The rapid development of the Internet has greatly changed people’s Internet search habits. We don’t search for a keyword directly and go to a merchant’s official website to learn about or buy a product like before. When we want to learn about a brand or buy a product, we first search for its brand reputation online, learn about the product from the user’s shared experience, and then decide whether to buy it, or compare the user experience of different brands before choosing the product. Content marketing is especially critical when it comes to understanding and comparing brands among buyers.

How do I choose a platform for content marketing?

First of all, we need to understand how search engines rate an article as high quality, and how to push the searcher to the quality content they want to see. In fact, in addition to some basic criteria, such as the originality of the article, search engines pay more attention to the relevance of the content of the article and keywords, as well as the authority of the platform. The search engine will make a comprehensive analysis based on the above factors and then push the search results.

When you type in a keyword, a drop-down menu will appear below the search bar, showing you the expansion terms that people have recently searched for that are related to the keyword you entered. Sometimes there is another “others may search” section in the search results page, and a “related search” at the bottom. When we write an article, we may want to consider including these long-tail recommendations to let search engines know how relevant the article is to the search term and “understand” the content of the article.

So, how do search engines know that your article is a good one? In addition to the relevance of the article to the keywords mentioned above, search engines also consider the authority and authenticity of the article. Still, even if the author of your article is not a well-known expert, it does not represent that the authority and authenticity of the article is low. Search engines also consider the platform where the article will be published. For example, when you and your competitor’s article is written “how to get rid of eye bags”, and the keyword appears about the same number and length, the search engine will refer to the publishing platform of the two articles to determine which article is better. Because articles published on larger platforms are more authoritative than smaller platforms (at least in the eyes of search engines), it is easier to rank highly.

For example, “HK01” is a well-known platform in Hong Kong and has become a brand of its own. Branded platforms generally have official social platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Wiki, etc. For a brand to be exposed on many social platforms, it requires a lot of manpower. Therefore, search engines will use this information to determine whether a brand/company has a certain size and resources. This brand information becomes the basis for search engines to measure the authority of the web page and its content. Therefore, when we choose a platform, we can consider a platform that already has a certain brand effect. There are also platforms that publish interviews with well-known experts or celebrities, and search engines judge these platforms as authoritative and consider their content to be authentic and reliable, giving them high rankings.

So, how do we discover what Google identifies as the authoritative platform? We can filter by searching for specific keywords. Assuming you are in the beauty industry, you can search for keywords related to beauty products, such as “hair removal”, “eye bag removal”, “freckle removal”, “Hifu”, etc. The platform that appears more frequently in many search results pages is the authoritative platform.

Once you’ve identified a bunch of authoritative platforms, the next step is to choose two or three of them to publish your article on. Let’s say you want to publish an article that targets the keyword “how to get rid of eye bags”. If you find that the authoritative platform A you want to choose has already been ranked in the search results for “how to remove eye bags” (i.e., an article about “eye bag removal” has been published on platform A), should you still publish the article on platform A? If the title of the article on this page is “8 ways to remove eye bags”, it is clear that the title only contains part of the keyword you want to target, “how to get rid of eye bags” – i.e., only “eye bag removal”. When you find that the article that does not fully contain keywords can be ranked well, you can publish the article on platform A. In other words, as long as you do a better job of keyword optimization than the “8 Ways to Get Bags Under Your Eyes” and get the title and content exactly match the keyword (i.e., “how to get rid of eye bags”), you’ll have a good chance of ranking well. On the contrary, if the original relevant article on platform A has fully matched the keyword, you should not choose this platform, because it will be difficult for your article to replace the original article and get better rankings. This is because a platform can only get one ranking result from search engines (except for keywords that are very uncompetitive). Of course, search engines also consider other factors, such as the number of keyword occurrences. If a platform’s page is already ranking, but the keyword only appears once in the title and in the article, as long as the keyword appears more often in your article and you write the content based on the top three articles, then you can still choose this platform.

Articles and keyword considerations for content marketing

Once you’ve chosen a platform, you’ll be ready to write an article. Why do you need to determine the platform before writing an article? Because some platforms are more rigorous in reviewing articles, it is necessary to understand the platform’s requirements for articles in advance. Before writing an article, you should pay attention to the layout of keywords, such as: how many times should the keyword appear, how many words should the article have, how to determine the direction of the article?…… We should try our best to add relevant terms recommended by Google, such as the search bar Drop-down menu and long-tail words in related searches, to the article, and then refer to the number of keyword occurrences in the high-ranking articles, the number of occurrences of exact match keywords, the number of occurrences of separate keywords, the number of words in the article, the writing direction of the article, the key words contained in the title of the article, and so on. If you are doing “OK mirror” and want to rank for the keyword “OK mirror”, you need to look at the articles in the search results (as shown below). The top three pages explain what an OK mirror is, how it works and what it can be, who it is for, and more. These are all very valuable references.

There is also a type of keyword, where your title and content must contain specific words when writing content. Let’s say you open a fitness center and want to do content marketing for “weight loss exercises.” This keyword actually hides part of the extension, which is “what are the weight loss exercises”, because Google knows very well that the purpose of people searching for “weight loss exercises” is to see what weight loss exercises are available. So in addition to including keywords, your article should also list several weight loss exercises. And the title of your article should preferably have a “number”, and the content of the article should also contain a “list of numbers”, as shown below:

The title contains numbers, such as: 7, 5, 6 strokes…

The content of the article contains a list, e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4……

Content marketing articles should align with the searcher’s purpose

Content marketing is no less useful than official social platforms, increasing brand exposure and credibility. When we want to share good information online, we need to be recognized by search engines. Google has dramatically improved its search engine algorithms in recent years to make search results present what searchers want to know. In the past, searchers needed to go to the second or even third page to get the information they needed, but now the first version of the information is able to satisfy the searcher’s curiosity. Google has been able to determine what searchers want to see based on keywords and push relevant information accurately, and it even knows if your article is suitable for the searcher’s purpose. With this in mind, your search engine strategy and content layout should also match the search intent of the searchers, rather than just promoting the brand message or product you want the searchers to see. Let’s say you want to direct viewers to a website with the keyword “indigestion” and see your medication for indigestion. If the core word of your article title is “indigestion,” then the content should be written around that core word. You can introduce your product by listing the symptoms and causes of indigestion, and then introducing methods or medications that can relieve and treat indigestion. This will naturally lead you from what searchers care about to the products you want to introduce. So, remember to prioritize when writing an article, even if your main purpose is to let people know about your product. Because Google can “read” the content of an article, if the focus of the title is indigestion but the content focuses on the product introduction, it is inconsistent with the purpose of the searcher and it is difficult to rank well.