Introduction

 

Let’s say that you’ve had a company website for donkey’s years, and let’s say that you run a pizza restaurant, it’s a popular business in Cardiff, based in the Cardiff Bay area. Yet now management have made a decision, you now want to expand, you want to deliver authentic Italian wood-fired pizza’s all over the great city of Cardiff, Wales, but how do you spread the word that your business is now delivering its pizza’s within Cardiff?

Well, as you will know, there’s so many different ways to advertise a business, print, online, radio- but what about SEO?

 

What about investing in search engine optimisation?

 

Well, this is where we come in, so if you are busy, with a cup of coffee, and you’ve been on Google looking for local SEO agencies, here in Cardiff Wales, well, why not pick up the dog and bone, that’s phone, and call us here at Tree Top?

 

Here at Tree Top we have years of SEO experience, we therefore have highly-experienced SEO consultant’s right here at our well-regarded SEO agency. So, if you do come into meet us, well, our SEO experts are bound to mention “content marketing”- but what is content marketing?

 

Well, you’ve come to the right company, that’s because our SEO team will now explain what “content marketing” is, and why so many businesses, here in the ultra-busy city of Cardiff, Wales hire us to implement organic SEO.

 

In this article we will talk about:

 

-What is content marketing?

-Why must the work be white hat?

-What is Google’s WebMaster Guidelines, and why should my agency follow the rules?

-Does your business write content marketing

-Why our copywriters work for many businesses in Cardiff

-What is Google’s RankBrain

-Why your business should have a Google Analytics account

-Why your agency should monitor your business bounce rate

-Why each piece of written work should be well-written and have a high word count

-Why every single aspect of the work should be white hat

-What are internal backlinks?

-What are meta titles and meta descriptions?

-What is Alt-text?

-Why must my work have a high word count?

-Why we should avoid “duplication”

-What are Google’s Quality Rating Guidelines?

-What is local SEO?

-How does Google’s algorithm decipher if the work is white hat or not?

-Why you need a quality SEO company like ours

-Why do so many businesses here in Cardiff hire Tree Top?

 

Okay, so it doesn’t matter if you run a really large multinational business, or you run a small business, and you are a sole trader- if your business is to improve its organic or it’s local SEO during 2021, then often you will need content marketing.

 

Content marketing is often therefore just written text, like what you are reading right here, however if the work is high-quality and if it is useful to your customers, then this can help to improve your businesses organic SEO.

 

So, for example, let’s say that you run a website which sells car parts, and you sell high-quality engine oils, if you write a blog post, with which explains a new type of engine oil, why it is so high-quality and which engines it is best suited for, then this might be a good read by people who are interested in car parts for that model car and who are interested in high-performance cars, and therefore they might read the blog post about this new engine oil, and they might make a purchase from you.

 

Now, there are so many SEO companies out there, that just write rubbish content, for example, let’s say that you run a solicitors practice, and the copywriter that works for the SEO agency might not have a clue about your business, or the various services that your business offers.

 

So, if they are tasked with writing say four blog posts every month, at 500 words each, so in total roughly around 2000 odd words, if the content marketing is not that helpful to your customers, then this means that your business is likely to incur a massive and sky-high bounce rate, which is not good your businesses SEO.

 

So, quite simply put, the written work needs to be very high-quality, in that it needs to be written by somebody that understands your business, or at least spent a great deal of time making sure that they research what they are writing about, so that the work is really good quality, and it is “white hat”.

 

So, what we are getting at is, if you are hiring an seo agency which is writing content which is not that helpful to your customers, then this could actually damage your companies SEO, what instead needs to happen is your marketing company needs to understand your business, and the questions that your customers often ask- they then need to answer these questions as well as they possibly can.

 

So, for example, let’s say that you are a mechanic and your garage specialises in fixing car brakes, exhausts and batteries, now, there are likely to be hundreds of other garages in the city that also offer the same services, so your website needs to be high-quality, it needs to offer helpful advice, for example, you might advise drivers on when they should get there car’s engine oil changed, or that your business offers a free exhaust checks, a free battery check, a free brake check.

 

Now, by advertising this, and also explaining why your garage also offers such a good service, and why drivers should go to your garage to get their car batteries, brakes, exhausts replaced, is likely to improve the company’s organic SEO if it is good quality seo work.

 

 

 

What is content marketing?

 

So what is content marketing?

