I’m not going to convince you that you NEEEEEEEED to do content marketing. I can’t force you to listen to what I’m about to say either. I’m also not going to say that you can’t get results without content marketing either, but If you don’t love it or at least see the value in it then guess what? One of your competitors does!

If you tell me that you’re not interested in developing content for your website then that shows me that you’re very much focused on rankings and increasing your rank for a fixed number of target keywords. This doesn’t make sense for a number of reasons:

• Rankings are always fluctuating
• Rankings are based on your location
• Rankings don’t mean conversions
• Rankings are personalised to your logged in account

Secondly it’s the way people are searching for your services, while you might think it’s common sense to find your business on “Web Design Melbourne” your customer might actually be searching on the term “Best Web Developers in Melbourne” or “The difference between cheap and expensive SEO” as they try to understand how much they’re going to pay for their new website.

Don’t put all your eggs in the one basket and focus on one highly competitive keywords that you might never reach if your competition is doing everything you’re doing and more simply because they have more money to throw at it. Alternatively if you want to rank on a competitive keyword do you think you should be entitled to do so without lifting a finger?

Google clearly states the following:

“Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.” followed by “Create a useful, information-rich website, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.”

Now, listening to everything that Google says doesn’t mean that other methods don’t work, they do. The fact is though if you want to live in a world where you:

• Don’t worry about penalties
• Don’t worry about losing traffic from Google updates
• Don’t worry about losing a number #1 or #2 spot and what effect that might have on your business

Then you need to think about the long-term content strategy! I hear you groan, and hit your head into the table. You’re right that does sound like

• lots of effort
• it won’t be easy
• that it won’t happen overnight.

and that’s exactly the same as everything else you’ve wanted in life. You’ve got to work hard for it and commit to it long-term so that you in a few years time you’re going to look back at your competition that was left standing in the dust crying about things like “I don’t know what to write”, “it takes too long”, “I wrote three articles and didn’t see anymore traffic” or the worst “I don’t do content”.

But if you don’t want to do content, or your business isn’t ready for it, what options do you have with your SEO campaign? This is limited to typical SEO services which don’t involve paid advertising.

Get Someone Else To Create Content

The first option you have is to get someone else to create content on your behalf. It might be your SEO agency that facilities the content marketing on your behalf or you might hire specialists that focus entirely upon developing content for businesses. The youth of your business might be crying out for some creativity in their jobs and may also be passionate and informed about your industry so this might be an option too.

So what are the benefits:

Pros:

• You have continuous content developed for your site.
• You benefit from organic traffic that finds such content.

Cons:

• The costs add up quickly to have someone develop your content
• Your content may lack value because the writer is not experienced in your industry
• Your content may not connect socially which greatly reduces the number of social shares you receive.
• Your content lacks a voice and opinion which decreases the amount of inbound links you receive.

Do Link Building Instead

Link building works and it can work really effectively especially when in conjunction with content marketing. The problem with link building is when it becomes the churn and burn process that is typical of dodgy SEO agencies. They simply spam your website across the internet, doing more harm than good, on your target keyword, don’t do this!

There are numerous ways to gain links and depending on the competition you might see strong results. In order to gain high quality, industry relevant, links it’s typically about building relationships and connecting with people via outreach. What type of links can you use:

• Web & Business Directories – Things like business directories YellowPages, TrueLocal, Flying Solo etc.
• Competitor Links – Reverse engineer your competitor’s links and seeing how you can get links on the same sites.
• Promotional Links – Guest blog posting, press releases etc
• Non competing Sites – Websites that are in your industry but aren’t competing with your services
• Brand mentions – Sites that mention your brand or products but don’t link to your content.
• Social Media – Market yourself via social media marketing to gain links.
• Paid links – Private blog networks and paid links

Pros:

• Links such as Business directories are easy wins
• Reversing competitor links can give high return for minimum effort.

Cons:

• Web & Business Directories are easy wins but are unlikely to have a huge influence on rankings
• Reversing links is technical and time-consuming and may cost just as much over time
• It’s difficult to gain links socially if you don’t have great content to market
• Any link that you pay money for is questionable and you should be concerned about the after effects.

But WHYYYY Content?

Here are just a few statistics on the importance of content marketing and what it can do for your website.

• Companies with blogs get 97% more inbound links
• 55% of blogs on company sites result in 55% more visitors
• 70% of customers prefer getting to know a company via articles rather than advertising
• Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional outbound marketing.
• Content marketing produces 3 times more leads per dollar

If that doesn’t impress you then let’s take a look at some of the other areas that content marketing can help you with:

• Increase traffic
• Increased user engagement
• Build a more positive brand image
• Gain more Referral traffic
• Increased search visibility
• Increasing the size of your sales funnel
• Increased rankings in search engines

So if you’re getting all of the above and more from your content marketing strategy doesn’t it make sense that if you don’t want to create it then one of your competitor’s will because the returns are simply too good to ignore. Right now many small and medium size websites are lacking the maturity and understand of content marketing which is why they’re not doing it.

High quality content generates links and links improve rankings. Content allows you to tell stories which connect with your audience and ensure that your brand is more memorable.

Blogging isn’t just for the Gen Y! The websites that have been developing content for the past few years, some of them creating 8 articles a day, are absolutely killing it! If your competitor is doing this then you’re going to struggle to catch up. The thing is that it’s not just blogging, if you’re good at making videos then make video. If you’re good at making podcasts then make podcasts. The point is just to create content that connects and start crushing it online.

Again, this depends on your competition but if you’re in a competitive market then I don’t see that there is any choice but to start producing grade A valuable content and as much of it as you can. There is no limit to how much you should create just start making as much as you can while maintaining the value.

Your competitor’s don’t care if you don’t create content, they prefer it actually. The less competition the better they can amp up the statistics we’ve listed above. If you’re not in the game then that just makes the game that much easier. Don’t let the competition get the advantage and instead start crushing them today. If you need help with your content marketing strategy then get in touch today.