Content Marketing: a primer for business people who want to get found quickly on the Web

What's the easiest, fastest, smartest way to get marketing results for your business on the Web?

Here's a clue...it's in the tag line of this blog: Content Marketing! Here's why I say that...

Imagine you're starting out online - maybe you've been in business forever, but you're just taking your business onto the web. You don't have a large staff or a big budget. You look at the Web from your own perspective and try to imagine how your potential customers would search for you.

They'd use certain keywords, wouldn't they? Maybe you don't know squat about "keyword optimization" or "search engine marketing" or any of that. But I'll bet you can guess how your prospects might look for your products and services, can't you?

Okay, that's step one. You might want to use a keyword tool like the one at www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com to see which keyword phrases are more popular. Or not.

You can guess what the next step is... put up lots of pages on your site writing about what your company can do for people. What are the benefits they get from using your products and services?

Then use sentences with lots of those keywords so that the spiders or robots or whatever they call those automated indexing systems can do their work. They try to match up search requests with pages on the web that have those same words in their content. Get it?

Of course, the key is to write well so it engages your readers. You want them to know, like and trust you and your company's services or products. Use the keyword phrases in a way that makes sense.

HINT: Write your content for meaning first, then edit for keyword placement. That will make your writing flow more naturally.

Simple, right? Okay, I'm no techie, but that's my understanding of the way search engines work. I'm talking about what's called "organic search strategies." (The SEO experts may be laughing up their sleeves right now, but too bad.)

Stick with me here, I'm trying to help out some of you people who may be recovering techie-twits like myself. Just want to make this simple and easy to grasp so you can start writing content that naturally markets your business on the Web.

Step two: make a list of all the different keyword phrases and a list of topics or categories your readers would find interesting and relevant to their needs.

Step three: write those pages! A blog is an obvious choice for creating content pages that are keyword rich.

There's a lot that goes into writing and publishing content that markets well for your business. I'm thinking about writing a series on content marketing this week and next to cover all the nuances I've learned over the years, so stay tuned.

Oh, and if any of you readers are search engine experts and want to set me straight on all this, please do! My goal is to make this easy for the average person to understand and use in their writing so that they will get maximum "Google juice" with content pages on the Web.

Related Content: www.ContentforCoachesandConsultants.com

Related Posts:
Content Marketing: a primer for business people who want to get found quickly on the Web
Alex Geana: Portrait of how one professional uses content to market online
How to Write Content That Markets Your Company (Or, What would Seth do?)
Content or Marketing or Both? All Content Is Marketing
Coach & Consultant Marketing: An Interview with John Agno

 

Comments

[Jeanne May]

Hello Patsi...

I'm always reassured reading your posts -- like you I am no techie! this made perfect sense and I got the hang of what you are saying!

Totally agree with your point about writing content first and then editing for keyword placement and optimisation as much as you know how to do. For a while I got caught up in trying to do SEO stuff and I know I lost perspective on content. After all, providing content for readers is what I'm blogging for.

Jeanne

[Patsi aka The Blog Squad]

Thanks for stopping by, Jeanne, and I'm glad this makes sense. I just found out a few more tips that I'll share soon.

[Newt Barrett]

Patsi,
I wrote a post yesterday based on this article. I loved it. I did a trackback, but don't see that it was captured.
Here's the link: http://contentmarketingtoday.com/2008/09/12/how-to-be-discovered-on-the-web-content-1st-key-words-2nd/
Cheers,
Newt

[Patsi aka The Blog Squad]

Thanks for stopping by, Newt AND big thanks for the post! Actually I got wind of it via Google Alerts, but that is probably because I didn't pay attention to my trackback notification. I am honored, and I give a little curtsy to you for all you do to spread the content marketing gospel!

[Suzanne Bird-Harris]

I so appreciate that you point out the key is to write well so it engages your readers. Too often, I see bloggers and website owners defer too much to SEO strategies in their writing and that puts me off. So far as I know, no search engine is going to buy ANYONE's product or service - it's still the people (your visitors) who are your prospective customers, so when in doubt, defer to the human eyes. There are just too many other ways to appease the search engines to put up crappy content, IMHO.