 

While quite simply put it is often just written text, however the written text needs to be useful and white hat, so, for example if you are a solicitor that specialises in divorce, you might want to write articles explaining the divorce process, now, if this work is really useful, it is likely to have a really low bounce rate, and if the work has a low bounce rate, and it obtains really good high-quality backlinks, and backlinks are good quality they can really help to improve your businesses SEO,

 

so by offering a bit of free advice, say on the divorce process, what you are doing is offering free advice, that may mean high-quality websites might link to that work, and if the links are really good quality (White hat) then this can really help to improve your businesses organic SEO.

 

However, we must stress the point that the work must be high quality!

 

Why it’s important to regularly update your website, with high-quality “white hat” content marketing

 

Now there’s no point in investing in SEO to get your company onto the first page, and then stop paying an SEO business, and then the business starts to drop back down, obviously a business wants to stay on the first page for as long as possible, as if they get on the first page, for the right words, for example if you are divorce solicitor, you will want to be on the first page for “divorce solicitor” plus the name of the city, in which your solicitors practice, is based.

 

Therefore you should hire a high-quality agency, which can offer high-quality work, on a regular basis and this often means adding new blog posts to your company website.

 

Why you should we hire an agency that employs copywriters?

 

We would recommend hiring an agency that employees copywriters, as often copywriters will be needed to write the blog posts for your website, for example it doesn’t matter if you sell aluminium ladders or your business sells classic cars, often blog post will need to be written and sometimes these are long articles which are sometimes say 4000 words, which obviously take a huge amount of time to write.

 

Therefore you should hire a digital marketing agency which hires copywriters to write the blog posts, but the blog posts must be high quality and they must be white hat.

 

For example let’s say that you sell aluminium ladders, you may want a 4000 word article written which explains why your aluminium ladders are high quality and also what they are used for, for example you might have roofing ladders, and you might sell 10 different types of roofing ladders, you might explain different features that the aluminium roofing ladders have, for example the different safety features that they have.

 

 

 

Why the work must be useful

 

The work must be useful, for example there is no point in hiring a local SEO company and they write blog posts which your customers do not find useful. So for example let’s say that you are a divorce solicitor, and your divorce solicitors practice is based in a capital city and there are over 200 other lawyers in the city so you need to invest in top quality white hat SEO.

 

Yet there’s no point in hiring an agency which just offers cheap low quality work, for example they might write 400 words about how to cope while going through the divorce process, yet if them for hundred words are not useful to somebody who is going through a divorce then the work is likely to have a very high bounce rate, if the work has a really high bounce rate then this simply means that it won’t help the divorce solicitors practice to improve their organic SEO and it could actually damage the business so what needs to happen is you need to hire a company which offers high quality work and they can sustain that level of quality throughout the contract that you have with, it is therefore very important to note, that whichever agency will freelancer that you hire that they offer quality work with the quality is sustained throughout the time that they are improving your businesses SEO.

 

 

 

 

 

Why the agency must work hard to reduce your businesses bounce rate

 

So let’s say that you are a producer and you produce TV programmes obviously you want to keep your audience engaged in the program so that you can make money from adverts during the added brakes.

 

Now, you must take the same mindset when you are hiring SEO agencies, that’s because, if you hire the wrong seo agency, and they make the businesses “bounce rate” increase, this simply means that the website is losing your customers interest, therefore they are spending a lot shorter period of time on your company website.

 

So what we mean by this is if the bounce rate increases this simply means that more people are leaving your website, therefore a 80% bounce rate simply means that 80% of your visitors are leaving that page not visiting another page, so for example let’s say that you sell men’s shoes, and the bounce rate has increased on the homepage to 90%, this simply means that 90% of the visitors to the homepage of your shoe website have left the website without visiting another page.

 

Because you are not selling any shoes on your homepage, this means 90% of the customers are leaving the homepage without making a purchase, so obviously you are going to task your agency to lower the bounce rate, and therefore SEO company should work hard to lower your businesses bounce rate stop

 

Why it’s far better to have quality content marketing then to aim for quantity

 

So, when you are hiring a company, you should’s think that because they are offering you quantity that this is better, so what do we mean by this well let’s say that one agency says able to write for blog posts a month, but the other agency says able to write to, you might think well the agency there is offering more surely this offers better value for money?

 

But we would argue differently because it depends on the quality of the work, for example if you’re writing for blog posts but these are not very good, but not well written and they don’t offer any useful advice then these are quite simply a waste of time and it could actually damage your companies organic SEO.

