The Next 7 Things You Should Do To Create A Successful Content Strategy

When it comes to running a website by advertising a product or service, it is important to have a content strategy, in order to keep the website ranked in the search engines. Often, we come across websites whose advertising of the products and services does not match with the content. The problem arises here! For this, one needs to know the importance of a content strategy and the ways to create a successful strategy, so that the website is flooded with views and visits.

Before jumping on to the 7 things you should do to create a successful content strategy, let us ensure that we are on the same page!

What is Content Strategy?

Content strategy or content marketing strategy is a pre-planned approach on the communication with the audience without forcing them to buy our product or avail our services. Building a content strategy is done by creating valuable, trustworthy and communicative contents, which will in turn, convert the viewers on the website to potential customers.

What are the content strategy elements?

Some important elements of content strategy for the web, which one needs to keep in mind while marketing their content are:

• Brand guidelines- you should be clear while communicating about your brand to the potential customers.

• Marketing objectives- while making the content strategy, you should be clear about the marketing objectives that you want follow. Along with that, you should also chalk out their content strategy goals.

• Target audience- marketing anything becomes easy when you are clear about the audience you are targeting. All the necessary information should be noted down.

• Content strategy editorial calendar– content editorial calendar is nothing but contents that are segmented under different categories for the smooth marketing of the same. Different articles are segmented based on their topics, campaign, media channel, etc.

• Market research- market research about the products or services needs to be done thoroughly before introducing something new to the customers. This will help in providing an outline of the success of the product or service.

What is agile content strategy?

If you are in the field of content marketing strategy, then you are already familiar with the term ‘agile content strategy’. If it is a new thing for you, then here it is: agile content strategy is a method of producing and marketing valuable content using data and audience insights. From the concept building to building a content strategy, everything is sighted and the focus is on the response of the audience to the new business.

7 things to do to create a successful content strategy:

Apart from keeping in mind the elements of content strategy and knowing how to market it, here is a list of 7 things that you need to do for a successful content strategy:

1. Know what you want at the end

Knowing about your end game means knowing what you want at the end. The question “what do I want to achieve in the end?” is the answer to this! Before chalking out your plans for the content strategy, jot down your goals that you want to achieve, so that you can work accordingly on them. Use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound) goals establish strong ones.

2. Know your KPIs and set them up

In order to attain and accomplish your goals, you need to measure them. KPIs are Key Performance Indicators. Different businesses have different goals and hence, different KPIs. There may be a similarity between them but they are never the same! Each content strategy marketing needs specific campaign according to the budget, industry, type of business and their goals.

3. Target your audience and know them

Before introducing every product and service in the market, one needs to know about their target audience. The market research plays an important role in finding out the target audience. In order to know what your audience wants, you have to know who they are! You need to understand their needs and wants and accordingly tailor your content strategy, so that the target audience can turn into your potential customers.

4. Figure out keywords for your content

The best content strategy is to have a keyword analysis based on your type of content. Merely writing a content will not help in marketing and building a content strategy. You need to have a keyword research and pick up words that fit the best in your contents. This is done to reach out to the correct target audience easily and it will help you to rank in the search engines or be better than your competitors.

5. Have a look at your competitors and analyse them

Once you have got your keywords and content strategy, it is the time to look into the websites of your competitors. This will help you in having an edge over the competitors in terms of having better content. More than looking into what they are doing, you need to concentrate on the areas that they are missing out! This is your chance to fill in the gap and plug in your content strategy to have a better reach and insight than your competitors.

6. Developing an editorial calendar

Developing a content strategy editorial calendar will help you in keeping track when what contents are required and when they are been published. It ensures that there is no major loopholes in your content publishing strategy and avoids any skips. This is increase your consistency and in addition to that, you will have a record of the things that are been posted.

7. Measure and improve constantly

Once everything is collected and things start to work, you will have to measure your progress in comparison with the competitors and improve constantly. Your success depends on the way your KPIs work and their adjustment in the competitive world. This step is important in order to connect with your audience.

