How to Create Your Content Marketing Strategy

10/30/202310/30/2023 nettsolutions

A clear content marketing strategy is a must for any business trying to engage and expand its audience. But a survey by the Content Marketing Institute revealed that only 40% of B2B marketers have a clear strategy. Meanwhile, 33% had an undocumented one, 20% planned to set one up in the next year, and 7% had no such plans.

So, do you have a strategy for your content marketing?

If not, or if you’re looking to develop a fresh one, our Orange County SEO agency has a few helpful tips.

What is a Content Marketing Strategy?

A content marketing strategy covers the planning, creation, and distribution of your content. It encompasses everything relevant to how your business uses content to reach customers, grow your audience, and achieve your objectives.

Building a detailed strategy will clarify how you can help readers, viewers, or listeners better than anyone else.

Creating Your Content Marketing Strategy

Confirm Your Content Marketing Goals

What do you want to achieve with your content?

Identifying your goals can be a time-consuming process, but when you know what they are, rank them in order of priority. That will make it easier to create the right content for your business (and ideally your audience) in the short and long term.

Research Your Audience

To create the most valuable content for your audience, you need to know who they are. What types of content do they enjoy? How long do they prefer blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other content to be? And what content do they want but struggle to find?

Answering questions like these will equip you with the information you need to craft high-value content. You can use the following methods to research your audience :

Surveys
Social listening tools
User behavior analysis
Focus groups

Developing a content marketing strategy without research may be a little faster, but you’re more likely to miss the mark.

Brainstorm Concepts, Topics, and Exciting Ideas

Use your marketing goals and data gathered through your research to brainstorm content ideas. You can try various techniques, such as a mind map: write a topic in the middle of a whiteboard and surround it with anything that comes to mind.

Create Personas

Personas can help you create targeted content that’s more relevant and engaging to specific audience segments. They include concise information on a fictional reader representing a group, such as 30 – 40 year-old professionals with lots of disposable income and no kids. In-depth audience research is essential for building accurate personas.

Build your Content Calendar

Setting up a content calendar will enable you to stay consistent, organized, and aware of upcoming topics. That’s ideal if you need to research a subject or book a space for filming a video. It’s also helpful for promoting content via social media and email before it’s published.

Good content is fundamental for any digital marketing strategy. And if you need help with your digital marketing, including SEP and retargeting, leave it to our Orange County SEO agency.

How can we boost your online visibility? Get in touch to find out!

Create Better Content with Personas

10/30/202310/30/2023 nettsolutions

Personas are a popular tool in digital marketing. A software business, for instance, might build user personas to understand who their new product is for. That can reduce the risk of launching a new program that fails to deliver the features that the target users need most.

Similarly, creating a persona for content marketing can help you bring the right information to the right people. You’ll find it easier to build content that engages the relevant audience segments and remains consistent.

But how do you create a persona for your content? Our Orange County digital marketing agency shares some tips to help you get it right

Research Your Audience

To create a persona, you need to know as much about your audience as you can. Here are a few ideas to keep in mind:

Send surveys to customers asking their opinion on your current content, the content they like to read, and what they find least appealing about content in general.
Chat with sales and support staff about common pain points. What drives customers to contact your business? What issues do they face? These insights can help you develop accurate personas.
Check your leading competitors’ content. What types of blog posts published on their site achieve the highest engagement? Which formats do they use most often, and how do readers/viewers react? You might learn more about what your shared audience likes and dislikes.
Pay attention to social media conversations related to your industry, business, and content. Social channels give you a direct connection to different audience segments, and can be vital when building personas.

When you gather information on your audience and how they engage with content, you can start crafting your personas.

Consider Your Target Readers’ Goals and Challenges

Use the information you gathered through your research to build a brief character study of your target reader, viewer, or listener. A content marketing persona should include essential details such as:

Age
Gender
Location
Occupation (mainly for B2B companies)
Goal (what they’re looking for when they come to your content)
Challenges (what’s preventing them from getting what they want)
Social media channels

You only need to provide basic details in each area — personas should give you and your team at-a-glance breakdowns of the target individual.

