Definition of content marketing

Content marketing is an essential part of any good digital and SEO strategy. The aim of this approach is to boost a company’s Google ranking and raise its profile through high-quality, relevant content, published on the company’s own website or via other distribution channels.

What is content marketing?

The cornerstone of any effective digital strategy, content marketing consists of designing and publishing content that is relevant, useful and offers high added value. The main aim of content is to legitimize the company’s expertise in its field and to establish its position in search engines.

Many possible forms

While we think primarily of article design, content can also take many forms, including :

• Blog articles
• Product tests, particularly for e-commerce
• Feature articles
• Infographics
• Videos

A key lever for visibility and brand awareness

Content marketing has established itself over the last few years as an essential lever for visibility and brand awareness, because it offers a number of advantages:

• Stand out from the competition by highlighting the identity, originality and creativity of your company or brand.
• Generate interaction with your core target audience. This can take the form of blog comments, newsletter subscriptions or social network shares, for example.
• Strengthening your brand image (e-reputation) and your legitimacy in your field among consumers
• Improving the popularity of your site and it’s positioning in search engines (SEO) by generating content and obtaining spontaneous backlinks (external links)

Why are content marketing and SEO linked?

While the primary aim of generating quality editorial content is to enable a company to communicate, it also contributes to strengthening its presence in search engines, and even to appearing on the first page of Google.

Using a lexical field to identify your pages

The position assigned by the American search giant to a given page on a site depends on a host of SEO criteria, including loading speed, usability on mobile and tablet devices, HTTPS certification and the quality of the external link profile.

But for Google to identify and position your web portal on a keyword directly related to your activity, it needs to find the same term in your pages. In this respect, the regular and recurring creation of quality editorial content gives you the opportunity to use the entire lexical field relating to your theme or activity.
This sends a positive signal to Google, which will then be more inclined to rank you higher.

The long tail to establish your presence

In search engine optimization, the expression “long tail” refers to queries made up of at least four low-volume keywords typed in by Internet users on Google or Qwant, for example.
The main characteristic of the long tail is that it is less searched for, but also less competitive.

While the resulting traffic is lower than that from a generic query, it is also much more targeted and therefore easier to convert. The long tail generally offers a very attractive return on investment (ROI).

The regular production of relevant editorial content enables you to use the entire lexical field relating to your activity and to facilitate the positioning of your pages in the long tail.

Netlinking, SEO and brand awareness

The Google algorithm was originally based on netlinking, external links pointing to the same site. The more links a site had, the more likely it was to appear in the top results.

Although thousands of other criteria are now taken into account, netlinking still plays a major role in the final score given to a page or site by the number 1 search engine. So it’s easy to see why it’s so important to get spontaneous referrals, particularly from other quality sites.

Publishing SEO content with real, high added value helps to make your organization a benchmark. In this way, you can spontaneously benefit from external links or shares via social networks. In both cases, this strengthens your reputation and visibility, particularly in Google.

An audit of your content strategy and semantic cocoon

In order for Google to identify your pages on a given keyword directly related to your activity, they must have quality texts with high added value. What’s more, the organization of the content across the site as a whole needs to be structured in such a way as to enhance the target pages. These are the pages most likely to generate actions such as subscribing to a newsletter, requesting a quote, making an appointment or even making a sale.

How do you find these keywords? What is their ideal density in a text, page or article? How do you create your semantic cocoon?

What is the purpose of a semantic audit?

The semantic audit aims to determine all the keywords to target for your business, terms that are likely to be entered by search engine users. These are the expressions on which your site already appears in the results, but also the queries on which it would be beneficial for you to appear.

Carrying out a semantic SEO audit therefore allows you to :

• Prioritizing the keywords on which it is essential to be present, in particular according to the expected ROI (return on investment) and the positioning of the competition
• Developing a genuine content strategy for each page
• Prioritizing this same content across the site as a whole
• Estimating the potential targeted traffic that can be generated by the editorial content

A semantic audit on its own is not enough to obtain subscriptions to a newsletter, make sales for an e-commerce site, or simply attract a larger targeted audience. On the other hand, it does help to maximize your visibility in Google results, for example, and therefore, as part of a visibility strategy, to increase your traffic on a long-term basis. In other words, the semantic audit aims to formalize the content that will attract prospects and, ultimately, convert them.

Ideally, the audit is carried out before a site is opened by one of SEO.fr‘s SEOs. However, it is never too late to carry out an audit.

What is the purpose of the semantic cocoon SEO technique?

A semantic audit enables you to identify the terms and expressions that need to be included in the editorial content of your showcase site or online shop if you hope to be better positioned in the search engines. But you still need to know how best to organize this information across an entire site.

By putting the user back at the center of this SEO strategy, the semantic cocoon aims to push a “target” page using pages placed at a lower level in the site’s organization chart. This architect relies on :

• Content that is semantically relevant and offers high added value. This means having first identified the key expressions related to your business (semantic audit) and devising relevant editorial content.
• Internal links that make sense to prospects or potential customers

This organization is based in particular on semantic continuity, with the target pages benefiting from the power of the intermediate pages, which are themselves linked to the deeper pages. This makes it easier for Google’s robots to understand each area of a merchant’s site, for example, and helps it to rank higher in the results.
In other words, the semantic cocoon helps to boost your positioning on the most competitive expressions.

Ideal keyword density for Google

To benefit from the SEO impact of quality editorial content and a semantic cocoon, the keywords related to the site’s theme need to appear in the same content. But then there’s the question of optimization. At what density is the impact significant? What are the limits that should not be crossed? In short, is there an ideal keyword count for Google?

The answer from the main person involved is unequivocal: there is no ideal percentage. Logically, any content designed in a natural way spontaneously integrates a broad lexical field and numerous key expressions. There is therefore no point in trying to ensure that a particular word appears at 4%, 5% or 6% for example.
On the other hand, there is a limit that must not be crossed. Over-optimisation and systematic keyword stuffing in H1, H2 or H3 may look like an attempt to manipulate the SERPs, which could result in a penalty.

Google does not base its assessment of a page’s authority on the repetition of a single keyword. Its analysis is more global and focuses on all the vocabulary used, in particular the presence of co-occurrences (synonyms), a rich lexical field (associated terms) relating to the page’s theme and meta-words.
The meta-word is a complex concept that brings together a large number of terms that make sense in relation to the main subject covered and make it exhaustive. This can include synonyms and words from the associated lexical field. But the concept is much broader than that, and on a page dealing with football, for example, you might find the names of competitions, trophies, famous players, the equipment used by a footballer or the names of rules. In particular, meta-words make it possible to create sets of complementary pages (semantic cocoon), each with specific subjects, but intrinsically linked to a page and to a more general main subject (depth of content).

It is the richness of your text and your site that will make sense to Google. Google always favors quality content, and its algorithm knows exactly how to distinguish between rich and basic optimization.

Semantic audit, competitive analysis of keywords, development of a content strategy, semantic cocoon, to boost your Google positioning, get in touch with one of the natural referencing experts at the SEO.fr digital agency to obtain a free quote.