 

However on the other hand if you hire an agency that only write to blog posts but these blog posts are absent quality, they offer useful advice and your customers will want to read them and quality like this is far better than opting for quantity, because if the bounce rate is too high then this will damage your businesses SEO.

 

Why does the algorithm only reward high-quality content marketing

 

Here’s the thing, let’s say that you are a electrician, in your city there are likely to be hundreds of other electricians, yet a lot of these electricians will want to also be on the first page- as then they can get more commercial and domestic work, so they might hire an “online marketing agency”- yet, if the seo work that they produce is not good quality, then the business might not stand any chance whatsoever of getting on the first page for terms to do with being a electrician and getting commercial and domestic work.

 

So what instead is needed is top quality SEO work, so in terms of the written work be in top quality you need to think of the questions that your customers are likely to ask you, for example you might want to explain the average cost of having a house rewired, you might want to talk about why it’s important to keep your fuse box modern and to make sure that it is checked by a qualified electrician, you might want to talk about why it’s important to have a rewire of a house on a regular basis you might want to talk about why it’s important to hire a commercial electrician who can install a electric supply to a large factory who has a huge amount of experience in doing this, therefore you are advertising your business you are adding written work which your customers will find helpful.

 

 

 

Why your business now faces more competition never

 

What you have to keep in mind is that a number of years ago it might have been relatively easy and straightforward to get your company onto the first page.

 

So, what do we mean by this?

 

Let’s say that you run a business and you run a construction company in a town, now a number of years back it might have been straightforward for the companies get your construction business onto the first page, yet now there might be say over 100 businesses that are investing in top quality SEO and therefore the standard of SEO to beat is now so much higher.

 

So, what do we mean by this?

 

Well, before you might have only needed 10 quality backlinks, yet now the businesses that are on the first page now have over 100 good quality backlinks.

 

So, what does this mean for your business?

 

Well, quite simply put some business owners think that organic SEO is like PPC, however, it is completely different from PPC, in that with organic SEO it can take a very long time sometimes to get a company onto the first page, for example, let’s say that you are a solicitors practice, it might takeover year for any agency get a business onto the first page.

 

So what you’re trying to say is this, is that with organic SEO it can take a long time to generate SEO results, that’s why it has to be considered totally different from PPC.

 

Why your content marketing should only be written by an expert

 

Here’s a really important point, that is when you are having blog posts and you are having content marketing added to your company website the work must be high quality and it should be written by an expert.

 

Now why did we say it should be written by an expert?

 

Well quite simply put let’s say that you are a divorce solicitor, and somebody is looking for some advice regarding their divorce, if they can’t find the answer straightaway the are likely to leave your company website, this therefore means that the bounce rate is increasing, if the bounce rate is really high your divorce solicitors website then this simply means that this will damage your businesses organic SEO.

 

So, this is why the work should be written by an expert, for example the copywriters at the agencies should ask the divorce solicitors questions so that they make sure that they are adding relevant facts to the written work, so that when somebody is looking for a answer to a question regarding a divorce, that they get accurate and helpful advice, and this means that they are likely to spend longer on the divorce solicitors website, they are likely to read more blog posts, they may even call the business to get more advice about the divorce process.

 

So what we are trying to say is this the work should be written by an expert, the copywriters at the SEO agency should readily called the business to see what facts they can add to the written work.

 

For example, if you sell electric bikes, let’s say, the marketing agency wants to write a detailed article about the top 10 bestselling electric bikes that you sell, then obviously the agency should call the electric bike business and they should make sure that they got relevant facts about electric bikes, so that they can include this in the article, so when somebody is looking to buy a brand new electric bike, they can read the article and they find it really interesting read, and therefore this can help to improve your businesses SEO and it might mean that person even buys the electric bike from your business, as it is obvious that you have given a lot of advice about electric bikes, so somebody can make an informed decision, about which bike is best for them.

 

Why the work must be white hat

 

The work must be white hat, it’s not just the written work the must be white hat every single aspect of the SEO must be white hat from the meta titles right through to the anchor text right through to the businesses back links every single aspect of the SEO must always be white hat, so whether you employ a freelancer works from home or you employ an agency that has 100 different stats such as back link builders, SEO managers, content marketing managers and whether they employ a vast amount of people, the principles still remain the same and that is that the SEO work must always be white hat and high quality.

 

Why is content marketing so important?

 

Without it some businesses might never reach the first page of Google, so what we basically mean is that let’s say that you run a divorce solicitors practice, or you run a construction business or your dentist, it is very unlikely for any business to get onto the first page, in a capital city, that’s unless it has invested in high-quality content marketing, whether that be high-quality “evergreen content marketing” or it is blog posts.

