Update Your Content Marketing Strategy for 2020

Why is content marketing important?

A thorough content marketing strategy can build a reputation for your brand. Good quality content is essential in modern times to earn the trust of your viewers. A positive brand reputation is the goal of every brand out there.

If you want to get ideas on how to create content that would initiate conversations and get viral, I suggest following officialsocialsamosa on Instagram. They share how different brands mould trending content into their brand image.

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A post shared by Social Samosa (@officialsocialsamosa) on Dec 31, 2019 at 6:12am PST

Content marketing has proven to increase conversion rates by 6 times compared to other digital marketing methods. (Source: ABG Essentials) If your content is SEO-optimized, its like killing two birds with one stone. (just for a metaphor, I don’t support animal cruelty)

According to Tech Client, business sites that post consistent blog content have on average of 434% more pages indexed by search engines compared to those that don’t.

Content Marketing Trends in 2020

Over 50% of the searches will be voice-driven in 2020

I want you to notice the changes happening around you. There are more people using smart devices like Alexa and Google Home. What does that mean? That means more searches will now be using voice commands. According to Comscore, more than 50% of the searches will be voice searches in 2020.

Voice searches are of conversational nature. They are made by most people when they are looking for solutions locally. It is quite obvious that voice searches are longer than text-based searches because it takes lesser efforts.

To optimise your content for voice searches, focus on long-tail keywords. You can get an idea about the type of questions that people ask by using the tool, Answer the Public. I have explained in detail about this tool in a previous blog post: How To Do Keyword Research For SEO And Apply It On Your Site

Creating FAQ pages is another great method to optimise your content. Build the FAQ page or pages around the long-tail keywords which you are targeting. Keep the questions and answers sound as natural as possible so that they can be easily understood even by a layman.

Headings make it easier for Google to understand your content

Are you using headings in the correct way? A great piece of content comes with headings and subheadings sectioning the information. It makes it easy for the reader to scroll and find the topic they’re interested in.

Make sure to use the header hierarchy in your content in 2020. Organized headings make it easier for Google to understand your content and crawl it. Headings affect your SEO indirectly. They make your content more easily scannable and readable, which is an important factor affecting SEO.

You can use your focus keyword or its synonyms to lay emphasis on what your page’s content is about. But the key is to do it in a very subtle manner. If you overdo it, it looks tacky. It shouldn’t look like it was forcibly stuffed into the heading just for SEO purposes.

Earn Featured Snippets on search results to boost your readership

According to Search Land, 50% of the searches don’t end up getting any clicks. Why so? It is because of the featured snippets feature of Google.
Google finds the answers to the person’s query and displays it in a nutshell in a featured snippet.

To earn a spot at this zero position is a bit hard but not impossible. I targeted the keyword ‘home decor items under 1000’ and earned the featured snippet for it.

One quick tip to get a featured snippet is, use a table structure or bullet points to explain the topic. Most articles which get featured answer a question: What, When, How, Why etc.

The importance of headings comes into play here too. I used headings to list different home decor items. The headings were crawled and displayed them in the form of a bullet list. At the beginning of each piece of content, you should also add in some quick answers to satisfy Google’s rich snippet requirements.

Google Medic Update favours you when you create content in your niche

Google rolled out a Medic Update to its search engine algorithm. It is one of the biggest updates and has created turmoil in search engine rankings of websites.

If you specialize in tech content and you post an article on health or finance, it won’t rank high in search results. It doesn’t matter how much domain authority or page rank your site has. Google will immediately turn it down, it wants you to write in the field of your expertise.

To make your site look trustworthy, have a clear about me section or a bio. Mention your social media links so that you look like a trustworthy entity.
Another thing that you can do you build trust is guest posting. When you are guest posting, the other site should be popular and be of the same niche as yours.

Also Read: How To Do Keyword Research For SEO And Apply It On Your Site

Personalized Categories for your readers to choose from

The easiest way in which I can explain this is through my blog’s homepage. Head on to my home page and what do you see? The very first thing on the page is the question, ‘What do you want to read about?’
After this question, the 6 categories are listed:

This makes it easier for the reader to navigate to their category of interest. It will reduce the bounce rate of your site and make the audience engage more with your content.

Put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Wouldn’t it be hard for you if have to scroll down many posts to find the ones you want to read? Neil Patel’s blog has a variation of this feature and it works pretty well. Shoutmeloud blog by Harsh Agarwal follows the same method on its home page.

Include Carousel posts in your Content Marketing Strategy to boost engagement

I’ve seen this change myself. Carousel posts which provide tips or answer to a question in one-liners are trending. As they make people keep swiping, it increases their time spent on your profile. This, in turn, boosts your engagement.

Such type of posts is easy to understand, likely to get more shares and saves by people. Your content marketing strategy must include creating such posts on Instagram.