Brafton has reported that firms cite content marketing as a priority in 2011, and a recent statement from Google indicates that investing in fresh and well-written content will be necessary to reaping search engine optimization benefits. Matt Cutts said in a blog post that the search giant will be invigorating its anti-spam efforts to ensure that only good content ranks well on the web, and marketers may be advised to be equally discerning when developing content for their sites.
Cutts said, “As we’ve increased both our size and freshness in recent months, we’ve naturally indexed a lot of good content and some spam as well. To respond to that challenge, we recently launched a redesigned document-level classifier that makes it harder for spammy on-page content to rank highly.”
Brands should be sure to offer content that is frequently updated, well-researched and newsworthy if they hope to rank well in Google. To this end, Brafton has reported that B2B marketers investing in content this year say working with journalists may be a good solution to content marketing. This may suggest that investing in resources for content will be a competitive necessity this year.
The investment could pay off; Brafton has covered a study proving that blogs drive more beauty purchases than magazines. Nearly one in five of the respondents to that survey said the blogs with the most influence over their purchases were ones they “stumbled upon” through search. And now Cutts makes clear that only quality content will be easily discovered via search.
In light of the fact that 75 percent of Americans look for news online, marketers might consider using custom news marketing to keep their sites full of fresh, relevant content that will appeal to both search engines and consumers.
