Content Quantity Is Priority for Many Marketers but Quality Should Be Equally Important

New 'How To' guide from Clutch clarifies content marketing for SEO

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Feb 14, 2017, 07:30 ET

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Simply posting a lot of content without proper attention to the consistent quality of that content may not be the best approach for content marketers, suggests a new study by Clutch, a research, ratings, and reviews platform for business services. Nearly 80% of content marketers say that increasing their company's online visibility is their primary content marketing goal. But there is still confusion over how much content is too much and when quality is more important than quantity.

How important is the amount of content your company creates?

To help define this issue and clarify how online visibility is directly connected to search engine optimization (SEO), Clutch created a comprehensive guide that explains how to do content marketing for SEO.

"As far as SEO goes, without content there are no rankings and there is no opportunity to appear in results," said Rand Fishkin, Founder of Moz, an SEO software company. "[Content marketing and SEO] are two practices that very much need each other."

Using content to rank on the first page of Google requires paying attention to the quality of the content you produce. It needs to be "10x better than anything [you] can find in the search results today," Fishkin said in an interview with Clutch.

Nearly all-content marketers say they want to improve their company's content, according to the study findings. In addition, optimizing content for access across multiple devices (26%), creating more original content (24%), and including more visual elements (21%) are top priorities.

But as the Clutch survey reveals, creating content to complement SEO efforts also requires careful consideration of the specific content formats you produce.

The survey explored the types of content businesses produce in order to support three goals: brand awareness, SEO, and lead generation. It found that companies that focus on brand awareness tend to create infographics (19%) and product reviews (18%), while those focused on SEO and lead generation are most likely to produce research/original data (21%) and infographics (14%).

A separate study however, conducted by Moz and Buzzsumo and referenced in the Clutch guide, presents evidence to suggest that content marketers' reliance on infographics should be reevaluated. The justification is that content that earns social shares typically is formatted for entertainment – list posts, videos, quizzes – while content that gets links and earned media is more informative (i.e., research-backed articles and opinion-forming journalism).

"The age of infographics is dying, and most of them are quite bad," Fishkin said. "The ones that have success do so in a slightly manipulative way. The embed gets linked back with very particular anchor texts that take advantage of search algorithms."

The Clutch 'how to' guide also outlines a process for analyzing content quality and comprehensiveness, and offers six recommendations for using content to do SEO better.

See the full guide here: https://clutch.co/content-marketing/resources/guide-to-content-marketing-for-seo.

Clutch's 2016 Content Marketing Survey included 300 expert and advanced content marketers from enterprises (100+ employees) in the United States. 72% represent companies with more than 500 employees, with 34% working for B2Bs and 66% for B2Cs.

About Clutch
A B2B ratings and reviews firm in the heart of Washington, DC, Clutch connects you with the agencies and software solutions that can help you enhance your business and meet your goals. Our methodology maps agencies and software solutions based on consumer reviews, the type of services offered, and quality of work.

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SOURCE Clutch