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Why isn’t my content marketing working?!

“I create all this content, but we don’t get any leads from it. “Why isn’t my content marketing working?” If you’re a modern-day digital marketer, that probably sounds familiar.

But whenever other marketers are struggling to get a handle on a part of the marketing mix, there’s an opportunity for savvier marketers to storm ahead. We like to think of this topic in Moz’s terms: good unique content just isn’t good enough anymore. Your brand needs to develop what the lovely Rand Fish has termed “10x content” – content that’s ten times better than anything offered by your competitors. This is as true for lead generation and inbound marketing as it is for your SEO efforts.

Because in the digital age, should we really be separating SEO from PR, or content from web development? We say no – an integrated approach is the key to consistent messaging, improved ROI and creating those all-important marketing qualified leads.

Search engines agree: Google’s algorithm updates like Hummingbird and RankBrain place greater weight on searcher intent, not trying to rank on page one of the results with outdated, “black hat” SEO tactics like keyword stuffing to match popular queries. Search engines want to create a quality experience for users across channels – so if you want your content to rank and attract leads, you need to step in line with their thinking.

As marketers, we want to offer our customers and prospects that same thing: a great experience with our brand. Create content that answers searchers’ questions and you’ve done just that. As well as getting bonus points from the searcher and the search engine, you’ll have placed your brand front and centre in searchers’ minds, so it’s more likely they will consider your products or services when they’re making a purchasing decision.

Content creation is an area where you can race in front of your competitors if you invest a little time in planning at the very beginning. Base your content creation on popular keywords for your industry and your content will do some of the work for you – combine it with a strong inbound marketing strategy and it will really begin to fly!

Happily, this is not as complicated as it sounds. Here are a few tricks to ease the creative process and help you create sizzling content that aligns to your inbound marketing goals.

What content are people searching for?

The basis of any good keyword research is the Google AdWords Keyword Planner. Although it’s designed for use in paid search, it contains a wealth of information that will start your content planning on the right track. You’ll need to set up an AdWords account to use this, but using the planner itself is free.

Once you’re in the planner, input a few terms related to your business or products and you’ll receive a list of associated suggestions – usually a few hundred. Download these into a spreadsheet and you’ll easily be able to sort through them all. There are often a few suggestions that seem nonsensical, but keep going: there will be some gold in there. A good tip if you’re ever unsure of a keyword is to search for it yourself – autocomplete will turn up some suggestions you may never have thought of, and the search results will help you judge its relevance.

Make sure that you look at the average number of monthly searches each keyword you choose has too – this is a good indicator of popularity among searchers and how difficult it will be to rank highly for it in search engine results. This figure is a fairly rough number so it’s important not to take it too literally, but aim for relevant keywords that have around 10-200 searches per month – you’ll want to use the low end for B2B and go higher for consumer content.

Your aim is to find the long-tail keywords for content inspiration. Long-tail keywords are usually 3-4 plus words long, and are quite specific in their intent. For example, the title of this blog contains a long-tail keyword: “why isn’t my content marketing working?” – we practise what we preach!

If one of the search terms you discover in the planner is a good long-tail keyword that would inspire a piece of content in an area you’re expert in (e.g. “what are the benefits of converged infrastructure?” or “where should I look for a new television?”), your audience has told you what they want to know. You can then create content that answers the questions they’re already asking!

What search terms bring people to your website now?

Until recently, you could see all the search terms that led people to your website in Google Analytics, but privacy concerns led Google to remove this feature. Don’t mourn this highly useful information just yet – it lives on in a similar fashion in Google Search Console (formerly known as Webmaster Tools). Simply look at the Search Analytics section to see the data.

You’ll get a whole heap of keywords that you’re already ranking for, alongside the average page position for each term. Pretty cool, isn’t it? Once you know what’s leading people to your site, you know what your strengths are already in SEO terms. Capitalise on them by repackaging your existing content or creating brand-new content based on these ideas.

What are your competitors good at?

Chaucer borrowed from Boccaccio; Shakespeare lifted from pretty much everyone; you can get inspiration from your competitors. With online tools, you can get a glimpse into the keywords that are working for your competitors.

One of our favourites is SEMrush: input any website (making sure to change the country from the US default to your location if needed) and you’ll see the top performing organic keywords and search page positions for that site. Use this information to see where your competitors are doing well, and compare to your own results to uncover the topics you can overtake them in. If you use the free version only a few will be shown – for the full report you need a paid subscription.

All very well, you may think, but what do I do with this information? Use the best keywords as the basis of content topics, but don’t stop there: make sure you include the keyword in the content’s title and use it naturally throughout the copy. Optimise the title of the webpage that will host the content too, including the URL slug and meta description (many CMSs let you do this easily). Remember – it’s better to use one keyword for each piece of content and optimise that content well than to include all the keywords you want to target at once. Where SEO is concerned, it’s a game of divide and conquer.

By combining all these tricks you’ll end up with a comprehensive list of the content topics that will help you move the dial for your business. With these strategies, you’ll start to bring searchers to your site for expert answers and bolster your marketing lead generation (alongside making the sales team pretty happy!).

But with all this great new content, you might be wondering how you can spread the word further and attract prospects from different channels. Never fear, our experts will cover the ins and outs of content distribution for lead generation in part two of this blog series – stay tuned!