Why building a content strategy is important:

Now that we know what are the key elements of content strategy and the 7 things to do in order to be successful, there is a missing element here! The importance of content strategy remains unknown and hence, here are some reasons why content marketing strategy is important for any business to survive in this business world:

• The prime reason is it helps to figure out what type of content is needed for you to target audience to have an impact on your business or to turn the target audience into potential customers.
• Once you know your target audience, you will take the help of every possible advertising technique to reach out to them and have an impact. This will increase your brand awareness.
• Once the brand awareness increases, the target audience will be educated in regard of your product or service.
• Putting content just for the sake of publishing will be a grave mistake on part of the business. Content strategy will help in channelizing the type of content needed for your brand and communicating it with the right audience.

In Conclusion:

Having a well-planned content strategy will not only help in building the business, it will also help in retaining the customers. As much as it is important to convert the viewers into potential customers, it is important to retain the customers as well! Building a content strategy perfectly will flourish the business and spread its brand awareness to the target audience. Keeping in mind all the 7 key points and implementing them while marketing the content strategy, your business is sure to see success within a very short time!

Top 10 SEO Trends in 2021 You Need to Know

In this modern world of Internet, it does not matter if you are a blogger or marketer or you own a website of any sort. All that matters is how you present your website following all the trends that is on-going! It is easier to attract consumers to your online website if you use proper SEO guidelines. With the ever so dynamic world, you need to adapt to the new changes as well! Therefore, this article is going to provide you a journal of the top 10 SEO trends in 2021 that you definitely need to know about! Keep reading to make your website rank!

What are the SEO trends in 2021?

We often here people saying about writing SEO friendly content or SEO content with proper keyword research and keyword analysis, so what does this actually mean? Is it all that you need to keep in mind while building a website? Certainly not! These are among the most important ones, but surely not the only ones. Hence, to grab some of the trends, here are the top 10 for you:

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI, introduced a few years back, has gained much importance in the world of Internet over the recent years. It is rapidly changing on how people interact with online content. If you are really into ranking your website in the Google, one thing that you must be well versed is with the Google Algorithm, RankBrain.

You must be wondering how can your website work on SEO optimization and rank for RankBrain? The factors for ranking in Google is a large number, but among them, click-through rate and the rate of time spent on your page are the major ones. For that again, you need to engross and engage the users with well-researched contents using LSI keywords and keyword research. With the help of an on-page SEO checker, you can keep a track of your readability points, backlinks and other important details.

2. Voice Search

As we all know, voice search has come a long way! Whether it is Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, everything that you want to know is just a voice away! With the new developments in technology, things got better and a lot easier!

If you want to optimize your voice search, you have to be careful with your keywords in the SEO content. LSI keywords are the best and most suited for voice search, as it tends to pick up lines from your everyday conversations and associate it with the thing that you are maybe looking for. The one thing that you need to keep in mind is voice searches tend to work better and in an appropriate manner if you are using long keywords or long phrases for your searches. You get the accurate thing that you are looking for!

3. Long formatted articles

In case, you are new in this genre and you do not know; here is a piece of information for you: long formatted SEO friendly content tends to receive more traffic, shares and backlinks. If you are eager to make your website rank in Google, all you need to do is focus on having a well-organized and well-structured long articles with more use of LSI keywords after having a thorough keyword analysis. Having long phrases in your content will in turn, help you with voice searches.

The main thing with long formatted articles is that you need to know how to structure it. The very first thing would be to divide your article into headings and subheadings, so that it becomes easier for the readers to read. An introductory and conclusive paragraph is a-must, since they are the major attraction for your long article! The content should be easy to read, user friendly with a vocabulary that is neither too difficult nor too easy-going. A perfect article will have a blend of everything in correct proportions!