Understand What Each Persona Needs at Different Stages of the Customer Journey

Content is important throughout the customer journey, so bear that in mind when planning your publication schedule.

For example, a potential buyer will find certain blog posts invaluable at the start of their journey (the awareness stage), such as a concise overview of a specific product or service.

Your content marketing personas can help you understand different readers’ goals and challenges at each stage of their customer journey. Consider how your content can engage them and encourage them to become loyal buyers. Brainstorm content ideas for each stage of the customer journey across your audience segments.

Our Orange County digital marketing pros are here to boost your business’s visibility on search engines through SEO, SEP, retargeting, and more. Contact us today to get started!

Mobile SEO Tips: How to Help Your Website Rank Better

07/27/2023 Brandon Celotto

While online, consumers all over the world spend more than half of their time browsing websites on a mobile device. But users may not be able to find your website in the first place if it’s not optimized for mobile. And that can have a serious impact on your rankings.

What can you do about that? Our Orange County SEO agency shares a few ideas to inspire you below.

Responsive Design is a Must

Mobile devices generate more than 60% of organic search engine traffic, so customers should be able to visit your site and enjoy a user-friendly experience on any device. Otherwise, you risk losing them: one survey found that 60% of consumers abandon transactions because of a poor user experience.

That’s why using responsive web design is a must for every mobile SEO strategy. Images, text, and other key page elements will be scaled to the appropriate dimensions for the user’s screen.

As Google gives preference to mobile-friendly sites that provide a positive user experience, responsive web design can help boost your SEO ranking.

Maximize Page Load Times

Page speed is critical. If your pages take longer than three seconds to load, you risk losing visitors and their business. Google also considers page speed a major aspect of quality websites and a positive user experience. If your pages take too long to load on mobile devices, it’s time to fix that.

You can increase page speed by:

Compressing images
Reducing redirects
Caching pages
Decreasing JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code

These are just a few ideas to help you get started. Keep making improvements until you get load times down to three seconds or less.

Target Local Customers

“Near me” searches have increased dramatically in the past decade, as smartphones and smart speakers allow consumers to find local providers with minimal effort.

More than 75% of people visit a brick-and-mortar location within 24 hours of running a local search on their mobile device, and almost 30% of those searches lead to a purchase.

Optimizing your site for local searches can increase your visibility on mobile. Create content with a local focus, set up a Google Business Profile, and enable customers to review your services. All this can make your site easier to find for local searches.

Create Mobile-Friendly Content

All content on your site should be easy to read and view on a mobile device. It also needs to keep visitors engaged enough to stay on your site and explore.

Try these tips:

Keep paragraphs concise to help visitors skim text
Embrace white space for easy readability
Use brief, punchy headlines
Break up text with videos and images (compressed, of course!)

Mobile-friendly content is essential for a great user experience, so optimize yours to boost your ranking.

Need a little help to take your rankings higher? Leave it to our Orange County SEO agency!

We’ll create a bespoke SEO strategy to increase your visibility and deliver a stronger user experience. Get in touch now to learn more!

5 SEO Trends for 2022 You Need to Know About

01/20/2022 mwon

SEO evolves from year to year, and it’s crucial that you stay up to date with the latest trends to avoid falling behind. With 2022 here already, we thought it was time for our Orange County SEO specialists to share five top SEO trends for the year ahead.

Greater Focus On Website Accessibility

As the Internet becomes increasingly embedded in our lives, every website should be optimized for improved accessibility. Many people may struggle to use your site properly if you overlook this key issue: for example, around 12 million people in the U.S. have vision impairment and approximately 15% of adults experience some level of hearing difficulty.

Enhanced accessibility can provide all users with a high-quality browsing experience, regardless of their capabilities. It will also reduce the risk of dissatisfied visitors leaving your site with a negative impression of your brand.

More Websites Catering to Voice Search

Twenty-seven percent of the worldwide online population uses voice search on mobile devices. This trend will drive more and more businesses to optimize their websites for voice search in 2022, but what does that involve?

