How is content marketing related to SEO strategy?

SEO is a subset of content marketing. Search is one of the three main ways to promote content and drive traffic. Email marketing and social media are the other two main content promotion channels. Here's what it looks like with the funnel...

Search is part of traffic and traffic is half the battle (conversion optimization is the other half) Search is a wonderful because the visitors tend to be very targeted. The search terms indicate their intentions. They tend to convert at a higher rate than visitors from other sources.

And content is what pulls them in. Here's another view into how search fits into content marketing, shown in a series of pages rather than a funnel...

You can see a breakdown of the aspects of each page in this process here... Lead Generation: Website Best Practices

One of the best benefits of content marketing is that it makes a website so authoritative (high link popularity) that it begins to rank for the more targeted buyer-related keywords. Then it finally begins to convert like a champion, turning visitors into leads and customers.

Content + Social Media = Links (aka blogger relations)
Links + Keywords = Rankings and traffic
Traffic x Conversions = Revenue

It's a bit more complicated than that but that's the idea. Search is a super important piece of the content marketing puzzle. But you can't really do it without content and social media. 

And in the end, all the traffic in the world won't help you if your visitors don't convert! Anything times zero is zero...

The might and influence of a captivating content can’t be under- estimated as it has the potential to change your conversion rates, site traffic, customer engagement and product sales. If you are able to maintain the interest and attention of your targeted customers towards your site, you can easily contribute towards improving your business fortune and conversion rate optimization. With an appealing site content, you can easily win the hearts of your customers and conversion rates for your site. The basic essence of an engaging website is the effective content marketing tactics. Take a look at these tips that can be the game changer for your business.

1. Include an engaging product descriptions- Online shoppers who check a product for purchasing are equally interested in product descriptions for getting a brief insight about the product specifications. By making your product descriptions more engaging, store owners can persuade online visitors to shop from their particular site.

2. Make use of informative videos- Product videos are simply great for content marketing exercises as they can convey the desired message more effectively among your targeted customers. But, remember, these videos needs to be optimized and of short duration in order to be utilized effectively in your content. It has been shown by numerous studies that these informative videos have the potential to improve your conversion rates and site traffic to a great extent.

3. Take the help of useful articles- Pitching for the product sales every time is not a great idea while writing a website content or promotional emails. It just makes everything monotonous and rhetoric and thus affects the customer engagement on your site. For keeping your customers engaged to your written content, you need to share helpful articles regarding the interest of your targeted customers. For getting a fair idea about the interest areas of your site visitors, you can take the help of a click heat map tool that can provide detailed analytical report about the mouse clicks made by the visitors.

4. Utilize appealing photography in your content- An engaging content requires the good company of an eye grabbing product images for getting instant customer attention and for making significant improvement in your conversion rate optimization efforts. Moreover, it is said that “A beautiful picture is more than thousand words” and can bring people more closer to your store. Further, social media sites like Pinterest are making optimum use of the product images for making strong impact among your targeted customers.

5. Take the help of events like fun contests, polls and quizzes- Content marketing is the artful presentation of the content and is aimed at getting more public attention from your targeted customers. But, this difficult task can be made more entertaining and engaging by including fun contests, audience polls, quizzes and other events. These events can help your business entity in getting more social followers for changing your business fortunes.

Don’t forget content marketing is still the “king” for getting customer attention as well as better online search rankings. With smarter search engine algorithms and tough competition, it is time to bring more customers towards your site with an authentic, appealing and informative content.