4. SEO strategy

An effective SEO strategy is the basic thing needed for your website building. You need to strategize your content in such a way that it reaches the level of organic search. Organic search are the results that come up without the influence of paid advertisement. They are been ranked by relevance and by following the algorithm. In order to rank your content, you need to make it score higher in SEO friendliness and off page SEO.

5. Image optimization

No matter how many words you are incorporating in your content, one thing is for sure: you need to have related images in your article. Images and visual representation of things have developed to such an extent that people are now just seeing pictures and purchasing things online! Make sure to use only high quality, relevant images in your site with proper labelling of each of them. Images does not only attract people to visit your website, but also your page will be able to rank higher in image SEO.

6. Local SEO

A website gives you the liberty of making your content available online all over the world. Local SEO works in a bit different manner. If your business has a physical location and it is marked in the map of Google, your website can have benefit from the local SEO. Your content will now be available in a proper geographic location within your location boundary. This will help you gain rank in Google locally.

7. Semantic search

We have all heard of the term ‘secondary keywords’. Along with the main and primary keyword, we know focus equally on the secondary keywords as well. They are nothing but the related words and phrases that are been used in the content and are beneficial for searches. Semantic search is the search through different related keywords of the same content.

8. Fulfilling the EAT Principle

If you are wondering about how to ensure the ‘quality’ of your content, then you should be referring to the EAT principle of Google. EAT refers to Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. They are the factors on which Google determines whether your content is a quality content or not! This simply means, your website first needs to expertise in that particular genre, the content should contain trustworthy information and it should be structured in an authoritative manner. That is why it is advisable to mention the reference URLs so that people reading it for the first time can have faith and confidence in you and this will in turn, help you in ranking in Google because of the increased clicks on the page!

9. Mobile friendliness

To say, mobiles are the future and the future is near! Along with your contents being SEO friendly, it should also be mobile friendly, which means, the content should be readable in a hassle free manner from the mobile sites as well. The structure of the article and the presentation will make a major impact on the ranking if it is not accessible through mobile phones with ease. To make sure that your site is mobile friendly, you can check the URLs does not have a “disallow directive” option. Ensure that the swiping and scrolling can be done smoothly and lastly, make your sites easily accessible through mobiles as well as desktops.

10. Featured snippets

Snippets are the small boxes that are been displayed above the SERPs when you search for something in the Google. Snippets are a great way to attract readers and still traffic from your competitive sites! The snippets usually shows content in a well-structured format with proper QAs, ‘know-how’, guides and information presented in a bulleted form. These features in a content tend to engross readers and hence, the on page traffic increases!

In closing:

Internet is a dynamic world and so is its algorithm. To keep up with all the new trends with every passing year, you need to adapt yourself and update your site accordingly! In order to get the correct results of your SEO content, usage of the accurate SEO tools is necessary because with SEO getting complex, we can only help you out by explaining them in simpler terms as we did in this article! So, in order to eliminate your competitors and go ahead of them, get equipped with all the trends and incorporate them as much as you can to get a higher ranking for your website!

15 Ways to Build Backlinks to your Website

It does not matter if you have a new or an old website, backlinks are a necessity in today’s internet world! If you are struggling to get backlinks or wondering how to incorporate SEO backlinks for your website, then it is a good news for you! The article here, further, discusses 15 easy ways that you can use for link building for your website to ensure a better search engine ranking. For getting backlinks, there are many link building tools available nowadays. While some of them are paid, others are free. For the start, it is advisable to go for the easy and free link building that will yield a good result for your website!

Before going any further, let us first tell you in brief what backlinks actually are and how they work!

What are backlinks and how do they work:

A backlink, in simpler terms, is a hyperlink on any external website that leads to your website. They can be called as external backlinks or inbound backlinks.

The more backlinks are been used for your website, the more people will come to know about your site and come to visit it. The one thing that you need to keep in mind is the backlink used for your website should be by an authoritative external website and related to your industry or content.

Gradually, when your website has high quality backlinks, it starts ranking in the search engine and hence, your website gains popularity. This is the reason and the purpose for using backlinks to your website!

