Generative AI has definitely turned up the volume on inbox noise. When your competitors use Generative AI to personalize at scale and the inbox noise has exponentially grown from its already dire state, how do you win an outsized share of attention?  

Let’s explore. Lowering the barrier to entry means content proliferates; buyers receive more personalized outreach, but content is less trustworthy and merely carries the appearance of being insightful. Customers become confused, maybe irritated, and conversion rates go down. The easier it becomes to create attractive content that lacks trust, the more impactful it will be to create authentic content. Everything else will get lost in the wash.  

Today, at the beginning of this revolution, sales cycles take five times the number of touches to close than five years ago. () 

When was the last time a customer said, “I wish vendors created more content for me?”  

The answer lives in the details and outside the box.  

Earlier this year, Foundry pulled together research (from both CMI and Foundry) showing two major trends – First, 96% of buyers want content tailored to them by Industry, Tech Stack, Company Size, and Job Role.  

I don’t know 96% of any group of people that agree on anything, perhaps we should listen.  

Second, the number one content type buyers prefer is from real user experiences and product testing.

Focus on your buyer. Give your customer the many content insights they need, when they need them. Engage them, and nurture them through the buying process with a blend of insightful content from peers and experts, and tailor it to their role, market, and vertical. 

Versioning for curation and personalization at scale is an excellent use of Generative AI in content creation. You can choose channels and formats that suit your organization and customer base. But you must start from an information source that adds real value and insight.  

Foundry’s buyer journey research tells us that 91% of ITDMs find challenging to source the high-quality content they need to make purchasing decisions. They look for information from tech content sites such as Foundry’s, and from their peers both face-to-face at industry events and packaged for them from Peerspot. They rely on white papers, webcasts, and webinars from vendors, analysts and editors. And 96% of tech buyers are interested in custom-tailored content, based on their industry, company size, and the platforms they already use. In short, making an IT purchase requires a lot of trusted, tailored information, and buyers aren’t always getting what they need. 

Adding value and insight to content is exactly why PeerSpot speaks constantly to IT buyers to generate product reviews and ratings, and comparisons of pricing, performance, and features. With 95% of reviews sourced from phone or in-person interviews of real users, PeerSpot’s methodology produces the most in-depth and credible user content in the industry. 

This is also why Foundry’s experienced journalists are in contact daily with practitioners and subject matter experts. It is all in the service of creating unique and insightful content that resonates with buyers. Anything else is, at best, a waste of time, and at worst may even damage relationships with your customers. 

If you’re interested in learning about how PeerSpot and Foundry help marketers adapt to this new world, check out some of our new solutions below.  

PeerSpot’s new platform, , enables marketers to create personalized, user-based content creation at scale. Reach out to me to discuss, I love this topic – Doni@PeerSpot.com.  

Get started by downloading the and partner with Foundry to simplify your marketing with data-driven media and martech solutions. 

If you aren’t familiar, FOMO stands for “fear of missing out”. It’s the feeling that whatever you are doing, you are missing out on something even bigger and better. 

Maybe you were scrolling on social media and saw friends having fun without you. Or, you haven’t gotten around to seeing the Barbie Movie that everyone can’t stop talking about. Whatever it is, FOMO can manifest differently for everyone, especially B2B marketers who are constantly tasked with staying ahead of industry trends and competition. 

However, it’s not about if we have FOMO (we all do), it’s about whether or not we choose to embrace that FOMO and use it to get ahead in our marketing strategies. 

FOMO in B2B marketing

Quite a few businesses are sticking with old-school methods for capturing leads and generating demand. But here’s the thing – they’re missing out on a whole bunch of potential customers who are super interested, and just haven’t raised their hand yet. In fact, 57% of the purchase journey remains anonymous, meaning marketers lack visibility into a huge repertoire of purchase-related activities and are most definitely missing out on opportunities. 

That stat should give any B2B marketer major FOMO.  

But what if that FOMO isn’t necessarily a bad thing? What if FOMO in marketing is actually a good thing, and something we should all be embracing? Well, I’m here to argue that it’s time to embrace this fear of missing out. Because when we do, we unlock incredible opportunities that were previously hidden from view. 

