3 Ways to Increase Sales Using SEO and Content Marketing

It’s common knowledge that SEO is crucial for attracting relevant traffic to a website. On its own, however, it doesn’t have much impact on what those visitors do after they land on your site. Will they convert or will they leave? That’s why you need to align your SEO efforts with content marketing if you want to drive more sales for your business.

In a way, content marketing and SEO are closely interrelated. They both need each other to deliver a bigger impact and an all-round benefit for your business. Here are three ways to use SEO-driven content marketing to increase sales:

#1: Create and Optimize Content for Voice Search

It’s much easier to speak into your phone than to type something. Especially when you’re in the middle of something. So it’s no surprise that voice search is becoming even more popular. Realizing this, companies are developing and enhancing voice search technology to make life simpler for consumers.

But people who use voice search aren’t just using it for fun or to get answers to their questions. They are also using it to make online purchases. In fact, a study by Edison Research found that 22% of people who own a smart speaker have used it to order a new product they hadn’t purchased before.

Another 22% also use it to reorder products they have purchased in the past. 29% use it to research products they might want to buy, while 31% use it to add products to their cart so they can review them later.

What this means is that if you boost your rankings in voice search results, there’s a good chance you’ll attract people who are interested in making a purchase. This can then increase your sales. If you want your content to be prominently visible among these search results, you will need to optimize it for voice search.

So you’ll need to have a better understanding of natural speech patterns. Instead of using short and generic keywords, focus on long-tail keywords that people are more likely to use when they speak. Identify the common phrases and questions people would likely use when they conduct a voice search for your content or product.

Answer the Public is a very helpful tool that will help you discover the questions people are asking and the phrases they are searching for. Collect some of the most-searched queries related to a particular keyword and use them to brainstorm content ideas. Perhaps you could put together a how-to blog post using those keywords or create a product FAQ section.

#2: Review Your Video Strategy

Video is a very entertaining visual content format, which brands can leverage to better market their products. In fact, a HubSpot study found that it was the most preferred content format among consumers. 54% of consumers in their study would like to see videos from the brands or businesses they support.

It’s not just that; videos actually inspire people to engage with a brand and buy their products. According to a Nielsen study,people who watched three seconds of a video ad had a 44% higher purchase intent. And people who watched 10 seconds of the video ad had a 74% higher purchase intent. Video ads also have a similar impact on brand awareness and ad recall.

This gives you a clear idea of how watching a video about a product makes people more likely to purchase the product. What this suggests is that creating and promoting videos and boosting their visibility in search engines could eventually drive more conversions for your brand.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Include a transcript with all of your videos so that search bots can use the text content to better crawl and index your videos. Since the content will be more indexable, it’ll also improve your chances of ranking for more queries.Plus, your content will be more accessible for all types of people. This will improve your chances of engaging them and hopefully converting them.

  Moz always includes a video transcription of their Whiteboard Friday video series.

• Optimize the title of your video and the description with relevant keywords for more visibility. However, don’t just stuff these keywords in for the sake of it. Try to keep things interesting and compelling, and use the keywords naturally wherever possible.
• Use a thumbnail image that’s visually appealing to get more clicks and views. It’s much more important than your title as it gives people a preview of what your video quality is like. So if the thumbnail shows poor video quality, they might not want to view it, even if they’re interested in the topic.Add a human face if possible, and make it relevant to the subject you’re discussing in the video.

  Check out how Neil Patel’s video thumbnail includes his face along with some graphics and text to fit the topic of the video.

#3: Take Advantage of User-Generated Content

User-generated content plays a critical role in both SEO and content marketing. It is an authentic and relatable content format, so it can also help you win the trust of prospective buyers. Using it can significantly boost your conversions, as it involves real people advocating for your brand.

Besides this, user-generated content such as reviews tends to contain a lot of long-tail keywords and natural speech patterns. This is very useful when search engines crawl your web pages to rank you for relevant search queries. This adds to the fact that getting new reviews can automatically translate into fresh content for your product pages.

Encourage your customers to review your products by sending them reminder emails every now and then. Some brands even go so far as to offer rewards in exchange for reviews. If you have a loyalty program, you could offer loyalty points in exchange for a review. Or you could offer a limited period discount or offer.

You can also collect customer reviews through social media. Give your customers a unique hashtag and ask them to share their thoughts and images about your product using that hashtag. You can then curate those submissions and repost them on your social media profiles. You could even feature them on your website on relevant product pages or on a dedicated page for user-generated content.

Pura Vida does a great job of this. They curate user-submitted photos from Instagram and include a “Styled on Instagram” section for each product page. They also highlight their best customer reviews on important web pages like their monthly subscription page.

Final Thoughts

These are some of the best ways to combine your SEO and content marketing efforts to drive sales. As you can see, these tactics aren’t just solely SEO or solely content marketing. They involve both, to compliment one another. They can help you improve your brand and content visibility while driving more engagement that can eventually lead to sales.

Got any questions or ideas to share about these tips? Let me know in the comments below.