Tag Archives: Content Marketing and SEO

August 20, 2019 · 3:56 pm

How Data Visualization Can Enhance Your Content Marketing

There’s never any shortage of online data. For marketers, this can be both a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, if you want to quantify the reach of your content or identify trends in your social media engagement, there are metrics available to give you the illumination you need. But at the same time, the process of setting benchmarks, establishing core measures, mapping the data, then interpreting it properly can be incredibly time intensive. When you’re already struggling to keep up with your routine content creation efforts, handling data and analytics may feel all but impossible.

But the answer isn’t to forgo the data-driven approach. Rather, it’s to implement the processes you need to make data-mining as simple and intuitive as can be.

Thankfully, there are some options available for small business owners, including both the incredible technological resources of Google Data Studio as well as the consultative services of agencies like Analytics Clarity.

It’s worth taking just a moment to examine how each of these vendors could help automate your data and analytics efforts, and ultimately make your content marketing more streamlined and focused.

The Benefits of Data Automation and Visualization

Google Data Studio is a unique platform that allows you to take different kinds of analytic data, both from Google as well as from compatible social networks, and turn that data into fluid, dynamic reports.

This may sound a little mundane, but actually, it’s a revolutionary service. Just some of the benefits include:

  • Through Google Data Studio, you can have key data automatically turned into a report. And that report will change in real-time, ensuring you always have ready access to the metrics you need.
  • You can choose to display the data in whatever visual format you like, making it easy for you and your team to understand the big picture.
  • You can share the visual report with key partners, vendors, and stakeholders; it’s as easy as sharing a Google Doc or a Google Sheet.

Meanwhile, when you work with a firm like Analytics Clarity, you can ensure that you’re always rightly interpreting the data, capturing even the subtlest trends, and making informed decisions about how to tweak or adjust your content marketing campaign.

Indeed, the kind of data solutions available today have really been game-changers for content marketers, who can now work with a much clearer understanding of how their content performs with target readers as well as Google Search algorithms. This has implications for everything from topic selection to CTA development.

Take a Data-Driven Approach to Content Marketing

It’s vital that you use data to guide your content marketing efforts; Analytics Clarity, a proud partner of Grammar Chic, Inc., can provide all the expertise you need to make smart use of Google Data Studio.

And, as you use that data to guide your content efforts, you can always reach out to Grammar Chic, Inc. Speak to one of our content professionals by calling 803-831-7444, or by visiting www.grammarchic.net.

1 Comment

Filed under Business Writing, Client Spotlight, Content Marketing, Social Media, Web Content

Tagged as , , , ,

January 12, 2017 · 1:11 pm

7 Content Marketing Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make in 2017

wrong-way-167535_1280

Many of us are still in the leaf-turning phase of the new year, eager to identify and implement key areas for personal and professional change. Perhaps some of your own resolutions include improvements to your company’s content marketing endeavors. And if not—well, maybe they should.

There is never a bad time to revise your content marketing mechanisms—to be more strategic about consumer outreach, relationship-building, and thought leadership. Getting more serious about content marketing can yield many benefits, and the good news is, making constructive content marketing resolutions doesn’t have to be anything too nebulous or complex: It can be as simple as learning from yesterday’s mistakes.

With that in mind, we’ve got some suggestions for you: Some content marketing mistakes we’ve seen before, and ones we encourage you to learn from as you move forward toward bigger and better content endeavors.

Mistake #1: Blogging Inconsistently

Anyone can resolve to start a blog. Even writing that first post can seem pretty easy. Maintaining robust and regular blog content, though, is another matter altogether—yet it requires consistency for you to keep your audience engaged, increase our search engine exposure, and develop your brand’s authority.

Mistake #2: Making Grade-School Grammar Mistakes

Be honest: Have you ever posted a company blog that interchanges your with you’re, or that mixes up their and there? These aren’t just little errors. They make your business look shoddy and unprofessional. Make sure you have a skilled editor proof your content before it’s posted.

Mistake #3: Overlooking SEO Opportunities

You don’t have to be a technical whiz to fill in the meta description for your company blog post (WordPress and other content management systems will offer you a place to do this), or to include a few judicious keywords in your posts and your titles. Don’t forfeit these opportunities to tell the search engine what your content is all about.

