In September 2013, Google announced Hummingbird, which was designed to focus largely on addressing and understanding of natural language. It pays attention to individual words in a query, making sure the entire sentence, meaning or conversation is taken into account, rather than individual words.
Soon we will see the improvement in the understanding of what pages best match users’ intent and how comprehensive a particular page is in addressing their needs.
With this in mind, well-crafted content will remain a crucial ranking factor. As Google puts more focus on evaluating user engagement and content’s usefulness on pages ranking higher in search results, semantic content optimization is a hot topic in the digital marketing industry.
More users choose to use “conversational search”: For example, to get a definition of this term, you’d say “what is conversational search” instead of of searching “conversational search definition.”
Semantic search delivers intuitive results based on users’ intent, and takes advantage of contextual clues instead of keywords to deliver the best matches for your queries.
What is high-quality PR content?
For years, we we’ve heard that content is the king of digital marketing. Though everyone is putting emphasis on the word “quality,” not many are aware of what it encompasses.
[RELATED: Attend the Brand journalism for the internal communicator workshop, and write stories that engage and inspire employees.]
Namely, when we say a certain page’s content is relevant for a particular query, it means it meets the needs of a large number of people who land on it.
If they are looking for information on the product or service, it has to be present on the page and relatively easy to locate. It must provide visitors with confidence that it is from a reputable source, and the overall website design has to provide an engaging experience.
How great content builds trust
Customers are getting smarter, and yesterday’s marketing mumbo jumbo might no longer convince them of your message. They easily distinguish the low-quality PR content from that which is worth reading, and appreciate the latter, which slowly builds their confidence in a particular brand.
What customers wish to feel is like they are making an informed decision, thus appreciating content which will tell them if the deal is good—or too good to be true. By producing substantial content, you become a go-to expert to your customers.
They look at you and your organization as a friend and informant, and gladly will go back to you whenever in need of relevant information.
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Outstanding content targets emotions
Your potential customers seek a connection to your organization. Presenting them with valuable PR content can activate their emotions and psychological triggers, which drive them to learn more about you and ultimately make a purchase.
Here’s what digital marketing expert Sam Cyrus from Sydney SEO agency says:
Overly-optimized, low quality content is emotionally sterile and does not contribute to building confidence and trust; your customers need to know what kind of change your business will bring to their lives, how it can improve them.
Long-term investment
Traditional campaign-based marketing focuses on investing resources and measuring subsequent results of a particular campaign. If it proves successful, it generates high return on investment. Then you invest more resources, measure its ROI and so on.
The issue here is that once the campaign ends, so do returns.
With content marketing, you ensure continuous returns by making a long-term investment. Every new blog post, white paper and case study are assets for the future. Each adds value to your organization’s website.
There are no quick returns, but continuing to publish relevant content produces long-term results.
To determine the quality of the PR content you produce, evaluate the following:
· Is my content unique?
· Does it meet the needs of target customers?· Does it clearly define how the product/service is used?
· Is my product/service beneficial for the customer? Do I provide strong evidence of that?
· Is the language easily understandable?
A simple one-to-10 scale will do the trick. Once your PR content scores an eight or higher, it’s ready to go public.
Blake Davies is a marketing consultant and the editor of Media Gurus. A version of this article originally appeared on Spin Sucks.
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