Incorporate keywords into questions users are likely to ask, especially on mobile devices, such as “where’s the nearest pizza restaurant to me?”
Implement long-tail keywords for accurate targeting.
Write in a conversational style.
Create FAQ pages packed with relevant, conversational questions and answers.

Increasing Popularity of Featured Snippets

Featured snippets appear on around 19% of SERPs, and they give users a faster way to access information. Ideally, a featured snippet will provide an answer but still compel users to click through for a more detailed insight instead of scrolling down.

In 2022 (and beyond), more brands will structure their content to earn featured snippets. One technique is to use more questions and answers in content, beginning with “who”, “what”, or “why”.

Mobile-friendly Websites Becoming More Prevalent

More than 92% of Internet users around the world went online via their mobile devices as of January 2021.So, it’s no surprise that brands will increasingly optimize their websites for mobile devices in 2022 and beyond.

Mobile-friendly websites are critical to deliver the best user experience and prevent frustrated users from leaving your site.

Combining Video and Long-form Content for Better Results

Brands will continue to embrace longer content in 2022. This typically gives readers more valuable information and encourages visitors to stay on your site for longer, unlike a short piece of content.

And video will remain a key part of SEO strategies the world over. Ninety-three percent of businesses win new customers thanks to videos they post on social media, and companies that use video grow revenue 49% faster than those that don’t. Combining long-form content and videos can help businesses improve SEO campaigns significantly.

Our Orange County SEO agency is here to help you achieve better results, whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to overhaul your current SEO strategy. Get in touch to find out how we can help you today!

What are Featured Snippets on Google and How Can They Help You?

12/22/2021 mwon

Google continually develops new ways to help searchers find the information they need. That’s one of the many reasons why it’s the most popular search engine, with a market share of more than 86% as of September 2021.

And featured snippets could be considered one of the best additions to Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) in recent years. But they’re more than just a convenient way to deliver bite-sized answers to queries — featured snippets can help your business increase its visibility and attract clicks too.

Featured Snippets Explained

Featured snippets appear at the top of the organic results on a SERP, and display a few lines of text from a website. This snippet should answer the user’s question concisely, but the link to the website is included underneath if you want to learn more.

In this example, Google answered our question with a snippet from USA Today and a few images. This provides a concise answer with multiple options if we want to explore it in more detail.

What Featured Snippet Types Appear on SERPs?

Google displays four types of featured snippets on its SERPs:

Paragraph
Table
List
Video

Let’s take a closer look at each:

Paragraph

A paragraph snippet presents a carefully selected extract from a site that matches the query best.

Table

A table snippet presents data in a reader-friendly format, ideal for comparing figures or statistics.

List

A list snippet breaks information is the simplest way to answer some queries. Lists may be bulleted or numbered (e.g. a step-by-step guide).

Video

A video might offer the most appropriate response to a query. If so, that will appear at the top of the SERP, ready to play. This can be particularly useful when searching for visual directions, such as makeup tutorials.

Benefits of Featured Snippets on Google SERPs

Here are three benefits of owning a featured snippet:

Boost Brand Awareness

Having a snippet from your site featured on a Google SERP creates an opportunity to increase awareness about your business, even if users don’t click on the link to your website immediately.

Attract More Clicks

If Google presents an eye-catching snippet of information from your site with a link to the relevant page, users are more likely to click on it than if it were further down the page (or on another page altogether). It can help you get to the top of the organic results instantly.

Adds Credibility to Your Site

When Google chooses your site to answer a user’s query with a featured snippet, that implies that your company is the most relevant resource online. This can build credibility and trust.

You can optimize your website for featured snippets, but it’s a complex process demanding in-depth research. That’s why it’s best to leave it to the experts.

Our Orange County SEO specialists can optimize your site to increase its visibility, authority, and conversions. Get in touch for your free marketing analysis now!

How to Optimize Your Content for Voice Search

10/13/202010/13/2020 mwon

How often do you use voice search on your mobile device?

