Author: Graeme Lund
Content advertising is the publishing of articles about your business, services or products on the internet. It is important to note that this form of advertising only works if the articles can be found by potential customers.
For content advertising to work (in other words, for the article to be found) there are two crucial aspects. Firstly, the article must be published on a website that is well liked by search engines and, secondly, the article must be written and uploaded onto the website in a particular manner to ensure that search engines will place the article at or near the top of their search results.
What makes content advertising so effective
Correctly prepared and published content advertising is perhaps the least expensive and one of the most effective forms of advertising available. Here’s why:
- It improves your own website SEO because of the backlinks to your website
- It improves the ranking of your Google Business Listing and your exposure on Google Maps because of the digital citations
- It reaches a huge audience because it has been written in such a manner that it answers commonly asked questions placed on search engines.
- It generates a constant stream of business. The article is there to stay.
- It will be found when people search for your business name.
- Gives your business, services or products third party endorsement.
- You can place links to the article on your website and social media once again generating third party endorsement of your business.
- You can use the article as content for your website. It will improve your website SEO.
Content advertising and its effects on the first page of a search engine result
Content advertising that has been correctly posted on a good website should be found on the first page of a search engine result for the company name or for the products and services. In addition, the content advertising can affect almost every aspect of the search result.
The below example of a search for “Frontline Market Research”, a business that specialises in market research, is a typical example of a search engine result.
The usual order in which information appears on a Google search result can be divided into four groups:
- Paid advertising at top of the page (Yellow)
Content advertising has no effect on paid for advertising. Up to four paid search result listings may appear at both the top and bottom of a page. These are usually competitors of the company or the company’s products and services for which the search was done.
- Google Business Listing on right side of page (Orange)
If a business has a Google Business listing correctly registered then the listing will appear on the right side of the page.
Correctly written content advertising provides a digital citation for this business listing which helps verify the Google Business listing and ensure that it actually appears on the search result.
- Company URL in the top middle of the page (Blue)
The companies URL together with its SEO description and meta description should appear in this location. If a business has very bad SEO, the search engine may not even find the correct business URL.
Correctly written content advertising provides invaluable backlinks to a company’s URL. These backlinks help the search engine to verify that the URL is current, valid and functional and will thus ensure that the company URL shows up in search results even if the company website has bad SEO.
- Social Media in the bottom of the middle of the page (Purple)
Search engines almost always place a company’s social media websites under the company website. These include twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.
The first paragraph of all content advertising should be placed on social media with a “read more..” link to the website hosting the content advertising. This helps improve the ranking of the company website, the Google Business listing and it helps the search engine match the correct social media to the correct company.
- Content advertising at bottom of page (Green)
The content advertising, if correctly written and placed on a well-liked website, will land up at the bottom of the search engine result first page.
Well written content advertising
For a potential customer who is trying to determine which company is best, content advertising can be the decider as it provides third party endorsement, verifies the companies importance and the content often answers questions that the company’s website and social media do not.
There are many factors which contribute to making an article an effective form of content marketing. It takes a lot of practice and a mix of creativeness and science to make an article really effective.
These factors include using the correct key search words, the correct use of these key search words, the length of the article, the use and labelling of images and the correct uploading of the article onto the website. Click here to find out how to write an article on your business for a website.
Need assistance with an article or other marketing? Contact Agency One on 082 556 4043 or email graeme@agencyone.co.za