Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:03 — 23.6MB) | Embed
One of the questions I hear from people I meet is, “Why is content marketing so important since SEO is still about linkbuilding?”
I mean, people are very confused on how content is directly influencing their website rankings.
So if you’re wondering about Content Marketing strategies, what are the white hat link building strategies, and how content marketing impacts your website rankings, click Play in the box above… or read this article.
Fiona & Kurt
Today I decided to shed some light on the link between SEO & Content Marketing, and my good friend and email marketing expert Kurt Johansen gave a helping hand. We talked all things content marketing and we even revealed how you can learn 101 to implement this guaranteed strategy in your business.
Discover in the podcast:
- 1. Content Marketing?
- 2. Google’s ZOO’s impact on content marketing
- 3. “This is what we encourage you to do”, says Google
- 4. Getting rid of poor quality links
- 5. How can you learn more about content marketing on a 101 basis?
Now let’s take each topic separately and see what it means…
1. Content Marketing?
Content marketing has always been a crucial part of what I do.
In fact, the practice has been around ever since SEO was invented. You would stumble across content marketing during the old days of SEO. Back then however, it didn’t bear such a heavy nomination…
What content marketing means for today’s online business owners is a way of creating content and then marketing that content across multiple channels on the internet.
As a business owner, content marketing starts with the basic understanding of your prospect’s needs. So you need to find solutions to a problem they have. Then, you have to create content around that topic; the kind of content you create must be relevant and of high quality, otherwise you’re working in vain.
The next step: putting that content on your website.
BUT the real challenge, the whole secret of content marketing is knowing HOW to market that content around on the internet in order to attract people back to your website.
2. Google’s ZOO’s impact on content marketing
It’s funny how Google named all their major algorithm updates after some very cute animals: Panda, Penguin and now Hummingbird are names which acquired a whole new meaning in the online world.
Because of this “zoo” the way online marketers behave has changed dramatically over the past years. And, because of this “zoo”, terms such as Black Hat or White Hat strategies have become part of an online marketer’s daily vocabulary.
To better understand these cute anima…algorithm updates we need to dive deep into the basics of how Google search works:
Google is, at its core, a search engine.
But Google Search is first of all a business. And for a business to be profitable, it has to provide its end user with relevant services. Otherwise it’s dead.
In order to decide on the relevancy of a website for a certain search, Google has this complicated algorithm which decides WHO ranks WHERE when someone searches for something online. It’s a series of calculations which are very, very complex.
While we do have an idea about how these calculations work, Google has never made them public.
BUT they have told us certain things that they DON’T like. These are what we call the Black Hat strategies. Perform black hat and you’ll get the Google Slap (which is a term used when Google de-indexes your website or pushes it right down the rankings to a place where no one can find it).
Which brings us to… the stuff that you SHOULD be doing.
3. “This is what we encourage you to do”, says Google
… the white hat strategies, that is.
As I said before, Google’s whole role as a search engine is providing high quality results for the end user. What happened was that the algorithm updates for Panda and Penguin became so complicated that Google is now able to pinpoint to the people who are doing the wrong things and get rid of them (ahem, their websites).
By doing this, the quality websites started to show up in search engines.
In the end, the clear message that Google is sending to all of us online marketers and business owners is that it wants high quality, good content added to a website NOT once in a blue moon, but on a regular basis.
There is a right way and a wrong way to put content on websites. Therefore, it can be a very dangerous thing to have someone do the SEO for you if you don’t have the basic understanding of what it means.
4. Getting rid of poor quality links
The bad news is that if you have poor quality links which lead to your website, you could be in trouble.
The even worse news is that the process of removing those links is tiring and tedious. What you have to do is contact the website owners and ask them to remove the link.
But this is almost slavery. Imagine if you have hundreds of poor quality backlinks… you’d have to send a message to ALL of those website owners! And in most cases, you won’t get any answer from them…
What can you do then? Google gives us another option: you can use the Disavow Tool. But you can only do that if you have evidence that you tried to make that contact and have the link removed.
Do you understand now why I insist on telling you that it is VITAL for your business that you know the basics of SEO? It’s the only way in which you can safeguard your business from allowing someone to do the wrong things.
5. How can you learn more about content marketing on a 101 basis?
I’ve been experiencing this adventure for more than 5 years now. During the last year I have been travelling throughout Australia promoting these white hat strategies to a vast number of business owners…
The feedback I always get from them is overwhelming…
However, people were constantly asking me,
“Fe, how can we get more in-depth knowledge about this?”
I have recently made the decision to break the Ultimate Web Blueprint down. So rather than doing 16 modules in 1 day, I am going to break them down in 16 separate workshops.
The first workshop is going to be about Content Marketing: it is the one area that I feel people need most help with and the one area where I see people are “Doing it wrong”. Not like in this picture, but it’s so funny I had to share it:
At a normal, “traditional” workshop you and 100 other people go there, listen to the speaker, take notes and come back all enthusiastic. Then as you sit in front of your computer you go, “Wow, this is all too hard”.
The Ultimate Web Blueprint is different.
To help you get the most out of it I decided to actually LIMIT this workshop to 10 PEOPLE ONLY.
It’s NOT a workshop where you sit at a desk and listen passively. This IS an Action & Implementation workshop where you will spend the whole day with me actually implementing the content marketing strategy in your business.
- You WILL be creating the content in the room
- You WILL be uploading and publishing it on the internet
- You WILL learn how to syndicate it across multiple different channels
- Thus, you WILL get the most out of the piece of content that you’ve created.
You now see why I can’t do it in a room full of people. There are only 10 seats available.
Actually, there are only 8 seats available. 2 have already been sold…
When you attend the workshop you will not only get the WORKFLOW, but you will also IMPLEMENT it IN THE ROOM. The best part, however, is that you will be able to ask questions on the spot; questions which are specific to YOUR business and YOUR needs.
Not just a 1-day workshop
You’ll have to do a bit of legwork prior to the workshop. But if you sign up to attend I will send you all the instructions in time so you know exactly what you need to do before we meet.
How can you join the workshop? Go to http://www.ultimatewebblueprint.com/content-marketing – you’ll also find more details about the workshop in there.
When and Where?
I will organise this workshop in SYDNEY, on the 2ND OF NOVEMBER 2013.
There will also be a followup workshop on Sunday, where Kurt has prepared an amazing training on getting more leads and turning them into customers by the use of email marketing. There’s one thing to be able to drive traffic to your website, but how do you then nurture those leads…?
Kurt will show you how to create a lead magnet (optin boxes and autoresponders) and how to design followup emails to nurture the relationship with your leads.
Are you ready? Join us now for a special price!
Do you know someone who could benefit from this workshop? Share this article with them and let them know that we’re in Sydney on the 2nd of November, sharing the blueprint, love, and knowledge…
