There’s an old saying in online marketing circles: “Content is king”. The term actually comes from Bill Gates himself, predicting how the internet would grow, and how money could be generated online.
It’s astonishing how accurate Mr. Gates’ assessment was, though some things have obviously changed in ways he could never have predicted. We recommend you read it.
But how does content help your online marketing efforts? What kinds of content should you make for your Halifax business? And what does content have to do with SEO in Halifax?
We’re going to cover all of that, and more, in this guide about content generation in Halifax. Our focus is going to be on blogging (for reasons we’ll soon discuss), but many of the principles discussed here can be applied to all kinds of content your Halifax business might generate.
Content is still king. We’re going to show you why, and how to dethrone your competitors with superior content.
Why content creation is still king
Content, be it videos, images, blogs, games, or anything else, is why we use the internet. Any page you visit could be described as content. It is the raison d’être of the platform. Content marketing is so important it’s become something of a buzzword.
For our purposes, we’re going to have to move beyond the buzz and into something more substantial.
Content creation and SEO in Halifax
Our content creation goal is two-fold: increasing brand awareness, and increasing sales. We can increase brand awareness, sales, and our ranking in search engines when our content:
- Ties into keywords you want to rank for
- Encourages traffic to flow from SERPs to your web pages
- Entices users to stay on your page for a long time
- Is relevant to your industry and location
- Answers users’ questions
- Entices users to learn more about your business
- Encourages users to browse and purchase your products or services
A good ruler gives the people what they want and need. If content is king, it rules well when it’s thought-provoking, informative, and shareable – all while piquing the curiosity of the people consuming it.
To rank well in search engines and boost your ranking, you need to know what people are searching for. That’s where the first step of content creation, keyword research, comes in.
Keyword research in Halifax
The first step toward keyword research is brainstorming. Think about the terms that search engine users who are interested in your business might search for.
A great place to start for keyword research are “service in location” (SIL) keywords. It’s important to understand that “keyword” is shorthand for any search phrase – a keyword is often multiple words. These are sometimes called keyword phrases – but it’s much easier to simply call them keywords.
SIL keywords are always keyword phrases. They’re any query formatted like this:
- Restaurants in Halifax
- Spas in Bedford
- Hotels in Dartmouth
- Oil changes in Halifax
You get the idea. Think about all the services your business offers, and the various neighbourhoods and other regions in and around Halifax. Pair them together, and you’ve got yourself a whole bunch of SIL keywords.
You’ll want to use a keyword research tool to see which of these SILs (and other keywords) are worth creating content to try to rank for. Check out ahrefs’ list of free keyword research tools. The best keywords:
- Have a low level of competition
- Have a high number of searches
- Have commercial intent (the searcher wants to buy) or informational intent (the searcher wants to learn more about a topic)
Once you’ve found the right keywords for your business, you can start brainstorming about topics that are relevant to those keywords. Imagine you run a fishing equipment store. You might create topics like “The 5 best fishing spots near Halifax” or “How to plan your first deep sea fishing trip”.
You’ll notice that the second topic doesn’t have Halifax in its title – that can be okay under some circumstances.
Now that we’ve brainstormed topics that are relevant to our keywords, we can start creating content. You can create all kinds of different content, from videos to memes – but we’re going to focus on blogging.
Blogging in Halifax
Why blogging?
While all content has its advantages, blogging, in particular, has a number of advantages for the purposes of boosting your search engine rankings. Blogging is:
- Easy to start doing. You don’t need cameras or microphones – just a keyboard.
- Easy for search engines to read. Search engines understand written words better than anything. That means your blog can teach a search engine what your website is about.
- Great for informational and commercial queries. We’ll explore why in a bit, but blogging is very useful for answering specific questions, and what are known as long-tail keywords.
- Easy to incorporate other content in. You can add infographics, videos, and memes to your blog.
Tips for blogging in Halifax
- Content needs to be unique, and uniquely useful. That means you should never copy existing content, and that you should always find a distinctive spin on topics that have already been covered.
- Content should always serve your keywords – in other words, keyword research always comes first.
- Write like a person, not a machine. Make jokes! Develop your own style! Get personal with it. By putting a part of yourself into everything you write, you ensure that all of your content is unique.
- Use keywords in your headings. Notice that most of the headings in this article feature keywords we might want to rank for, like “blogging in Halifax” and “keyword research in Halifax”.
- Don’t keyword-stuff. Just focus on writing good content. Search engines are getting extremely good at understanding semantics – include relevant keywords in your headings, write well-researched and interesting content, and everything will fall into place.
- Look at what your competitors are doing. What’s ranking well in Halifax? Search for the keywords you want to rank for, find relevant content, then create something better than what’s already out there.
Other types of content your Halifax business can create
During your research on what kinds of content to make for different keywords, you may notice that the content that lands at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) is not a blog. It may be a video, an infographic, or something else.
If you have the resources, match the type of content you create to the content that ranks well for a given keyword. Search engines are good at determining the type of content that users want to see for a given keyword – don’t fight against the algorithm.
We’ll create content for you
High-quality content is essential to SEO, brand awareness, and even sales. We’re experts when it comes to SEO in Halifax. We can create all of your content for you.
firstrank.ca
