SEO Promotion – Why and How to Properly Promote SEO Content for Better Traffic, Leads and Sales

Some people have so much success with their content marketing strategies that they have hundreds of thousands of readers. Of course, great content is a big part of the equation, but the other, often overlooked area of content marketing is content promotion.

Where there’s traffic there’s hope. A visitor is an opportunity for conversion, which could mean a lead, a customer or a subscriber. But no traffic means zero conversions; this is why content marketers work so hard at content promotion.

And we do it by being active in three areas: search engine optimization, social media marketing and email marketing. Certain content has advantages in certain channels, but every piece of content can be promoted in all three.

How to Promote Content for SEO Results

• Embrace Video for Social Media Promotion

Video marketing is projected to account for more than 80% of all internet traffic by 2019. The state of video marketing in 2017 is comparable to that of content marketing in the mid-2000s—companies understand the importance of incorporating video into their strategy, many just aren’t sure how to go about doing so. The landscape is underdeveloped and ripe for cultivation.

As per HubSpot, almost 50% of marketers are adding YouTube and Facebook channels for video distribution in the next year.

Today, you have companies like Wistia SEO-ifying transcripts (embedding your descriptions in metadata for a more streamlined on-page experience); and you have access to free tools like Lumen5, which make it easier than ever to create compelling videos with virtually no talent.

• Make Social Media Your Slave!

Connect with relevant people and engage them in conversation.

• Tweet it

Around a third of your tweets should be self-promotional links to your content. The rest should be conversations and promotion of other people’s content. When you tweet, add a few of these and you’ll increase the click through rate:

1. A hashtag
2. A special character
3. A question
4. A specific benefit
5. A number

• Targeted sharing: mention people who will love the article

Use a Twitter search tool to find relevant people with large followings who would be interested and likely to share. Mention one or two of them at the end of another tweet. Here are instructions explaining exactly how to find people who will love your article.

• After you tweet, follow a few people who are interested in the topic

Search twitter for people with bios that include words that are relevant to the topic of the post, then follow them. These people will see your recent tweet at the top of your stream. They’re more likely to follow you since the content is especially relevant to them at that moment.

• Tweet a quote from the content

Take a juicy nugget out of the post and use it in the tweet. If the post contains data or statistics, these make good quotes that you can use in tweets. It will increase the click through rate.

• Post on Facebook

Make sure there’s an image and that the headline looks good. Mention anyone whom you included in the article, if possible by means of tagging them. If appropriate, ask friends, family and co-workers to like and comment on the post. More interaction means it’s more likely to appear in more people’s streams.

Posting on Facebook for B2C type customer is a great way of not only engaging an interested audience, but also an invaluable way to spread the word for your product. For every comment or like you get, you’re inadvertently exposed to hundreds – if not thousands more potential followers and thus potential leads and sales.

• Post on LinkedIn

Same as Facebook: post, make sure the image appears, mention anyone relevant, and stimulate initial engagement. If you have a business page and a personal page, post it to the business page first, then share it from your personal page. This makes the re-post seem far more authoritative, and will allow anyone who intends on sharing it to do so from the original post. LinkedIn is the ideal platform for B2B type customers.

• Consider automating your social media platforms

Not everyone has the time available to promote each of their SEO masterpieces manually; rather than manually creating each and every tweet and LinkedIn post, promote your content using an automated tool.

With most automation tools, you can write the post once, but have it push to social networks over and over again, in a continuous rotation. Be careful not to be spammy in your content!

• Include others in your article, then email them encouraging them to share

Content that was created together with other people (or their input) is far easier to promote. One of the reasons that contributor quotes, roundups and interviews are so popular is that it is human nature to want to share with the world something you were part of, even if it was just adding a quote or one reference. So include others in your articles, and then once it’s live, send them an email, encouraging them to share. You can even provide them with pre-written tweets. Be sure to thank them on the platform they choose to share it on – this gains even more trust and traction for potential leads and customers.

• Create a monthly newsletter with a roundup you niche content

Newsletters are the easy way to stay up to date with the blog content. Anyone who signs up for your newsletter will get notifications once you post new content. This means you have automatic followers, and a far higher likelihood of having content shared on your behalf (which is SEO gold if you ask me!)

• Add your blog URL to your email signature.

Thus, anyone you contact via email can check it out. WiseStamp is a great app to try for anyone using Gmail or other browser-based email systems. It will even pull in your latest blog post into your signature.

• Ask and answer questions on Q&A websites.

Thousands of people are looking for answers on the web every day. You can create accounts on Questions & Answers websites such as Quora, Stack Exchange, and similar and start helping people by answering their questions.

The idea is to find topics that are related to your niche and be active in those sections. It will help you get your name out there and build the authority. You can direct people to read more relevant content that you have created on your website. Again, this creates traffic = leads = sales!

• Consistency is key! Have posts scheduled and blog consistently

Creating a consistent schedule of posting on your blog helps your readers know when they can expect to hear from you again, whether it’s daily, weekly, monthly or even quarterly. The key to maintaining publishing consistency is to be realistic. Individual bloggers will find it difficult to create high-quality content on a daily basis. Start with weekly or bi-weekly posts and work your way up to daily posts, if that is your ultimate goal. Just don’t sacrifice quantity for quality.

• Create a contest

People just looooooove competitions! Contests are an efficient way of increasing traffic and leads to your blog. Running a competition is not a rocket science, but you need to follow few steps to make it successful. Ensure there are rules, a deadline, T’s & C’s and of course – make sure your winner is publicly named to reinstate trust in you brand. Bonus point if you can get the winner to share your article, page or whatever was used to allow them to win. Word of mouth is another goldmine in SEO!

• Add social share buttons to your content

You can place sharing buttons at the top of your content, at the bottom of your content, or on the side, as a floating widget. Or you can use all of the options if you want.

• Don’t just use headlines when posting on social networks

Many people get lazy. They only copy the headline of the text add the link and post it on social media and waiting for a miracle to happen. It’s important to spend time on adding additional content to your social post depending on the channel you use. It could be more text to Facebook post, hashtags for Twitter, etc.

• Thank your readers for reading and sharing

Take time and thank all your readers for comments. Don’t get lazy. It would mean the world to them. Also, thank people for sharing your content on social media.

• Make your blog content into video content

The number of hours people spend watching videos (aka watch time) on YouTube is up 60% year-over-year, the fastest growth we’ve seen in 2 years

If you believe your audience would consume video content better or if you want to grow your YouTube channel, take your most favourite content and convert them into videos. It could be an explainer, screencast, or videos with your face.

If you want to bleed some of the traffic from videos back to your blog, don’t cover everything within the video. Instead, add links to your blog post below the video in the description. That way people can click on it and learn more at your blog.

There you have it, our top 15 picks for content promotion that are sure to get you noticed and make your content even more shareable!

If you need any advice, guidance or perhaps an agency to handle your SEO, click here to get in touch with us today!

Source credits: https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/content-promotion-strategy/

https://growandconvert.com/content-marketing/community-content-promotion/

https://firstsiteguide.com/promote-content/