If you were to ask most well-known and respected digital marketing agencies, which seo ranking factors they think are an important ranking factors, and there are over 200, they are more than likely to say that it is white hat content marketing and backlinks  

Now, here’s the interesting thing, to earn high-quality backlinks, whether they be do-follow backlinks or no-follow backlinks, you have to have good-quality content marketing.

So, let’s say for example that your business manufacturers high-quality tennis rackets, which are custom-made by your company, now your business might have a company blog, which gives advice about tennis racket design, and also features blog posts written by well-known tennis players giving tips and advice about playing tennis.

Now because you have written this high-quality work, and you have given advice from well-known tennis players, which is obviously going to interest people who play the sport, you might start to earn high-quality backlinks.

So, as you can see content marketing and backlinks are two important ranking factors that are both work together. You often need to write white hat, quality content marketing to earn backlinks.

So, it doesn’t matter if you run a small business here in Cardiff, for example you might own a small woodfired pizza restaurant in Cardiff Bay, alternatively you might own a very large business that is based in the centre of Cardiff which employs hundreds of staff? If you want to get your business on the first page of Google, you often need quality white hat content marketing.

 

In this article we will discuss:

What is content Marketing?

Do I need to hire a high quality white hat content writer?

What is on-Site SEO?

What is a meta description?

What is a title tag?

Page Speed

Alt Text

Why good content is linkable

 

 

It really doesn’t matter whether you’re a global business employing thousands of people, or a sole trader- one thing is for sure, that is if your business needs to improve it’s SEO (search engine optimisation), then you’re probably going to need to invest in content marketing.

Whether you’re investing money or your time, there’s definitely a few things that you should know about content marketing.

In a nutshell not all content marketing is created equal, and what do we mean by that statement?

Well, it’s simply not a matter of looking at your direct competitors, and thinking well they have written 40 odd blog posts, if I were to write say 50 then I bound to beat that business.

Nope, this is a sure-fire way of your SEO failing.

So, what’s the solution?

Well, the solution is simple, invest in quality

Now we do appreciate that “quality” is a rather vague term, in matter of fact it can be used describe anything from a new car through to a loaf of bread!

So the description “quality” doesn’t tell us much at all really does it?

Yet with that said, here’s our best advice in a nutshell, that is quality content marketing can help to improve your seo, yet low-quality content marketing, such as work that has been duplicated for example, well, that could damage your businesses seo, and in some cases even mean that the business incurs a penalty.

Yet, with that said, we thought it would be useful for us to write a blog post that’s dedicated to explaining what quality means when it comes to writing content marketing.

Yet, if your in a bit of a rush, and you just want to just read the bullet pointed version, well here’s what we think makes a piece of content marketing quality:

·        Must be super useful– that’s in terms of answering the persons question

·        Well-researched

·        Backlinks that show where you researched the subject, for example did you extract a survey from a newspaper article online? If so link to the work via a backlink

·        Should include meta titles

·        Meta descriptions

·        Alt tags

·        Internal backlinks

·        Title

·        Over 1000 words

·        Well-written

·        H1-H6

High-quality?

Every piece of content marketing that you add to your company’s website should be high-quality, and what do we mean by this?

Well, allow us to elaborate a bit further….

Not created equal

So, let’s say that you run a plumbing business, let’s say that you specialise in boiler repair, so you look at which businesses are on the first page for “boiler repair” within your area.

And you think right, I will write the same number of articles, let’s say 30, and I will just quickly write say 500 words for each, sound like a good strategy?

Well, its most definitely not a good idea!

That’s because the content marketing must be of a certain quality (white hat) for it to improve your businesses seo, if it is not high-quality and white hat, that’s to say the content marketing is low-quality, well, this could damage your business seo.

It could even mean that your business incurs a penalty.

Penalties fall broadly into one of two categories, that’s to say they could be an algorithmic or a manual penalty.

If the penalty is algorithmic, for example if it’s a Google Penguin penalty, then this means that the algorithm that Google uses has flagged that your website does not meet Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Yet, if the penalty is a manual penalty, then this means that someone that works for Google has reviewed your businesses website, and found that it doesnt meet the Webmaster Guidelines also.

A business can see if it has incurred a manual penalty by logging into the businesses Google Search Console account.

However if the penalty is an algorithmic penalty, then often there will be no notifications.

A respected white hat SEO agency, like Adore should then be contacted as to what would be the best way for your business to recover from a manual or an algorithmic penalty.

However, the business that you use to help your business recover from the penalty, must be white hat, and must offer high-quality work.

 

Okay, so what do you think are the essential qualities that a piece of content marketing should have?