Embracing FOMO begins with intent data

How can we start embracing the FOMO in B2B marketing?  

Perhaps the most obvious way to tackle FOMO in B2B marketing is starting with intent data. Intent data is a goldmine of information about potential customers’ interests and activities. It includes both first-party data (collected from your own platforms) and third-party data (gathered from external sources).  

As mentioned earlier, a significant portion (57%) of the purchase journey remains anonymous. This is where intent data becomes invaluable. It allows you to identify and engage with potential customers who are actively researching solutions, even if they haven’t filled out a form or subscribed to your newsletter. This data reveals what your previously invisible target audience is researching and where they are in their buying journey. 

Embracing FOMO ends with actions

While intent data is a great start, it doesn’t come without challenges – the principal one being the difficulty of efficiently converting data to actionable insights. 67% of marketers say their number one challenge with intent data investments is making intent data actionable.

To avoid this problem, it’s best to have a in place for using intent data effectively and achieving your goals. For example, say your objective is to identify potential opportunities for your sales team. In that case, you might want to consider implementing an orchestration process that automatically identifies accounts showing intent and guides them through various strategies at each stage. For instance, if an account clicks on a display ad and then engages with a website call-to-action (CTA), you can set up a system that triggers a targeted sales campaign for timely outreach. This way, you’re not just collecting data; you’re actively using it to drive your marketing efforts and convert potential leads into valuable customers. 

Conclusion

While yes, FOMO sucks when you’re the one who got sick and can’t go to your best friend’s birthday party. As a marketer, FOMO is something to embrace. We should be afraid of those missed opportunities and should take proactive steps. The first step is with the help of intent data, to identify opportunities and act on those before we’ve already missed out. 

An equally strong commitment to both activities is critical to attracting technology buyers to your brand and ultimately converting them into customers, because content marketing plays such a vital role in modern marketing strategy. In the newly released report, produced by Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and sponsored by Foundry, 76% of technology marketers said content marketing has increased in importance over the past year. And many have the funding to show for it: 51% of respondents predicted their content marketing budget will increase in 2023.

The CMI study found that most technology marketers are feeling pretty good about their content marketing investments. Eighty-five percent said they were using content marketing successfully to create brand awareness. Almost as many say they’ve had success with content marketing to educate audiences (81%), generate demand or leads (80%), and build credibility and trust (78%).

But gaps remain, and they point to the imbalance I mentioned at the top of this post.

Technology marketers’ No. 1 content marketing challenge, cited by 67% of respondents, is creating content that appeals to different stages of the buyer’s journey. Asked specifically about challenges related to measuring content performance, the biggest pain point is integrating and correlating data across multiple platforms (61%).

Those are warning signs, because even though 62% of respondents believe they provide a consistent experience across their customers’ brand-to-demand journey, uneven content quality and siloed reporting data can create potholes along the way that impede performance and results. Despite the success they claim at earlier stages of the buyer journey, fewer than half of the respondents (48%) said content marketing has helped their organization generate revenue.

To be truly successful, content marketing needs to deliver on a brand-to-demand scale, with measurable payoffs at all stages of the buyer journey.

Fishing where the fish are

The CMI report uncovers a glaring gap in distribution strategy. A little over half (52%) of respondents include native advertising in their marketing mix. This percentage has been increasing since 2020 (38%), but it’s still a missed opportunity for nearly half of technology marketers. Overall, technology marketers using paid content distribution channels dropped to 82% from 93% the previous year.

Native or sponsored content should be a critical component of content marketing strategy. You need to fish where the fish are, people!

Case in point: Foundry’s to create . The native BrandHub experience, which features a variety of content and dynamic storytelling hosted on CIO.com, found an engaged audience of IT leaders. The six-month campaign resulted in 66,000 pageviews of co-branded content, 27,000 social engagements, 4,000 engaged target accounts, and millions of dollars of pipeline.