Now that we know what backlinks are and how they are used, let us get into some techniques and ways to build backlinks to your website!

Ways of Building Backlinks:

The importance of backlinks are immense, so, why not dig in deeper to find out some amazing and simple ways to get a higher ranking for your website? Have a look further to inculcate these in your website and get some free backlinks.

1. Quality and a link-worthy content

Only writing is not enough! In a world where there is competition in every step, you need to be unique and stand out of the crowd, in order to gain a better position in the competition. Hence, writing a quality and link-worthy content is the key for building SEO backlinks. Your blogs need to be relevant to your topic and good-to-read. The external websites will find your backlink to be valuable only when it is unique and reader-friendly, providing straight information through words!

However, there are certain types of contents that seems to attract more backlinks than the other ones. To ensure that your website gets a higher ranking, few things that you need to follow while structuring your article are:

• How-To content: blogs that have steps or “how-to” do certain things are been preferred by the readers because as per statistics, they are easy and fun to read!
•  List articles: articles that contain a number in their title is catchy than simple and plain title articles. List articles are the ones, which have their main information mentioned in the title of the article along with some numbers. For example, “10 easy steps to lose weight at home”.
• Quiz: articles that contains quizzes or question answers in them are way more interesting to the readers than any simple and plain structured article providing information. Always remember to make your quizzes or questions relevant to your topic.
• Guides: people love reading short blogs or guides to know about anything without going into its very details. The articles, which acts like guides are tentatively more attractive in terms of building backlinks than the rest of the articles.

2. Guest blogging

Guest blogging is a traditional yet a tried-and-tested method to increase SEO backlinks for your website, which ultimately helps in higher ranking of your website in the search engine. Guest blogging includes various individuals to write in your website as a result, many people come to know about your website as a whole. If the contents written by the guests for your websites are unique and good, you will definitely get more than one backlinks from there!

For a better understanding of the concept of guest blogging, you can go to any website and check out their option, phrasing “write for us” or “guest article”. This is nothing else than creating SEO link building for the betterment of the website!

Once you get that option, all you need to do is write contents that will be immensely important for the website and convince them that your content will equally be interesting for the readers to give it a read! Get ready now to get some good number of backlinks for your website!

3. Infographics or Images

Sometimes reading long contents without any images or infographics kind of gets boring for the readers. That is when the need for inserting images come in your content! Infographics are nothing but information presented in the form of a table, picture or a graph that will excite the reader and catch their attention immediately. Images downloaded or captured can also be used for the same purpose. The only thing that needs to be kept in the mind is everything that you are inserting in your content should be relevant to the topic, and you will be getting some high quality backlinks for your website within no time!

4. Try and create a Skyscraper content

If you are confused about this step of building SEO backlinks, then do not worry, as we are here to explain it to you! Skyscraper content is a simply a backlink strategy, which involves finding the existing popular and unique content online, improving it and simply copying the backlinks.

Whenever you search up something in the Google, the first link that it shows is the most famous website or link and it contains the maximum backlinks. Choose the information from those websites and write your own content without duplicating the exact thing from there, and make it better than the original version! You can add images that was may be not present in the original article, add more information or cut out some information that is not needed and improve it in an overall manner! You can use some link building tools to check out the backlinks of the content and post it in your website with a yet another catchy and interesting title!

5. Comment on high quality blogs

The most easy and common way to get backlinks for your website is to comment on high quality blogs. Remember to keep the comments genuine and original so that you can gather some good amount of backlinks! Leave a comment that would make the other readers communicate with you in the comments section or something that would encourage the website owners to talk to you. In short, your comment needs to create an impact for the content, in order to gain good backlinks. Select only high quality blogs for gaining backlinks through comments because ordinary blogs would not be of any help for you!

