Why Content Is Still King
“Content is king” you’ve heard that before, right?! When the internet was just a dream and print content was all there was; Content is King was the undeniable truth. However, how is it that in today’s landscape where online content dominates print content, many of the world’s top SEO and web marketing experts still say that “content is king.”
“Content marketing is the only marketing left.” Seth Godin.
If you’re in business today you’ll know that marketing has changed dramatically. Customers have more choice and so they are more discerning. Marketing activities that worked well a few years ago probably won’t have the same results today.
Why is this the case? That even after decades, no matter the medium, content is still the crux of good marketing?
It’s what builds loyalty. Businesses aren’t built on first-time visitors. Companies like the Wall Street Journal don’t make most of their money from people picking up their papers for the first time. They make money from people who’ve read their content and then decided it was good enough that they either want to purchase again or purchase a subscription. If the business had to get a new customer every time in order to get paid, they’d all have gone under by now. Yet many online publications approach their business that way. Instead of focusing on repeat visitors, they focus on optimising for search engines so they get more new customers. At the end of the day, however, the really famous and successful blogs like Huffington Post or TechCrunch ultimately still get most of their traffic from repeat visitors. Yes, search engines love them – but their businesses would be a fraction of what they are today if they didn’t have great content.
The evolution of search engines
For many years Google and other search engines have worked towards making their search results pull up better and better results. They want people who search on their engines to find the best content possible in relationship to what they’re looking for. As search engines get smarter, marketers who focus primarily on marketing tactics rather than actual content will die away.
Google has proven this repeatedly by continually downgrading the importance of low-quality links and upgrading the importance of usage statistics and other metrics to actually measure the content of a website. If you build your website around great content while having a decent understanding of basic SEO, your site will flourish. If you put all your attention on SEO and don’t pay much attention to your content, you’ll always be trying to stay one step ahead of the search engines.
So will content still be king in 2018?
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It gives you the ability to sell higher ticket items
A low quality content website might be able to sell $0.20 clicks via AdSense. But a high quality website could sell $5,000 DVD sets by the hundreds. Having great quality content allows you to build a relationship with your readers. That relationship allows you to sell any number of things to your readers. From high end items to recurring memberships to one on one coaching, it all starts from having high quality content. In the long run, only content that really helps people is going to succeed. Content that doesn’t is likely to get downgraded more and more as time passes.
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It encourages engagement
Good content encourages readers to respond and share. Poor content will not get the same degree of engagement, if it gets any at all. This engagement and sharing can really make a difference to the impact that your post has, so make sure you make sharing easy and that you give your content a good airing on social media.
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It will help your SEO
Original high-quality content will have a significant impact on SEO and a blog’s SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position). Consistently publishing good quality content transitions your blog into an authority and creates many more opportunities for other sites to link to you (creating a rise in backlinks). Also publishing this unique content regularly will help a website rank organically for relevant search terms and keywords. The higher the ranking, the more potential traffic it can gain.
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It can increases traffic
This original quality content will also help to drive traffic and lower the bounce rate. People will be more inclined to click onto another post if the site is packed with fab content.
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It can help to generates new leads and sales
Good content can heighten brand awareness and give you an edge in a saturated market. The more awareness people have about your brand, the more chance you will have to turn this awareness into sign-ups and sales.
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It can add value to your products and services
Content that can add value and solve a problem for your readers will be very much appreciated. If your product or service can then be positioned to be a further benefit in helping them with their issue/problem it will feel less ‘salesy’ and more congruent.
HOWEVER! The King can’t rule the land alone!
Why content can’t be all we focus on?
There will always be brilliant talented writers that don’t succeed. Sad, but true. Fabulous, engaging content will not set you apart from the crowd on its own.
Nope, sadly it won’t!
Promoting that awesome content is also super important. You can write as brilliantly as you like or shoot the most engaging videos, but if no-one knows about them it doesn’t matter what you create.
It’s not a ‘easy’ as to create epic content. EVERYONE produces epic content. You need to Promote it epically as well.
Promotion is key. Oh and conversion matters too!
Can you make the most of the visitors you get by converting them? Making a sale? Getting them to subscribe? Otherwise you will need to keep getting those new visitors again and again purely to keep your traffic numbers up. Instead you need to ‘funnel‘ these visitors into something that will help them remember you (like signing up for your list) so you can start to build a relationship with them.
Sometimes the content that wins is just alright…. not brilliant or epic, just alright, passable content. Maybe with a click bait headline added for good measure. Sometimes average wins, which proves that content is not always king.
Amazing content will not always be the content that makes the most money. Heard of the starving artist?! Some of the sites with average content but lots of traffic will be cashing in on revenue from ads.
So, is content dead? No, definitely not. However, creating epic content alone is not going to guarantee your success. You need to also promote that content. Think outside the box and try to find ‘your thing’ that will help YOUR epic content stand out from everyone else’s!
