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Modern Concepts in
Content Marketing,
SEO & Metrics
Charlie Marchant &
Luke Nicholson
Charlie Marchant
ONLINE MARKETING
CONSULTANT
Luke Nicholson
ONLINE MARKETING
CONSULTANT
Outline
Part 1: Content marketing goals and strategy
●  Set the purpose of a content marketing strategy
●  Attract users to your content
Part 2: Get results from a content marketing strategy
●  Convert users through content marketing
●  Measure success of content marketing
What is content
marketing and
why use it?
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is content you create to bring customers to you.
That content can take different forms, including:
Articles / blog posts
Email newsletters
Infographics
Videos
Social media posts
etc.
These are all examples of content marketing because they all contain some kind of message or idea that is passed from
the creator of the content to the consumer.
What content types does
your business focus on and
why?
Set the purpose of your
content marketing
Gain organic traffic
Organic traffic is traffic that comes through your website
through a search engine query.
Most content marketing campaigns are designed to build
content that will drive organic traffic to your website.
Example
A person might ask Google "what is the best laptop of
2017?" The first result will most likely be an article about
laptops. If the user clicks through to the website, that
website has just earned an organic visitor through its
content. That visitor is a potential customer.
Gaining organic traffic is a long-term marketing strategy for a
business.
Organic results are 8.5x more
likely* to be clicked on than paid
search results.
* in the US and the UK
Generate leads
Lead generation is identifying and cultivating potential
customers for a business's products or services.
Certain types of on-site content can generate leads for your
business.
Great content for generating leads include:
Webinars
eBooks
Online courses
Email newsletters
60% of businesses that blog
acquire more customers than those
who don’t.
Build brand trust
A less quantifiable but also important goal of content
marketing is building a brand.
When done well, content marketing will:
Help people to discover your company
Get people talking about your products/services
Influence the public perception of your company
Improve
brand more
trust difficult to measure than traffic figures,
These
are much
lead generation and customers.
However, these factors influence how likely people are to buy
your product, how many people buy your product and how
much your company is worth.
81% of the population trusts
the advice they get from
bloggers
Summary: why use content marketing
Use the content that works for your target audience
Build organic traffic over time
Generate leads for your website
Build your brand
Build trust in your brand
Attract Users to
Your Content
Use the Right Keywords to Attract the
Right Customers
As we learned in part one, the goal of a content marketing campaign is to create content that attracts potential customers.
Fortunately, there’s an extremely powerful method of finding out what customers want. It’s called keyword research.
Think about Google. We use Google when we want something. We might want to know when our next football game is
on, or we might want to know what’s the difference between aged and extra-aged tequila.
Your customers also use Google when they want something. If you know what your customers want and can create
content which meets their needs then you will attract a heap of traffic!
Using Google Keyword Planner
You don’t have to guess what your customers want...
Tools like Google Keyword Planner take the guesswork out of content creation. You can see average search volumes for
a set of keywords. This is extremely valuable information as you can then create content based on the amount of demand
there is for that content.
Avg. monthly searches and competition
Avg. monthly searches – the number of times this keyword is searched for in an average month
Example: 100,000 to 1,000,000 people search for the term “flower delivery” in the UK in an average month.
Avg. monthly searches is an important number because it enables you to estimate demand. It’s clear from
this search that a lot of people in the UK want to use Google to order flowers.
Competition – tells us the amount of competition between advertisers for the keyword
Example: The competition for the keyword “buy flowers” is high, while the competition for the keyword
“florist” is low. Why would that be? Well, it’s because advertisers think they can make money by ranking for
the keyword “buy flowers” and they don’t think that they can make money by ranking for the keyword “florist”.
They could be right!
In many cases, we’re looking for keywords that are high volume but low competition!
Commercial intent
Arguably, the most important thing to consider is not directly revealed by Google: commercial intent.
We say a keyword has commercial intent when the person making the search is likely to be close to
making a purchase.
Example
The keyword “buy flowers” has clear commercial intent, the person making the search likely
wants to buy flowers online. This is why “buy flowers” has a high competition score.
But not all keywords have commercial intent. Somebody searching for the keyword “florist”, for example,
might be searching for a florist, or they might simply want to know what a florist is. This is why “florist” has
a low competition score.
Doing keyword research
Keyword research is an essential first step of any content marketing campaign. You should be creating
content that matches the keywords that potential customers are using. Use at least two different
keyword research tools to build a reliable list of keywords.
Google Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Explorer and Searchmetrics
are three of my favourite keyword planners.
Use keywords to generate content ideas
Use a tool such as answerthepublic.com to turn your keywords into content ideas. Putting “buy flowers”
into this tool gives you 94 relevant questions that could become titles for your blog posts.