Characteristics of top performers

The annual CMI report always shows some interesting deltas between marketers who consider their content marketing work to be extremely or very successful and those who are less bullish on their own performance, and this year is no exception. Top performers in the 2023 report consistently outperform other respondents in several key areas, including:

• Measuring content performance accurately (73% of top performers say they do this, vs. 47% of all respondents)
• Prioritizes the audience’s informational needs over the organization’s (87% vs. 67%)
• Use content marketing to generate sales/revenue (74% vs. 48%)

There’s a clear path to content marketing success. A commitment to quality content, supported by a holistic distribution and promotional plan, provides the perfect balance of “content” and “marketing” to attract and engage with busy IT stakeholders – and convert them into buyers.

 is Foundry’s global director of content strategy, overseeing a global team of content strategists who work with Foundry’s technology clients to develop and deliver award-winning content marketing programs.

One of the worst feelings is when you try something new – whether it be a restaurant, movie, or product – and it just doesn’t live up to your expectations.

This is especially true in B2B marketing and sales. It’s extremely frustrating when a shiny new software, tool, or strategy your team pushed for can’t prove any  and isn’t living up to your organization’s expectations.

While we hope your ABM journey has been smooth sailing for you, we know that isn’t always the case. Like any strategy,  might not be perfect the first go around. So here are 4 reasons why ABM might not be living up to your expectations, with solutions you can put into action. 

Reason #1: Marketing and sales silos

ABM is a team effort and is supposed to  teams. In fact, Foundry ABM client Clearwave was able to see a . However, we see some organizations still operating in silos even after implementing ABM. Studies have shown failure to align your marketing and sales teams can . 

So why do some organizations struggle to work in tandem with each other after implementing ABM? There could be a variety of reasons including:

• Unclear goals

Once ABM is adopted, marketing and sales teams should align goals with an account-based approach. For example, maybe set a goal to decrease sales cycles by x%. This will encourage marketing to work with sales to understand what personalized content a specific account might need for 1:1 outreach. Sales can then accelerate conversions by using these insights and resources to keep prospects engaged throughout the entire purchase journey.

• Lack of communication

Sometimes the root of the issue is a bit more simple – sales and marketing don’t communicate enough. This can start at the leadership level if marketing and sales leaders are not on the same page, or this can come down to a lack of time for collaboration. A large benefit of ABM is that sales teams have less busy work, as sales only targets accounts most likely to convert. Marketing can use account insights to select a winning play for sales – all the more reason for communication to take place! 

• Failure to adopt account-based metrics

Once ABM is implemented, marketing and sales teams must reconsider the metrics they use to . ABM is different from traditional tactics, so it must be measured differently too. Before even launching an ABM program, marketing and sales leadership should align on how they’ll define qualified accounts and attribute revenue to the ABM program. Failure to define qualified accounts and shift to ABM reporting can lead to a division among marketing and sales teams. 

No matter what ABM platform you use, organizations that operate with siloed marketing and sales teams will struggle to implement an ABM program successfully. 

Solution

Here are two strategies to unite your siloed marketing and sales teams and .

• Align goals

Goals set for both marketing and sales must be aligned. Marketing and sales working towards the same goal will help to align them on the same page and encourage collaboration. Have leadership  to be accomplished through ABM implementation.

• Open a line of communication

Create conversation! Providing your marketing and sales teams with an open line of communication will allow for collaboration and feedback among teams. Marketing can inform sales on specific insights and high-intent accounts, while sales can inform marketing on what content prospects want and what’s working or not. To encourage communication we recommend setting up weekly or biweekly team syncs or creating a dedicated slack channel.

Reason #2: Poorly defined ICP

The first step in any ABM campaign is to start with a list of strategic target accounts. But how do you build that list of accounts?

Start with your !

An ICP (ideal customer profile) is the foundation of any ABM strategy. ICP is the hypothetical description of the type of buyers in your market that would benefit most from your product or service. Detailed in the ICP are important pieces of information such as target account personas, pain points, and the value proposition. 

Since every ABM campaign starts with a list of accounts built from your ICP,  it would make sense that problems arise if you are working with a poorly defined ICP. 

Solution

Here are our tips for workshopping your ICP in order to build a strong ABM foundation,

Try answering these questions to get an idea of the kind of accounts you should be targeting, or better yet, reference your actual CRM data for ultimate accuracy in your ICP definition.

