In their infancy, search engine optimization (SEO) strategies were questionable at best—businesses stuffed clunky keywords like “best product in Baltimore” all over their websites in hopes of attaining the top spot on search engine results. Clearly, this made writing quality content difficult—and frankly, boring—to read with so much text focusing purely on search engines and not on readers.
In recent years, though, SEO has evolved to now emphasizing the need for original and informative content. Businesses have increasingly begun developing blog posts, white papers, eBooks, and so much more; the expectation is more about providing valuable insight instead of climbing up the search result list.
As content evolved, two important new SEO strategies were born: content mapping and content clusters. Let’s explore both.
Content Mapping
Content mapping is all about personalization—it gives you a concrete plan that allows you to deliver the right content to the right person at the right time. If this mantra sounds familiar, it’s because it’s also part of a successful account based marketing strategy. Content mapping takes into consideration several critical elements of your target audience, including their buyer persona, stage of the funnel, and preferences for content consumption. For example, one person might prefer bite-sized social media blasts, while another might love reading longer, informative blogs.
While this may not seem like very actionable advice, it’s true: your specific content map will depend entirely on your industry, buyer persona, and their stage in the decision process. This way, when prospects ask you questions, you can answer them by providing helpful and engaging content. If you find that you are having trouble connecting with certain buyers, we recommend experimenting with relevant iterations until you find one that sticks.
Content Clusters
Notably, the idea of content clusters is a relatively new part of SEO. Its goal is similar to that of content mapping: to make content more relevant and interesting for the prospect. Content clusters, though, drill down on mapping in order to expand on and more accurately map related content topics together.
For example, let’s say you’re an audio/visual services firm with several different product offerings. While you might be inclined to write on different topics within one month, content clusters call for you to group similar topics together for an expanded and thorough discussion based around a single (or very similar) keyword(s). Once the topics in the cluster are determined, you can then map each blog to a specific buyer persona.
Consider this: if digital signage is your cluster topic, you might be inclined to write blogs on the benefits of digital signage and how digital signage is changing corporate communication. While these two are technically different topics, they both revolve around the same kind of keyword: digital signage. And by incorporating this keyword into different (but still original) pieces of relevant and informative content, you are solidifying your SEO game.
Final Thoughts
Despite their clear SEO (and overall) benefits, content strategies are unfortunately underutilized by businesses—and to their own detriment. In fact, Moz found that only 27% of B2B businesses have a well-defined content strategy. Those companies are missing out on developing and maintaining a well-rounded account based marketing strategy with content at the helm.
Content mapping and content clusters help you strategically focus your content marketing strategy to gain more organic search engine results while you develop more genuine relationships with your prospects and clients. Luckily, developing content is a creative task, so if you find you aren’t seeing results one way, you’re encouraged to try it another way.
Contact us today for more tips on creating a successful content and SEO strategy.
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