agency or using a tool such as Semrush can help you identify the volume of searches associated with a particular keyword as well as its difficulty to get ranked for. This can help you hone the list of keywords further so that you have a good balance of words and phrases.

Understanding that 49% of users say they use Google to discover or find a new item or product, being found in search engine results pages should be a key part of your SEO strategy. (Source: Think with Google, 2019 via Hubspot )

A picture tells a great story

Don’t just think of content as the written word. Sometimes less on a webpage is more and breaking a page up with relevant images will help make the page easier to read, builds your brand and helps visitors get a feel for who you are.

Make sure your images are optimised for use on websites. You may need to resize them before you upload as large images can impact site speed. The first five seconds of page-load time is crucial as it can impact on conversion rates. Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time (Source: Portent, 2019). Also remember to complete your image alt tag on the backend. This is good for SEO.

Can website visitors easily move from webpage to webpage?

Make sure your website menu is easy to read and navigate. Ideally a webpage should be no more than 2 clicks – preferably 1 click – from the homepage.

Create bold and clear call to actions with directional text so visitors know what to do. Make it easy for them. Add a call to action near the top of a blog as well as the end to help with engagement. Phrases to encourage action include:

Download our ebook
Book a meeting
Contact us for more information, email us on…
Get involved by registering at….
If you want to attend the networking session, contact…
Free website review

Internal links throughout content especially in blogs also helps guide visitors back to services and products where you mention them on the site.

Digital marketing Croydon

We are a Croydon based digital marketing agency offering SEO services including blog writing, keyword research, local SEO, Google Ad campaigns to help improve your online presence and visibility online as your SEO experts.

Is your marketing targeting your audience?

08/19/202208/13/2021 by scmarketing

Incorporating a tailored Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign into your digital marketing strategy will help your business be seen online.

SEO is a number of processes that help your website be found via search engines. This is when you appear in the Search Engine Results pages and your aim is to be in the first page.

Most online searches start with a few words relevant to what your prospect is looking for.

As part of your SEO strategy, have a think about who books your services and buys your products. If you don’t already know who your target audience is then you need to create a persona. This is a fictitious character based around the requirements of your target audience.

Once you understand the challenges and needs of your target audience then conduct an audit of your website with your persona in mind. You’ll soon see whether you need to change any content or add specific calls to action, a new contact form or a few new images that will appeal to your audience.

You don’t necessarily need a brand refresh it’s all about the initial details for landing pages such as your homepage or pages that are linked to your Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign.

However, if you think a new web design could be in order then drop us a line to discuss as we can also provide a website audit for you.

Web design Croydon

We can analyse your website’s performance and develop a plan to boost your website’s potential with a tailored SEO campaign. We can also mix and match with other digital marketing such as social media, PPC, and email marketing.

We are a marketing agency based in Croydon, South London and work with small businesses, as well as those in accountancy and the construction sector.

Send us an email at Saymoo@smart-cow.com or give us a call on 020 3137 1826.

Tips for writing engaging blogs

08/19/202208/03/2021 by scmarketing

You need to make an impression when someone reaches your website as the goal is to keep a visitor on your site exploring your products and services.

So, here’s a few tips to help with writing content that will resonate and engage with your target audience and help with search engine optimisation (SEO).

Topics of interest

Relevant content for your target audience is important for any marketing activity especially your blogs. Make sure that the topics you choose to write about are of interest to your audience. The aim is to add value to help people solve a very specific problem with tips and advice.

Write blogs that answer their questions. The goal is to optimise that post to appear in related searches by including keywords.

Offer industry insight rather than being product focussed so that you are positioned as a thought leader in your field.

It’s not just your clients and prospects that will benefit from this insight, search engines love unique, fresh and relevant content.

But remember to keep content clear and to the point.

Case studies

Cover topics which highlight your expertise. A case study is a great way to illustrate this with quotes direct from your client to add detail to how you solved their challenges.

You can always interview your case study via Zoom and then this could then be edited (with their permission of course) to create a video led case study. Video is another great way to bring your blog to life.

Create an offer to download

Offering a free template to download or an ebook provides an attractive offer. Plus, it enables you to add a form so you can capture email addresses of those interested in your offers.

Regular SEO

Without regular, new and relevant content your website is less engaging. Your target audience is less likely to stay on your website or revisit in the future.

Make sure that you complete a few actions on the backend when you start to upload blogs such as add a meta description, image alt tag and H1 headings for starters. Get into that routine and you’re really helping with ongoing search engine optimisation. Read more about SEO and why you should consider it here.

Free website review

Why not take advantage of our FREE website review to get it well and truly optimised. Then you can simply concentrate on adding regular blogs to your website to keep it engaging and help to generate leads.

SEO agency Croydon

If you would like to discuss SEO services incorporating content marketing as part of a wider long term digital marketing strategy for your business then book a consultation with us.

We’re a digital marketing agency in Croydon, get in touch and let us help you improve your online presence with a review of your web design and current SEO strategies including keyword research.