6. Answer on Quora

If you are okay with the concept of commenting on high quality articles, then you can answer questions on Quora as well! As known by everyone, Quora is a question-answer site that has questions related to a variety of topics and answers are been provided by the readers with proper information. You can search your genre of topic (for example ‘MBA tuitions’) and the related questions will be displayed in your screen. You can now answer them with your expertise and provide the correct answers! Whenever you are answering questions, remember to add the link to your website for getting higher number of backlinks and in turn, higher ranking on the search engine!

7. Look for resource pages

A resource page is a page that contains a link of all resources and websites that the owner may find it important for its audience and readers. For example, a website for MBA study material may contain links of websites that specify the best colleges for MBA or top B-schools for MBA. You can similarly search for other keywords that are associated with your topic of writing and include those in your content. This will make sure that your article is SEO friendly, which means it will be getting a high rank in the search engine! The SEO link building process will get easier if followed this way!

8. Testimonials

Testimonials are nothing but reviews! Suppose there is a company of beauty products and services and you have purchased some products from their site. You can submit a review praising the product and its effects. This testimony can help you in gaining backlinks for your website as well! This is like a trading system where you provide a testimony for their product and services and in turn, they provide you with backlinks for your website. This will increase audience views in your website as well as customers will be relieved to buy items from their website! Again, the one thing you need to keep in mind is your testified product or service should be relevant to your website.

9. Interviews

Having people to interview online for your website is one of the best ways to get getting free backlinks. For following this method, you have to do a thorough research about the websites and online portals that are of the same genre as your website and conducts interviews. Once you get in touch with them and manage to have an interview, it is sure that your website will get good amount of backlinks with this help. If you are good at the interview thing, the next thing that would follow is invitations to other interviews!

10. Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing where known faces or celebrities advertise your products/services and it is one of the trending marketing techniques. When you approach any influencer with this deal, they promote your website, write for you, and advertise you and all these, in turn, leads to your link building. All you need to do is find a good influencer and strike up a good deal that will benefit both the parties at a reasonable cost!

11. Reclaim mentions

Sometimes it so happens that other websites mention about your product/service and mention you but does not add your website link to their write up and as a result, you missed a chance of having a backlink! In such cases, you need to find out the mentions about your website and reclaim it. However, finding such things is not an easy task. There are tools available for it that will help you find out your mentions. This process is known as reclaiming your mentions.

12. Fix broken links

There are times when we find a page saying ‘404 error’, which means that the page is temporarily unavailable. As a website builder, you need to take this opportunity for creating backlinks to your website! You need to find out their resource page and have a direct contact with them. If your website and their website is of the same genre, you can improve and modify their information and start it afresh in your own website- creating more backlinks!

13. Moving Man Method

‘404 error’ is a notice, which means that the page is temporarily unavailable and there is a potential chance of it to emerge back again. Moving man method is the method to find out related pages or websites that is gone permanently, changed their service/product or changed names. Taking information from those websites and updating them in your own way is a great way to build backlinks.

14. Keep a check on your competitors

While handling and managing a website, the primary focus would be on your website (without a doubt!) but also, it would be on the competitors’ websites! Checking out their blogs and the way they handle their backlinks, ways that they are using to generate more backlinks is one of the main ways to keep your website on track and at par with the competitor websites. You can always follow their strategy or have a better strategy for the same!

15. Journalists and reporters

Collaborating with a journalist or any reporter for getting your website story covered in the media is a good way for link building to your website! The reporters can cover your story and the relevant information about your website and post it in their own way, using your links to their content. This will help in generating backlinks to your website from external source and hence, your audience outreach and SEO ranking would increase in no time!

In Closing:

Today, creating a website is not enough but it is all about running the website successfully by incorporating all the trends in your content. In this ever-changing world of the Internet, you need to adapt yourself along with it too, so that there is no chance of you been left out! The mentioned points are some classic yet easiest ways to generate backlinks to your website that will help you increase your SEO ranking in the search engines. Therefore, without any doubt, pick out the best way for you and start working on it to have a good outreached website within no time!