Mistake #4: Missing Email Marketing Opportunities

Remember that when you post a really good entry to your blog, it’s something you ought to be promoting everywhere—and that includes in emails. Your email marketing list is a great place to turn when you want to get attention for a new piece of content. Spread the word, and make sure you’re conveying real value to your readers.

Mistake #5: Misusing Social Media

Your Facebook and Twitter accounts aren’t just for promoting your latest products or sales, though that’s certainly a good use for them. You should also be using them to spread meaningful, value-adding content, though—not just your company blog posts, but curated content from other industry resources, too.

Mistake #6: Poorly Formatting Your Content

Are your company blog posts difficult to read—or difficult to skim? Sub-headings, lists, and bullet points can really make life easier for your readers. If nothing else, shorter paragraphs are generally recommended.

Mistake #7: Not Offering Value Through Your Content

It ultimately comes down to what you’re writing about: You should be developing content that truly makes life better for your readers, answering their questions and posing actionable solutions to their problems. Otherwise, why would they bother?

Content development happens to be our strong suit—so if you’re looking for a hand in making big content improvements in 2017, give Grammar Chic a call at 803-831-7444, or visit us at www.grammarchic.net.

1 Comment

Filed under Brand Management, Content Marketing, Content Writing, Email Writing, Social Media

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 1, 2016 · 1:29 pm

4 Keyword Errors That Can Tank Your SEO

seo-1746842_1280

Keywords are critical for successful search engine optimization (SEO), but they can also be stumbling blocks. We’ve all been to websites where the keywords were so dense and so awkward that the text didn’t read naturally, or offer any meaningful insight to the user. By the same token, you’ve probably struggled with blog posts or web pages that simply didn’t generate any SEO traction, likely because of insufficient keywording.

In other words, working with keywords requires some balance. To help you achieve it, we’re going to run down four of the most common keyword mistakes—technical errors that can sink your SEO endeavor. We’ll also provide some hints for avoiding them.

Common Keyword Mistakes—And How to Avoid Them

Only choosing short-term keywords. Before you can implement keywords, you have to select them—and many SEO novices spend too much time and attention on shorter, more general search terms. The problem with choosing a keyword like “plumbing” is that it’s just not how users tend to search for things; at the same time, it happens to be really expensive to rank for, especially with PPC ads. A long-tail keyword—“affordable plumbing in Charlotte, NC,” for example—better reflects user habits, and also provides more room to be competitive.

Keyword stuffing. When people ask us how many keywords they should be using, we generally just recommend that they use the words naturally. Keyword stuffing is when you use so many keywords that any semblance of meaning is lost. For example: “Looking for a good Charlotte, NC plumber? There are many Charlotte, NC plumber companies to choose from. Talk to a Charlotte, NC plumber by dialing into our Charlotte, NC plumber hotline today!” If your text doesn’t read naturally, you’re probably stuffing it with keywords—and that can actually lead to search engine penalties.

Going off-topic. Is your chosen keyword “Charlotte plumbing expert?” And are you using “Charlotte plumbing expert” 10 times within your text? If so, then the content needs to be about Charlotte plumbing experts. If it’s about something totally off-topic, that’ll just infuriate readers—and, again, land you with search engine penalties.

Forgetting title tags and meta descriptions. There are the most crucial areas for including keywords—so if you’re not filling them in strategically, you’re missing prime SEO opportunities!

Get Your Keywords in Order

If you’re struggling to balance content creation with keyword deployment, our Web copywriters would love to lend a hand. Contact Grammar Chic to learn more, either at 803-831-7444 or at www.grammarchic.net.

4 Comments

Filed under Business Writing, Web Content

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 25, 2016 · 12:50 pm

Why Content is Still King—And Always Will Be

content-is-king-4

Content is king. That was a popular phrase in the early days of search engine optimization, more popular still once content marketing started to take off. The meaning of that phrase is pretty simple: For whatever other gimmicks, tactic, or strategies you employ, high-quality and compelling content is the single most essential, make-or-break component of your marketing strategy.

It’s a useful phrase for a couple of reasons. One, it provides focus. SEO strategies tend to ebb and flow, as Google’s search algorithms themselves are subject to change—but the importance of content is something you can rely on. So long as you don’t get distracted from that simple premise, you can’t veer too far off course.