·        Well researched

·        Well-written

·        Written to help the reader, not written just to improve the businesses SEO

·        High-quality and better than other blog posts that are currently on the first page

 

What do we mean by “better quality than other blog posts or pages that are currently on the first page?”

Well, that’s a really easy one to answer, let’s say you’re about to start a business that builds garden fencing.

Yet, on the first page there are 10 businesses, each has written blog posts about how to build a feather edge fence, well, your business, if it’s to have stronger SEO than those businesses, must offer better quality content marketing.

So, for instance, you could make your blog post better by offering advice that’s clearer, for example a step by step plan, and also advice on how to build feather edge fencing on difficult ground, such as a slope.

Now, you might be thinking, well, we want to start a garden fencing business, why on earth would we want to give away advice on how a customer can build a fence themselves?

Well, here’s the thing, a lot of businesses give away free advice that’s because it’s used to improve the businesses seo, once the business improves its seo, then it can sometimes generate more business.

So, by giving away free advice, the business can benefit, that’s if the seo is done right

Here’s how a business can benefit from writing content marketing:

·        The business may receive more visitors to the website

·        The websites bounce rate may reduce

·        The business may obtain more quality backlinks

·        The businesses website may well be deemed more relevant, because it has applied white hat seo

And what do we mean by relevant?

Well, lets say that you run business, and your business sells organic beer, if your business is blogging about organic beer, and the work is white hat, then when someone is looking to purchase organic beer, then your website could be deemed more relevant, so it appears higher in the SERP’s.

So, what makes content marketing “high-quality”?

Research

You must do your research, so for example, let’s say you run a car dealership, and you want to start selling more electric cars, so you want to write a few blog posts about electric cars.

Well, before you start writing your blog posts, it’s a good idea to do some research, for example what’s the best-selling electric car?

Which electric car has the best range?

Which electric car can be charged the fastest, all of this information can then be incorporated into your blog post, which is much more likely to be a more interesting to read.

Know your business inside out

Your blog post should be written by an expert, so for example, let’s say you sell double glazing, its important someone with a high level of knowledge about your products works with your marketing company, this is so that the blog posts have a lot of detail about your products, which can help to improve your businesses seo.

References

It’s important to reference where you get your facts, so for example, if you found the model of electric car that was the best seller last year, you should incorporate a link to where you found that fact. Then you could ask your marketing company to add the link and the anchor text.

Googlebot follows links, that’s to say Googlebot crawls and indexes each businesses website, so if you were to write say 2000 words on the best selling electric cars in the U.K, then you may wish to add backlinks to where you read that information.

Then Googlebot can follow those links, and many SEO agencies think that if you incorporate facts into your blog posts, and these facts are correct, that’s because Google has knowledge of these facts through its Knowledge Vault, your website can start to be deemed a source or reliable information.

So for example, you may mention a make and model of a car, and how many were sold last year, when you may state the number of cars that were sold, you could highlight say the number, lets say its 10,0000, and then link to the article where you read that number of cars that were sold.

Many seo consultants believe that if your website contains a lot of reliable facts, and this can if done in a white hat way this can improve your company’s seo.

Well-written

The content marketing should be well written

You should most definitely not grab a double shot espresso and then just start typing thousands of words, as this is likely to be a low-quality article, and if it overly focuses on improving the businesses seo, and not offering reliable information that’s been researched, well, its likely to damage your businesses seo and not help to improve it.

Will the content marketing help the reader?

This bit is crucial, so many businesses make the mistake of writing content marketing just to try and improve the businesses seo.

So for example, lets say you run a law practice, and you want more customers who would like help and advice in terms of employment law,well you may start writing “employment law solicitors” a high number of times, in a poor attempt to try and improve your businesses seo for this term.

We would highly recommend that you do not do this, as your business could incur a penalty.

So, what’s the solution?

The solution is to write high-quality content marketing that will help someone who’s needs an employment solicitor.

So, for example, the marketing company then may work with the solicitor, that’s to work out which questions the business gets asked a lot, and to write blog posts that answer these questions.

Then you could write a blog post that answers these questions, this could help to improve your businesses seo.

Must aim to be the best

The work should aim to be the best.

How can you improve the SEO of each piece of content marketing?

Structure

Each piece of writing should have structure, so for example make use of titles, H1- H6 tags.

Word count

We would recommend a high word count, but the work must also be quality.

Page speed

The website should load quickly.

Mobile friendly

The website should be mobile friendly.

Amplify

The business should work with the marketing company to amplify the content marketing.

How we can help:

If you would like a quote for SEO, then why not call us?