Chances are, you do it regularly. Half of all searches are expected to be voice-based by the end of 2020, and 30 percent of people browse the web without using a screen at all.

That means businesses and organizations need to make sure their content targets voice searches effectively, but how?

Structure keywords to fit phrases

The proliferation of voice search is driving an increase in content designed to answer questions and suit specific types of phrases.

For example, you might unlock your phone and ask Siri where the nearest vegan restaurant or movie theater is. You’re looking for a fast answer for an immediate issue, rather than a specific product or service. Content intended to suit voice search should be written with question-focused searches in mind.

Pay more attention to local SEO

If you operate a business that caters to the local community primarily, take advantage of local seo techniques to increase your reach. So, if a user asks “what time does Local Coffee Shop open on Saturday?”, your content should help them find your business hours within moments.

Make sure your company profile’s details are correct on Google and cover all the information customers might need to know.

Optimize your site for mobile devices

Your site should be optimized to be mobile-friendly across devices. Otherwise, people may click through but leave when they realize half the content is missing. Even if a page takes too long to load, prospects might lose interest and try a competitor — the probability of users bouncing rises 123 percent when a mobile page takes 10 seconds to load.

Mobile pages should load quickly, be easy to browse on small screens, and display all media properly. Your content must be easy to scan, allowing users to scroll down to find relevant details easily. Follow proper content hierarchy and position the most important information at the top of the page.

Incorporate FAQs into your content

As question-based searches are increasingly common, one simple but effective way to boost your content’s compatibility with voice queries is to add FAQs.

These should answer questions directly and concisely, so anyone who navigates to your site to read them finds the information they’re looking for. While there, they might be impressed by what they see and decide to stay longer. This could translate into conversions, whether that’s a purchase or registration for a newsletter.

Think about the sort of questions prospective and existing customers may have about your business, products, services, etc. For a little inspiration, check out your leading competitors’ websites to see what they’re addressing in their FAQ pages.

Follow these simple tips to optimize your content for voice search and increase your visibility.

Want some expert help to achieve better results? Find out how our Orange County SEO agency can help your business succeed today!

How to Make Thought Leadership Content Work for Your Business

06/29/2020 mwon

Why is thought leadership content so valuable?

Because it can:

inspire more than 47 percent of C-suite executives to share their details with your brand
encourage close to 60 percent of decision-makers to work with your company
motivate 61 percent of decision-makers to pay premium prices to work you

But creating thought leadership content that makes an impact isn’t easy, or every company would be considered an authority in its sector.

So, how can you make thought leadership content work for you?

Our Orange County SEO specialists have the answers …

Support Points with Original Research and Data

Conducting your own research is one of the most effective ways to help your thought leadership content stand out. This might be as simple as creating a poll on social media or as complicated as surveying industry experts around the world.

Regardless of its scale, original research provides readers with insights they can’t find anywhere else and ensures your content is unique. You offer more value than a competitor regurgitating others’ data, and establish your site or business as a useful resource.

Create Gated Thought Leadership Content to Generate Leads

Most of your thought leadership content might appear on your business’s blog or other websites e.g. industry news publications. But you can create longer pieces as gated content to capture leads.

For example, a free 40-page ebook packed with unique, actionable insights can inspire visitors to submit their email address more than the promise of a monthly newsletter.

Newcomers can check your existing content before deciding whether to sign up or not, and you can incentivize them further with a small discount or free trial.

Look at Competing Thought Leaders (and Do Better)

One simple step in creating thought leadership content is to explore your competitors’ output. What blog posts, articles, whitepapers, and even books are they publishing? How do they promote it? Do they use special offers to attract interest?

But remember: your content must be unique. So, be inspired by competitors but focus on establishing a distinctive presence.

Make Content Relevant to Industry Changes, Product Releases, and Events

Good content is relevant. Not just to your audience, but to industry changes and events.

That’s why it’s important to create a content calendar and schedule pieces to make the biggest impact. For example, if your business is attending an expo in two months, start gathering material for a deep post as soon as you can.