In addition, it provides some practical direction for your blog and Web content development. Your starting point is always going to be more or less the same: Devise topics and themes that not only align with your company’s vision, but that also offer practical, actionable value to your targeted readers. That first step sets your entire content development process in motion.

But content is king, as a marketing truism, has long drifted into cliché—and in some ways, fallen out of fashion. It’s enough to raise the question: Is content still paramount to effective online marketing?

Google’s Value Proposition

To answer this question, we need to step back and make a few observations about how search engines work; for the sake of simplicity, we’ll just use Google as shorthand here. What is Google’s ultimate aim with its search engine results page? Like any company, Google is trying to provide its customers with a product that is useful and satisfactory. In this case, the customers are search engine users; the product is the list of search engine results themselves. What Google needs to do to keep its customers happy is simple: Continue to provide useful, to-the-point search results that answer the questions search engine users are asking.

That’s the one constant thread in search engine optimization and content marketing. Algorithms may change and trends come and go, but Google is always going to have an interest in providing a valuable product to its customers—which means that algorithms are always going to be looking for content that gives users what they came for.

Not only does this mean content will always be king, but it suggests some helpful ways of thinking about what good, effective content really is. Consider this checklist of what high quality content should be:

  • Easy to navigate
  • Descriptive and accurate in its headlines and meta descriptions
  • Formatted to ensure easy skimming and reading
  • Engaging and well-written
  • Enriched with graphics, videos, and supplemental links
  • Actionable in its practical takeaways
  • Relevant to the targeted search engine queries

Keep this in mind as you develop content with search engine optimization in mind: You’re ultimately helping provide Google with its product—and so long as you develop something that Google’s customers want, you’re on the right track.

For help with this, don’t hesitate to contact the Grammar Chic writing and marketing team right away. Reach us at www.grammarchic.net or 803-831-7444.

1 Comment

Filed under Content Marketing, Content Writing, Web Content

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

October 16, 2015 · 3:25 pm

5 Ways to Sync Content Marketing with SEO

iStock_000013846060XSmall

Content marketing and search engine optimization are not mutually exclusive, and in fact the overlap can be significant. Many of our clients hire Grammar Chic to handle content writing, and separate SEO firms to handle the optimization; we work closely with these SEO pros to make sure the content we write is not only high-quality, but also ready for integration into a wider search engine marketing campaign.

Maybe your company has some irons in the fire both with regard to content marketing and SEO—and maybe you’re not sure how to make sure these two disciplines work together in tandem. The good news is that high-quality content tends to be a boon to SEO, and good SEO is usually transparent enough that it doesn’t tarnish the quality of written content.

How to Make Content and SEO Work Together

Still, it’s important to be strategic in how you integrate these two disciplines. Here are some tips to help you:

  1. Start with your goals. We’re always telling our content marketing clients that they need to know their destination before we can provide them with the road map—and that’s equally true of SEO. You need to know what you’re trying to accomplish, and what benchmarks you want to hit—whether it’s increasing traffic, getting links, or improving your online reputation. Set goals and make sure you have the same goals, or at least complimentary ones, for both content and SEO.
  1. Create buyer personas. There’s an old saying in SEO circles, that Google won’t love you until everyone else does. What this means is that the way to search engine success is to develop content that human readers find valuable. So, by developing buyer personas that help you tailor content to consumer preferences, you’re not just ensuring better content. You’re also ensuring more effective SEO.
  1. Do some keyword research. Use Google AdWords’ keyword research tools—or something comparable—to discover some useful search terms that relate to your business. Don’t overstuff your content with keywords, and in fact try to avoid a keyword density of much more than 1 or 2 percent—but do use those keywords to give some structure to your writing.
  1. Marry content writing with link building. Link building is very much an SEO activity, but it can also make your content more effective. Through link building, you may do some guest posting on authoritative industry blogs, which will only amplify your written content and expand your reach—a win-win.
  1. Conduct a content audit of your company website. You want to make sure your website is well-written and user friendly, but you can also look through it to appraise the SEO impact of your titles, headlines, and meta descriptions—all of which can make the site more palpable to search bots and Google algorithms.

And remember: Having high-quality content written is always an SEO boon. To enlist our writing services, we invite you to contact us at www.grammarchic.net or 803-831-7444 today.

4 Comments

Filed under Content Marketing

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,