Barely a week goes by in the world of SEO without some kind of report into how the industry is fairing or which of the various methods of optimization practitioners should focus their efforts on. The latest report comes from Digital Marketing firm Econsultancy and content discovery platform Outbrain. It is centred on what has traditionally been one of the key elements of search engine optimisation: content.
Econsultancy’s first Content Marketing Survey Report is based on a survey of more than 1,300 digital marketing professionals working for brands, publishers and agencies. And, as surveys generally do, Econsultancy have produced some very interesting results.
The importance of good content in achieving a high search engine ranking will not be lost on anyone with an understanding of SEO, but it now seems that brands, publishers and agencies are cottoning on to the fact. According to the survey, some 90% of respondents believe that content marketing will become more important in the coming 12 months and 44% believe that content marketing is more effective than advertising when it comes to generating sales.
For SEO content providers out there, the fact that businesses are now appreciating the value of content will be very pleasing, as will the next statistic: only 38% of those surveyed on the client-side have a defined strategy in place and 55% plan to work on one. Get your keyboards at the ready content marketers, business could be about to pick up.
To hammer home the value of content marketing to anyone reading the report, Enconsultancy included reaction from high-ups at major corporations:
“Content is the voice of your brand and it is therefore important to allocate the respect, investment and focus it requires. Creating great content is difficult and delivering great content consistently through established processes is complex. However, this is what is required if you want to take your brand from good to great in today’s communication environment.” – Charles Obrien, Digital Marketing Manager at McLaren Automotive.
Objectives
So everyone now knows that content marketing is the way forward, but what are the objectives?
If you have great content on your website, the SEO aspect (i.e. backlinks and organic traffic) will take care of itself. Therefore it should not be too surprising to see that SEO is only fifth on the list of most important business objectives from those surveyed with 31%.
Content is only one piece of the jigsaw in a wider SEO campaign, but in an industry where social media marketing is taking over, it’s good to see that good old content is still receiving recognition. After reading through the survey, one phrase keeps cropping up in my head: “Content is King!”