This might document the creation of a product you plan to reveal or explore said product’s expected market impact.

Whatever the topic, the content can generate interest in the product and vice versa. And both can bring curious new visitors to your site.

Thought leadership is a fantastic addition to a content marketing strategy and helps drive traffic. But what else can you do to attract more visitors, build authority, and boost engagement?

Our Orange County SEO experts are here to help. Just get in touch for your FREE Relevancy & Quality Score Report now!

Content Marketing Tips for Small Businesses – The Right Way to Reach Your Audience

03/13/202005/18/2020 mwon

A well-planned content marketing strategy is a crucial asset for any small business, though it’s not easy. You might find yourself sweating at the prospect of having to write blog posts three times a week or putting together a comprehensive whitepaper. but the truth is, all the hard work can really pay off.

Just ask those small businesses posting blogs on a regular basis and earning 126 percent more lead growth than those that don’t have a blog.

So, to help you get more out of your content marketing, we’ve put together the following tips.

Know Who You’re Writing For

One of the most important steps in building a good content marketing strategy is understanding your audience. If you try to write for everyone, the results could be vague and, most likely, interesting to no one.

But when you focus your aim and write for a specific segment, you can inject more truth and power into your content.

Think about your current customer base, your competition, and the pain points your business addresses. This helps clarify your ideal reader and the action you want them to take.

A Content Calendar is Key to Success

It might be tempting to create content as and when the mood takes you. Especially when your small business is operated by a skeleton crew with little spare time to flex their creative muscles.

But implementing a content calendar establishes a tighter focus and boosts relevance. For example, generating ideas for Christmas-themed content weeks in advance gives you the time to think carefully about the sort of answers your audience will be looking to solve in the run up to the season.

Planning themes and topics early reduces time wasted scrabbling for ideas on the day a blog post is due, too.

Use Long-form Content to Achieve Better Results

Research shows long-form content brings stronger results, with articles of more than 2000 words performing well for around 56 percent of creators.

That’s not to say you should never publish short posts, such as news updates, insights into forthcoming products, or simple articles offering a quick read.

Just make sure to publish long-form content that demonstrates thought leadership and gives readers something they can sink their teeth into regularly.

Experiment with Visual Content

Images help users process information and grasp the core topics or themes of a piece of content before they even start reading. Posts including images generate 650 percent higher engagement and earn three times as many links as text-only ones.

Try publishing infographics and videos on a regular basis, but spend time and money getting them to a professional standard first. When using images in your content, use original photos or graphics as often as you can. Only rely on stock visuals when you have no other option.

These content marketing tips can help small businesses build more effective campaigns and reach the right people. But it can be difficult to implement a strict plan when you have a company to run and a team to manage.

Want to work with a professional Orange County SEO agency committed to achieve real results instead? Just get in touch for a free marketing analysis now.

How can You Use Featured Snippets in Your SEO Campaign?

02/12/202003/09/2020 mwon

We’ve all seen featured snippets by now, even if you don’t know them by name.

They’ve quickly become a common fixture on SERPs (search engine results page), helping users to find fast answers from an authority source just by clicking on one of the snippets at the top of the page.

Each featured snippet includes a link to the site, unlike answer boxes, which makes them a valuable addition to your SEO campaign. But how can you make the most of them?

Focus on Answering Questions

Featured snippets commonly answer questions, such as ‘what is a backlink?’ or ‘how do you bake a cake step by step?’.

Dedicate a full page to a question, with images, videos, strong keywords, and an in-depth answer that offers real value to searchers. Focus on giving the reader all the information they need in a well-structured format, incorporating keyword-rich header tags (H2, H3).

Embrace Lists

Lists are another type of featured snippet. They may appear in response to searches for ‘where should I stay in San Francisco?’ or ‘the best CRM tools’ (see below).

Featured Snippets List — Embrace Lists in Featured Snippets

A glance at the list gives users a fast answer, but still leaves enough missing to encourage a click through to the site. Lists’ accessibility can help to boost user engagement and aid scannability.