 

So, content marketing is very important to the organic SEO process, it’s also not a process that is a “one-off” and then that’s it, what we mean is, its not just a matter writing the evergreen content marketing, no, often high-quality content marketing, needs to be added to the blog section of the website every single month.

 

So, how does our SEO agency believe that content marketing has changed in 2021?

 

So we think that in 2021 it’s important to write blog posts for your company website which a high quality, for example used to be the case that you could write an article that the say 400 words, however now the text normally needs to be a lot longer needs to normally be a minimum of 2000 words yet the information should be useful.

 

So instead of thinking about improving your SEO, what you really need to think about is how can we possibly offer the best possible advice to our customers, so doesn’t matter if you sell bikes or you are a solicitor there is always questions that your customers will most likely have about your products or your services.

 

So for example if you sell bikes people might want to know the best electric bike to purchase for a certain amount of money, if you are a divorce solicitor then there is obviously going to be hundreds of different questions that people have when they go through the divorce process, so what you should aim to do is offer the best possible advice, you should aim to offer advice that is better than your direct competitors, for example let’s say that you are a divorce solicitor you should aim to offer better advice than the other divorce solicitors this way your website is likely to have a much lower bounce rate, and it might attract high quality links which could really improve your businesses organic SEO.

 

So, to answer the question, how do we think content marketing should be written in 2021, we would say that the work should be high-quality and it also should be white hat.

 

What is semantic SEO?

 

So what is semantic SEO, well this is a relatively new term that various SEO companies have started using, however it’s a really interesting area of SCO, it basically means that you can improve your businesses content marketing by making the work detailed and talking about entities.

 

So what do we even mean by this, let’s say that you sell high-value classic cars, and you ask SEO companies to provide quotes in order to improve your businesses organic SEO but on a global level.

 

Now the SEO companies might start to write blog posts about certain brands of car, for example you might sell very rare classic cars, so the marketing agency might talk about the model car a bit of a history about the car example you might have taken part in a really high profile race, so therefore the brand of the car would be an entity the race would be an entity and also you might talk about a famous driver that might have driven a car so the driver would be an entity.

 

So what are entities, what basically entities are things of importance that they can range from an event, to a product through to a person, is basically something that is important and it has facts about that entity, for example a racing driver will have facts that are known about the racing driver, for example the racing drivers achievements, how old they are, what races they take party, and what car manufacturers they represented when they were racing, so it is widely thought that was semantic SEO it’s a good idea to talk about entities and then by talking about these entities because they are all interconnected it becomes much clearer what that text is about.

 

So, if you are talking about a rare and high value classic car, you might mention the racing drivers name, the races that he has taken part in, and the brand of the car, it therefore becomes obvious that you are talking about racing cars and the automotive industry.

 

So entities can be used so that the algorithm understands what the article is about, in that it is talking about the automotive industry, and obviously as your marketing agency starts to add more articles which are talking about the automotive industry this then sends a clear signal to the algorithm that your business sells products or services that are to do with the automotive industry, therefore improving your SEO for automotive industry related terms, the more you start to talk about a certain brand of car using white hat SEO you can start to improve the businesses SEO.

 

What is organic SEO?

 

So what is organic SEO, well if you want your business to appear on the first page you can pay for pay per click, or you can pay an agency to improve your organic SEO or you can appear in the local business listings, now let’s say that you run an Italian restaurant, you obviously wanted to come up in the local business listings you may also want it to come up in the paper click and the organic results as well.

 

However, a lot of business owners simply want to appear only in the organic business results, now for this to happen, normally you will need the help of an SEO company and you must acknowledge that with organic seo it is not a fast process, in that you are not going to see results overnight, and for some businesses it might take many months, and sometimes for some companies, it might even take many years to see results.

 

Yet, with that said when you get your business onto the first page you may receive a lot more enquiries and a lot more sales this is why so many businesses want to get on the first page, but what you have to be aware of his to things that is the work must be white hat otherwise you could incur a penalty and the other thing is that you want to be on the first page for important words and phrases, for example if you run an Italian restaurant you wannabe on the first page for an Italian restaurant plus the name of the city or the town in which the restaurant is based, you don’t want to be on the first page for fine dining Italian restaurants plus the name of the city because less people are going to search for that, which means that you are likely to get less sales and enquiries because less people are looking for that search string.