How would you describe your ideal account?

• Industry (Healthcare, Software, Education)
• Geography (US, Canada, EMEA, APAC)
• Size (SMBs, Large Enterprises)
• Budget (How large of a budget does this organization have to spend on software or tools?)

How would you describe your ideal persona? 

• Department (Marketing, Sales, Operations)
• Seniority (Entry Level, Manager, C-suite)
• Job Titles
• Responsibilities and Objectives 

What are their key drivers?

• Pain Points
• Influencers (Who are the decision makers?)
• Channels (What channels would resonate most with this account?)
• Timing (When should we reach out?)

Reason #3: Not utilizing your full tech stack

In order to get the most out of your ABM program, you’ll want to make sure that you are  and any available integrations. 

Occasionally we see organizations purchase an ABM platform thinking it will be a shiny tool to fix all their issues. However (as you probably know), it’s not that simple. 

It’s extremely important to do research before purchasing an ABM platform (or any piece of technology).  to see what  they offer. Does the platform integrate with any technology you already own? Will you have to buy additional bells and whistles along with the platform? These are questions that must not be overlooked when deciding what ABM platform will fit best into your existing tech stack.

Solution

Here are a few tools that we recommend having in your tech stack in order to best run your ABM program.

• Intent Data

Intent data gives you insights into your buyer’s activities across the web. When these insights are integrated into your ABM platform, you can automatically trigger sales plays and alerts based on intent signals. Here are a few examples of intent providers that work with Foundry ABM:

1. Foundry Intent: Identify intent across your website, the public web, industry content, and Foundry’s opted-in audience to provide a more meaningful view of in-market buyer behavior.
2. : Account-level intent data determined from research activity across thousands of B2B websites.
3. : Account-level intent data from activity on the G2 product review site.

• ‍Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation tools like HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot integrate into Foundry ABM’s platform allowing you to automate tactics and pass lists of leads or accounts into ABM campaigns and reports. Integrating ABM platforms with channels used for advertising and marketing automation platforms allows for even better reporting and orchestration – creating seamless stage progression among accounts.

Foundry ABM has the best integration out of all the ABM providers. It is two-way, simple to set up, easy to use, and automated.

Marketing Manager, IT Industry

• CRM Platforms

Sync your CRM with your ABM platform to support list building, predictive scoring, ROI reporting, and prioritizing accounts for sales. Sales teams should be able to action on sales activations and intent data from within their CRM. This saves times for your sales reps as all the insights they need are in one place – providing them information on when and who to reach out to, and what to say.

Tech Stack Success

SugarCRM has perfected the tech stack element of ABM. Sugar leverages the  signals to identify in-market accounts early and galvanize sales and marketing to discover pipeline as one team. Since doing so, Sugar has generated .

Reason #4: Failure to adopt account-based KPIs

Since ABM is different than traditional demand generation tactics, it requires a different way of measuring metrics throughout the buyer’s journey. While typical demand generation focuses more on quantity, ABM focuses on quality. By adopting , you’ll be able to better understand the benefits and value that ABM brings to your organization. Taking an account-based approach to metrics will help to measure ROI from ABM and help you continue to make the case for ABM. 

Solution

We’ve helped marketers execute thousands of ABM campaigns and have learned a metric or two along the way. Here are a few account-based metrics that we recommend you use when measuring ABM.

• Reach

Reach is defined as the percentage of target accounts touched by your campaigns. Key metrics for reach include ad impressions or email opens.

• Engagement

Engagement is defined as a percentage change in interactions with target accounts. Key metrics include website visits or email campaign responses.

• MQAs

MQAs are defined as the number of highly engaged accounts prioritized for sales engagement. 

• Pipeline

Pipeline is defined as the dollar value of deals opened in target accounts. The key metric to measure pipeline success is new opportunities.

• Return On Investment (ROI)

ROI is defined as the dollar value of deals closed-won in target accounts. The key metric to measure ROI is closed deals. .

If you fail to change the way you measure marketing and sales success with ABM – this could be a large reason ABM is not living up to your expectations.