You may not be able to work lists into every piece of content you create, but try to include them when constructing pages dedicated to answering questions.

Build Authority to Gain Google’s Recognition

Google draws on authority sites for featured snippets, to ensure maximum value and expertise. So, if you want to increase your site’s chances of being picked, you need to build authority.

How can you do this?

Pay attention to your title tags, meta descriptions, and image alt tags
Make sure all content is high-quality and formatted in an engaging way
Work on achieving backlinks from other authority sites, to build your own credibility
Optimize your website for mobile devices

Building authority takes time and patience, but it’ll pay off when Google starts to notice you.

Add High-quality Pictures and Videos to Boost Value

Pictures and videos can increase your content’s value. Visual media has the power to convey meaning and present examples to users, answering questions in a more engaging way than text alone. Humans are more likely to remember visuals than words, and content with visuals tends to earn 94 percent more views than text-only content.

These are especially valuable for how-to pieces or resolving complex issues. One good way to increase videos’ impact is to create a transcript, so Google gains a clearer insight into its content.

Take advantage of these ideas to help your site rank for featured snippets. If you manage this, you’ll gain valuable real estate on SERPs and secure more traffic.

Want to learn more about increasing your visibility and ranking? Get in touch with our Orange County SEO experts now, and we’ll give you a FREE pro-marketing analysis.

Essential SEO Trends for 2020 Every Business Has to Know

01/30/202001/30/2020 mwon

SEO trends come. SEO trends go.

Staying on top of the latest ones can help you strategize, make well-informed decisions, and adjust your work processes to accommodate industry changes. But what are the most important SEO trends worth your attention in 2020?

The Ongoing Rise of Featured Snippets

Featured snippets have become a regular fixture on SERPs (search engine results pages), and that’s set to become par for the course.

Featured snippets are a summarized version of answers to users’ search queries, pulled from multiple pieces of content. They also typically appear at the top of a page, taking prime position ahead of the highest-ranking organic results.

Businesses can take advantage of featured snippets by structuring content to include questions and answers.

Voice Search Dictates Content and Keywords

Our smartphones keep us connected to a world of information at all times. But, even better, we can use voice search to find immediate answers to questions without typing a single word.

This convenience is driving the proliferation of voice search so much it accounts for 20 percent of searches performed within the Google App.

As with featured snippets, your business can increase the chances of ranking higher by structuring content in a way that answers clear questions. Long-tail keywords are a key part of optimizing for voice search, too.

Mobile Optimization Continues to Influence Rankings

Google has switched to mobile-first indexing, giving ranking priority to websites optimized for mobile rather than just desktop. There’s no excuse for any business to inflict its desktop site on mobile users, especially if it’s already designed poorly.

In 2020, more companies and organizations must embrace mobile optimization to compete. Aim to keep the user experience as smooth, fluid, and convenient as possible.

Videos are a Must for Engagement

One of the biggest SEO trends for 2020 is the inclusion of video. Obviously, YouTube is a marketing behemoth now, but video has become increasingly vital on social networks too. With videos, companies can convey messages and communicate with their target audience in less time than with text-based content.

Videos also lend themselves to social sharing and can utilize other elements (music, sound effects, language, facial expressions) to inspire an emotional response. It can be much harder to move people with words alone.

92 percent of marketers using video claim it’s a key element of their marketing strategy, an increase of 17 percent on 2018’s figure. Implementing video into your marketing campaign demands careful planning, investment in the proper equipment, and (potentially) a professional production crew.

However, there’s real potential to generate leads and achieve good ROI if you can get your video marketing right.

These SEO trends are set to make a big impact on the industry in 2020. That’s why it’s worth paying attention to each, and watching out for others emerging over the next 12 months.

Otherwise, you run the risk of falling behind — and losing customers to your more SEO-savvy competitors.

Want help from an Orange County SEO team of experts to help you grow your business in 2020? Just get in touch today for a FREE marketing analysis!