Creating content for your own site versus creating content for someone
else’s site
It’s important to build content on your website (as opposed to building content entirely on external
platforms). Your blog should be the home of the content marketing campaign.
Blogging for business
Why blog? 60% of businesses that blog acquire more customers. Businesses that blog will always be more likely to
acquire customers because they’re creating content that helps the website rank highly, they get customers engaged with
the brand and products, and encourage them to come back to the website for more.
Blogging has an SEO benefit. Your blog posts are web pages that Google indexes. A blog strengthens your on-site SEO,
lets you target specific keywords, and builds internal links to other relevant pages on your website.
Blogging enables you to keep control. Having external platforms as the main place that you build content is a risk.
Imagine that most of your customers come through Facebook. What will happen to your business when Facebook changes
the rules?
61% of online consumers are reported to have made a purchase
based on recommendations from bloggers
Using keywords in your content (onpage SEO)
There are six main ways to use keywords in your blogs:
1. Keyword in title (ideally front of title)
4. Keyword in the anchor text of internal links
2. Keyword in first 100 words of content
5. Images (file names, description, alt tags)
3. Use the keyword in your headings (H2)
6. Also use LSI keywords throughout the blog
1. Title
2. First 100 words
3. Heading h2
4. Internal links
6. Images
5. LSI keywords
Building a website that attracts users
(on-site SEO)
Don’t just build a webpage that attracts users, build a website that attracts users. Follow SEO best practice
(make sure you have a website that is ready for your content marketing campaign):
1. Site map (xml & html)
7. Improve website speed
2. Keywords in navigation bar
8. Image optimisation
3. Meta titles and descriptions (rich
snippets)
9. Mobile responsiveness
10. De-index non-public pages
4. Logical URL structure
11. Declare language (for multi-language sites)
5. Eliminate duplicate content
6. Fix redirects (301 > 302)
12. Make your blog a subdirectory rather than
a subdomain
Building links that attract users (offsite SEO)
There are some good reasons to build off-site content as well. Firstly, it may give you access to a far bigger
audience than you have on your own site. Secondly, you may be able to secure a link back to your website.
A guest post, a piece of sponsored content, a journalist piece: these are all excellent ways to build links to
your website. High-quality links are still one of Google’s most important ranking factors.
1. Earning links from authority websites (using DA as a metric).
2. Links from .ac, .org, .edu, and .gov sites are extra valuable.
3. While low-quality links (spammy links) can result in a Google penalty and should be disavowed.
4. Use a tool like Majestic to analyse your competitors’ backlink profiles
Comparing your backlink profiles
In this example, we can see the number of
backlinks pointing at the McDonald’s website
compared to the number of backlinks pointing
at the Burger King website.
We can also see each website’s Trust Flow
and Citation Flow. Trust Flow tells us the
quality of links pointed at a site, whereas
Citation Flow tells us the quantity of links
pointed at a site.
You can use a tool like Majestic to identify
your competitor’s most important backlinks so
that you can acquire them for yourself.
How to build links with content
marketing (off-site SEO)
Content marketing can help you build a strong backlink profile for your website. A
website with a strong backlink profile will rank highly, and a website that ranks highly
for the right keywords will generate an enormous quantity of traffic.
Here are some of the common content types we use when building backlinks:
1.  Directories
2.  Videos
3.  Infographics
4.  Articles (guest posts, sponsored content, journalistic pieces)
5.  Competitions / giveaways
Summary: Attract Users to Your
Content
1.  Use the right keywords to attract the right users
2.  Build content that attracts users (on-page SEO)
3.  Build a website that attracts users (on-site SEO)
4.  Build links that attract users (off-site SEO)
Using Content to
Convert Users
Plan a content marketing strategy
Content marketing should work as part of your company's overall marketing strategy.
Content marketing should be supporting a company to bring awareness, increase traffic, generate
leads and ultimately make sales.
First, answer these questions:
1. What is the company's website trying to achieve?
2. What do you want people to do on the website?
3. Who are your target audiences?
4. How can content marketing help you to get those people to your website?
Analyse your target audience
What types of content appeal to your target
audience?
Don’t guess!
Where do they spend their time online?
Use Google Analytics data and social media
insights to find out this information.
What are they interested in?
What are they reading?
Who do they follow?
Second, consider the following:
1. What is your value proposition and how can you best communicate this through your content
marketing?
2. What is your budget? Which types of content marketing are realistic for this?
e.g. articles are very cheap to create, videos are very expensive to create
3. What are the giants in your industry doing? What can you learn from them?
4. What are your direct competitors doing?
If they’re doing nothing, then great!
If they’re using content marketing, how can you do it better?
Make a plan
Third, the buyer’s journey
What is
the goal
of the page?