Conclusion

ABM has so many benefits and can be a huge asset to your organization’s performance. So we understand it’s frustrating when ABM isn’t living up to your expectations. Luckily, most of the time getting your ABM strategy exactly right requires a few changes and can be easily resolved. Learn more on successful ABM adoption.

The good news is that tech marketers have been doing this content marketing thing long enough to have established some pretty reliable best practices. Some of those successful strategies and tactics are apparent in the from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs, which is sponsored by Foundry.

Nearly one-third of respondents (32%) in the study said their organization was very or extremely successful at content marketing. These “top performers,” as designated by the report’s authors, distinguish themselves from the other respondents in several categories, including how they: 

• Measure content performance (94% of top performers vs. 79% of all respondents)
• Value creativity and craft in content creation (90% vs 76%)
• Prioritize their target audience’s informational needs over their own organization’s promotional messaging (83% vs 66%)
• Have a documented content marketing strategy (71% vs. 46%)
• Are very good/excellent at demonstrating ROI for content marketing (64% vs 36%)

That list is a good blend of art and science – an approach we’ve been preaching at Foundry for some time now.

Nobody’s perfect

All tech marketers, even the top performance, face ongoing challenges. These are the top three pain points in the CMI/MarketingProfs survey:

1. Creating content that appeals to multi-level roles within the target audience (cited by 51% of all respondents)
2. Accessing subject matter experts to create content (49%)
3. Internal communications between teams/silos (48%)

For the 62% of tech marketers who outsource at least one aspect of content marketing, additional challenges emerged, including:

1. Finding partners with adequate topical expertise (a clear No. 1, at 75%)
2. Finding partners who understand the target audience (44%)
3. Budget (36%)

Sound familiar? Silos and budgets are ongoing issues, as are finding the right partners who have a deep understanding of IT and the people who influence and make tech buying decisions. If you’re experiencing these challenges, you’re not alone.

How to keep raising the bar

Given the progress tech marketers have made, and the challenges they still face, here are a few tips to help teams raise the content marketing bar and move from good to great.

Have a plan, based on clear objectives or desired outcomes

Your content marketing strategy should be documented and articulated across the organization. But once it’s documented, don’t let the strategy gather digital dust on a shared drive. You’ll want to update it regularly as you learn about what’s effective and what’s not. Or in response to external events, like, say, a global pandemic or rising inflation. (Three-quarters of respondents acknowledged their current content marketing strategy is different than their pre-pandemic approach.)

Invest in content creation, not just promotion

Too many people view content as a commodity, something that anyone with a cogent idea can spin up quickly. Far fewer have actually mastered the art of effective storytelling, in all of its forms. Tech marketers opting for quantity over quality have created a cluttered environment where 90% of tech buyers in our 2021 Customer Engagement Survey say it’s challenging to find high-quality, trusted information to make an informed IT purchase decision.

Building up content-creation skills, either in-house or with strategic partners, will help you create compelling narratives that attract and engage with tech buyers.

Differentiate your content

In addition to improving content quality, look for other ways to distinguish your assets from the unwashed masses of me-too blog posts and webcasts. One option is to experiment with different types of video formats. Video is the top area of content marketing investment planned for 2022, with 72% of respondents in the CMI/MarketingProfs survey planning to invest in the format. This means that to rise above the crowd, you’ll have to get creative in your approach. Try different lengths, environments, storytelling techniques, and distribution channels – and, most importantly, have some fun with it.

Podcasts may be an even better opportunity to differentiate, as just 36% of tech marketers said they produced podcasts last year and only 17% plan to invest in audio-related content in the year ahead. Foundry’s 2022 Role & Influence of the Technology Decision-Maker survey found that 51% of IT decision-makers listen to work-related podcasts – so there’s an audience there for you.  

One more opportunity may be found in custom research. Just 41% of respondents to the CMI study said they created research reports last year, but research reports ranked No. 2 for producing the best content marketing results. It’s easy to see why. Surveying technology decision-makers can provide deep insights into your audience to inform your content development. Survey results provide a strong foundation for all kinds of content, adding credible data to support white papers, infographics, blog posts, webcasts, and the like. We view custom research as the gift that keeps on giving.