5 Social Media Ideas to keep your Brand’s Feed Fresh

It would not be wrong to say that the world is now social media driven. Whether it is Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platforms, people are in for all of them! Apart from the emerging digital marketing, social media marketing is one of the trending marketing techniques that you need to follow, in order to sustain in this globally competitive world. However, some days can be dreading tired, when all you think about is “how to post the next content in an interesting manner?”

While people spend most of their time in social media platforms, it might be difficult for a company or a brand to keep up with the everyday social media posts and ideas. You need to lay out a good and successful social media marketing strategy with utmost care, for your company to reach the maximum of its targeted audience, and of course, higher reach! Before knowing the top 5 social media ideas to keep your brand’s feed fresh, let us first know why social media management is important today.

Why do you need to know social media management?

The importance of social media in our lives is impeccable! Keeping up a page of your brand just for the sake of keeping it, is not going to benefit your organisation in any way. Social media management is a small yet significant segment of your business. When you have something to post every day, it is important to find new ways to deliver the information. This is because of the simple fact that people get bored easily! You need to change and twist your social media strategy in a sleek manner. For that, the article further provides you with 5 ideas to keep your audience hooked to your feed!

Top 5 social media ideas:

1. Instead of posting a write-up, post a video

When the whole world is in for some audio and visual effect, what retains you from trying it? Statistics and analytics shows that maximum traffic is been driven through videos. People prefer watching a 2-minute video on any topic than reading something! Instagram, Facebook and Twitter gives you the option of making videos and sharing them in a variety of ways. You can do a live session with your audience, make a short 1-minute video and post it or even make a long video and post it on YouTube. Change your way of posting the videos often, so that your target audience stays hooked to your feed!

Pro tip- convert the information into videos, which is meaningful and convertible into videos.

2. Share company news

Social media marketing is all about connecting with your audience and making them believe in your venture! Apart from sharing information about your business, why not share some exciting news as well! While you are opting for this social media strategy, make sure that your company news is personalised and supported by a short video or photo. For example, if your company received an industry award, you can share this piece of amazing news with your audience with a post followed by a celebration photo or video! This way, your audience will get more engaged with your brand, which will in turn, generate traffic to your sites and feed!

3. Host an AMA session with your audience

With the invention of new features and technologies, it is not quite difficult to attract audience in your venture, if your social media marketing strategy works out well! Started from Reddit and now getting popular in Instagram, AMA or Ask Me Anything is like a question-answer session with your followers and audience. They can ask you questions related to your business, which they want to know about and you can answer them by your mode of choice. Either it can be a simple write up, a photo or a short video posted! This is one of the amazing ways to connect with your audience and know their desires better.

4. Repurposing your content

You can post the same content in your YouTube channel and Instagram post but in a different way! This is called repurposing the content. In social media platforms, it is a loss if you post all the same things everywhere, so why not improve a bit? Suppose, there is a video that you want to post. You can post the full video in your YouTube channel and a sneak peak of it in your Instagram handle! Once your audience gets interested in seeing the 1-minute clip, they will definitely go on to YouTube to see the full video! This will help you increase your reach and get good response from your audience.

5. Tie up with other brands

In this era of social media marketing, co-marketing is a win-win situation for both the ends! Co-marketing is, when you team up with other brands and promote their products or services from your feed along with your own products or services. This benefits both the parties because each of you gets to the audience of the significant other! This increases your brand’s reach and targeted audience. It is easy to sync up with other brands in Instagram and Facebook because of its wide reach.

Pro tip- do not pair up with your competitors, but select a brand that has similar audience like yours.

In Closure:

Social media platforms has a huge impact on you for running your venture successfully. If your brand’s social media marketing strategy is at par with your competitors or have an edge over them, it is just a matter of time when you will have a greater lead! As mentioned above, keeping up with the social media post is not enough to keep your venture strong and ahead. For that, you need to have a proper social media management. The world is now small, hence, it is just your efforts that will take your brand at the top to be the best in the world!