Call to action
(CTA)
A call to action is a piece of content intended to get a user to take a certain action. CTAs are typically
an instruction or directive (e.g. buy now or sign up).
Summary: convert users
1.  Remember the goal of the page –> the goal of the website
2.  Think about the buyer’s journey
3.  Target the right audience
4.  Communicate your value propositions
5.  Focus your CTAs on converting users
Measure
Success
Why measure content marketing?
Like all marketing activities, content marketing
should be judged on its ability to bring in a return
on investment (ROI).
It’s essential that your content marketing
campaign helps you achieve the goals that are
fundamental to your business’ success.
For most businesses, the fundamental goal is
sales. For most businesses, the content
marketing campaign should be judged on its
ability to generate sales.
Here’s how content marketing can become
profitable: Strong content will improve your
website’s ranking. Higher ranking leads to more
page visits. High page visits combined with a
good conversion rate leads to an ROI.
What are the essential metrics (KPIs)
for you business?
How does your content marketing
campaign reflect this?
Measure keyword ranking
improvements
The first result in Google gets 32.5% of the traffic.
The first page of Google gets more than 90% of the traffic.
When targeting a keyword, think
about how much content you’ll
need to produce to secure a first
page result. Calculate how
much traffic you’d need to
generate to offset the cost of
producing the content. You can
use a tool like SEMRush to track
your site’s visibility over time.
Estimate your anticipated ROI
Before you start a content marketing campaign, think about your anticipated ROI. This will help you
determine an appropriate budget for the project. To calculate your anticipated ROI, you’ll need to estimate
some figures:
- Expected organic traffic
- Expected conversion rate
- Average order value
A viable content marketing campaign must cost less than it brings in (have a positive ROI).
Track engagement metrics
Traffic is not the only important website. It’s just as important that users engage with your website in
meaningful ways.
If users are engaging with your website, then they are most likely getting value from your website.
When your users get value from your website, your business grows.
The key to effective content marketing is focusing on creating a good user experience.
Engagement metrics in Analytics
Bounce rate
The bounce rate tells you what percentage of visitors leave a page without taking an action.
A high bounce rate tells us that the majority of visitors aren't taking any actions on your page – they're
taking a look at the page that they've landed on, then they're pressing the "back" button in their browser
and heading back to the search engine.
A low bounce rate tells us that the majority of visitors are taking an action after landing on your website.
They might be going onto another page within your site, signing up to your newsletter, downloading your
app or adding your product to the shopping cart.
For most eCommerce websites, a low bounce rate is good and a high bounce rate is bad.
Using a reporting tool such as Raven Tools, you can track the bounce rate for our website overtime. You
can even discover the bounce rate for different sources of traffic. You may find, for example, that visitors
who come to your website through your newsletter are more likely to leave your website without taking an
action than the average visitor.
Average bounce rate by industry...
Retail sites have an average bounce rate of 20-40%,
while content websites have an average bounce rate of
40-60%...
according to a study by Kissmetrics
How to use engagement metrics
Just as we should measure the results of a
content marketing campaign, we should
also measure the performance of individual
pieces of content.
The aim is to identify the characteristics of
high-performing content for your industry so
that you can consistently create highperforming content.
1. 
Start Measuring: Pick one user engagement metric and start tracking it.
2. 
Get a baseline: so you know where you are currently.
3. 
Brainstorm: ideas that could improve your user engagement metric.
4. 
Prioritise: those ideas (looking for the biggest impact on engagement
with the least resources).
Use Majestic to measure the impact of
link building
Just as it’s important to measure the success of your
overall campaign and track your engagement metrics,
you may also want to track the value of your linkbuilding campaign.
Majestic is commonly used to track Trust Flow and
Citation Flow, which enable marketers to judge the
value of a prospective link.
You can also use Majestic’s backlink history feature to
see how your website compares with your competitors
over time in terms of backlinks earned.
Use Buzzsumo to measure social
success
Buzzsumo is an interesting tool that can help you measure the success of your content on social media
platforms. Specifically, it can quickly show you the number of shares that your content gets across
different platforms. This helps you do a number of things, including the following:
Identify your best-performing content (you should analyse why some of your content is more successful
than others)
Show you which social media platforms are working best
Spy on your competitors and see how well their content is doing
See the most shared pieces of content on a given topic for a set timeframe
The most shared “Trump” articles of
the last year
The most shared “flowers” articles of the last year
Summary: Measure Success
1.  Focus on the most important metrics for your business (avoid vanity metrics)
2.  Measure your website’s success
3.  Measure your content’s success
4.  When you find something that works, replicate your success!
Any questions?
Ask us about your content marketing strategy
Luke Nicholson
Charlie Marchant
rambutandigital.com
e: [email protected]
connect on linkedin
rambutandigital.com
e: [email protected]
connect on linkedin