Partner with the experts

Another way to differentiate your content is through expertise. As noted earlier, half of tech marketers struggle to gain access to the right subject matter experts, and three-quarters have trouble finding partners with the right technical expertise. Just 24% have influencer partnerships for distributing content.

It’s critical to find a partner with deep knowledge of both the technology landscape and the audience. IT decision makers have told us time and again that they don’t want marketing hype or information that’s too general or not relevant to their needs. They want unbiased content from experts to help them understand how to apply technology to solve business challenges. The right partner has access to subject matter experts who can help you create content that builds trust and credibility with your audience.

Measure your performance

No deep insights to this tip – everyone at this point should understand the value of metrics in our data-driven world. But as the survey shows, measurement is still a differentiator for the most successful content marketing operations.

Analytics help to inform and ensure that you’re making progress toward strategic objectives. Monitoring KPIs in real-time helps you identify problem areas and make important course corrections to stay on track toward campaign goals. And importantly, measuring content marketing ROI helps you justify further investment in the next budget cycle.

Moving from good to great is hard. But for those looking to make the leap, the effort will pay dividends with a pipeline full of prospects and a path to repeatable revenue growth.

Scale the Reach of Your Native Content through ������ý���߹ۿ� Sites

Beyond social amplification and SEO campaigns, one of the more effective tactics in being seen is publishing your content on a trusted and well-known content websites or media brands. ������ý���߹ۿ� brands such as CIO.com, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal allow marketers to place their thought leadership content on their domains as part of a campaign. The content lives “natively” among the site’s editorial content, albeit with clear labeling that it is sponsored by an advertiser, and it is all done with full disclosure. The benefits are clear – your content is placed in an environment of trust and affinity. The relationship the audience has with the brand provides a halo effect on your content and messaging.

This native content tactic is perfect for creating top of funnel awareness. The problem many marketers face, however, is how to move the sales needle by turning this valuable traffic into prospects and customers. Fortunately, we’ve seen success with a few tactics to help drive these audiences into your various marketing and nurture streams.

Strong Calls to Action: Give Them More Content

Including call to action (CTA) links in the body of the hosted native content offers readers more of the type of content they are already reading. For example, if your native content is introductory in nature, offer some deeper level content on your site to capture some information or get them to sign up for a newsletter.

Ad Remarketing: An Invitation to Deepen the Relationship

Taking that idea one step further, you can set up retargeting pools for the content page where your native content is being hosted. That enables you to serve ads across the web on contextually relevant sites using ad creative with a strong CTA pointing to your website landing pages with more content on the same topic.

Ad retargeting, often called remarketing, is a powerful tool to reengage people who have already raised their hand for your content. You have piqued their interest with content, now offer more in exchange for some basic information (e.g. email address, company name). Set some frequency caps so you don’t overdo it, but it is reasonable to reach someone in your retargeting pool 3-4 times to entice them to visit your site/landing page.

Account Identification: Your Secret Weapon

Account ID is a tactic to get more information about the people landing on your native content. There are several technologies that give you critical information about your site visitors. Products such as Foundry Intent are powerful tools that disclose the company/organization of the readers who land on your native content. These tools use the person’s IP address combined with proprietary algorithms to identify the company of the site visitor. That data comes appended with additional useful information such as industry, company size, URL, and location. This data can be used in a few ways outlined below.

Feed the info to your sales team to match to their prospect pools or ABM target account list to confirm if these accounts are consuming your content and being retargeted by your ad campaigns. Or use the list of uncovered accounts to build a target account list and feed them into an email nurture campaign to names already in your CRM. Another option is a lead gen campaign with a reputable demand gen company to generate net new names.

Posting native content on a media website is a tried-and-true tactic for driving awareness and establishing credibility with your target audience. A few additional steps can help generate prospects and eventually turn them into customers.

At its core, SEO is the practice of increasing website traffic through organic search engine results. In other words, it’s the process of obtaining high-ranking placement on a search engine results page (e.g. Google). While the concept is relatively simple, the execution is far from that. With endless amounts of online content, marketers must take the necessary steps to improve rankings, drive traffic and increase awareness.

Search engine algorithms are complex and incorporate many different factors. To make it easier for you, we’ve outlined eight best practices for SEO success.

1) Game Plan
Before building your content, it’s important to identify your target audience and understand the current landscape. Who do you want to attract and why? What sites are already performing well? Is your goal to boost engagement? To boost content downloads? For users to register for a webinar or virtual event? Consider the purpose or end goal of each asset you promote and the actions you want users to take as your guide.  Start by creating a general outline including important keywords and topics. Google your term and review the top 5-10 results to determine common story elements that are driving a strong search result. Check out the ‘Related Searches’ section at the bottom of the search page. Use this information to plan sections and sub-headings that reflect important aspects of the main topic as well as address related topics. Accurate and relevant titles, sub-headings and body content will all help boost SEO.

2) Content Is King
User behavior signals such as time on site, pages per session and bounce rate all influence website rankings. If you can provide high quality content, readers will spend more time on your webpage and interact with links, watch videos, etc. Your content must satisfy the need of a reader and be presented in an engaging manner. Be sure to format your content properly to optimize the user experience, and to consider what stage of the buyer’s journey your target audience is in to ensure the utmost relevance. The content should be easy to read and digest; a good suggestion is implementing sub-headings (including your keywords!), concise paragraphs and bullets when applicable. For more insight on creating compelling content, explore our guide.

3) Own Topics, Not Keywords
While keywords are important for any SEO strategy, it’s critical to analyze how keywords relate to each other to form over-arching topics. For example, if you’re writing an article on cloud computing, you should include other relevant phrases (e.g. related 3rd platform technologies) to help contribute to a larger topic and improve SEO performance. If you solely focus on cloud terminology, you’re limiting your audience and reach. For a hot topic, try to incorporate 7-10 related keywords to help elevate the performance of your article.

4) Evergreen Strategy
Do you have evergreen content (e.g. event listings, directories, etc.) that you can update regularly? If not, it’s something you’ll want to consider. Evergreen content keeps organic search ranking high while providing visitors the most current information on perennial topics. A good rule of thumb is anything that is both helpful for readers and designed to be updated on a consistent basis should perform well. Essentially, your evergreen content should always remain relevant to readers, regardless of current news or events. Look at content that continues to perform well as an indicator for what assets you want to update as well as similar topics you should cover moving forward to add to your evergreen arsenal.

5) Mobile Matters
Google will index the mobile version of your site first! Because of this is, it’s vital that your content is accessible and readable on a mobile platform. Most users today search using their phones so it’s important your mobile page is engaging and easy for readers to navigate.

6) Speed Is Key
Users have high expectations when it comes to web page performance. If your pages take too long to load, users will not hesitate to move on – regardless of how great your content may be. This of course will have a negative effective on key SEO metrics like time on site, pages per session and bounce rate. Learn how you can .

7) A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words
It’s no secret that audiences enjoy captivating pictures and video. Your goal should be to add related photos, illustrations, video and infographics to as many of your articles and pages as possible. Relevant visuals will help readers better understand the content while enhancing the user experience. An image that is surrounded by related text ranks better for the keyword it is optimized for; Google understands the location of keywords near related images so keep the images close to related copy. Captions also help with keyword and engagement metrics. Where applicable, also add a title and ALT text to your images for improved SEO.

8) Think Links
To help bolster your content, it can be helpful to incorporate links to relevant internal and external content – especially as you work to build link sharing. A good practice is linking to knowledgeable sources to help bring credibility to your own content. You can also add links to new content within established high-performing content on your site.

A robust SEO strategy will drive quality traffic to your website, resulting in better ROI and higher credibility for your brand. When implementing these best practices, remember that balance is key! Every aspect outlined plays an important factor in your SEO performance – whether it’s content and keywords, user behavior, page speed, backlinks, etc. Take the proper measures to execute each step for the best SEO approach. Ultimately, your goal should be to show authority and relevance while providing value to the readers.

In addition to these best practices, there are plenty of tools to help shape your content and improve SEO. Here are a few of our favorites:

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•  : Moz Pro, Keyword Explorer, Fresh Web Explorer & More