In the digital age, content is king. As such, the importance of creating quality content that resonates with your target audience is paramount.
While paid advertising can effectively drive traffic to your website, organic content builds a loyal following and establishes your brand as an authority in your industry.
What is organic content?
Organic content refers to content you create to attract traffic you don’t have to pay for directly. This traffic comes from search engines, social media, and more.
For example, let’s say you run a fitness blog and want to attract more traffic to your website. You conduct keyword research and find that many people are searching for “best exercises to lose belly fat.”
Based on this information, you create a blog post titled “10 Best Exercises to Lose Belly Fat.” You then include a variety of exercises that have proven effective when it comes to torching belly fat.
You optimize your post with relevant keywords and share it on your social media accounts. Over time, your post gains traction and begins to rank high in search results for the targeted keyword phrase.
As a result, you attract more traffic to your website. Simultaneously, you establish your brand as a trusted resource for fitness information. To top it off, you potentially generate leads or sales from the increased exposure. This is how effective organic content attracts traffic to your website, which can be a rocket ship for your brand.
The numbers agree: The #1 organic result in a Google search has a click-through rate of 27.6%. On the other hand, paid ads only deliver a click-through rate of 3.17%.
Organic content best practices and strategies
To create effective organic content, following best practices and strategies designed to maximize its impact is essential. Some key strategies to consider include the following:
- Conducting keyword research. Before creating any content, conduct keyword research to identify the keywords and phrases your target audience searches for.
- Creating high-quality content. Your content should be well-written, informative, and engaging. Make sure to provide value to your audience by answering their questions and addressing their pain points.
- Optimizing your content. Use relevant keywords within your headlines, subheadings, and the rest of your content. It’s best to also incorporate all tags and meta-descriptions for images.
- Promoting your content. Share your content on social media and other relevant platforms to increase its visibility and attract more traffic.
- Avoiding keyword stuffing. Google’s algorithm frowns on content that’s jam-packed with keywords designed to give the page a higher ranking.
Organic content for social media
Organic content for social media refers to any content you share on social media platforms to build and engage with your audience without the use of paid advertising.
Examples of organic content for social media include informative, entertaining, educational, or promotional posts, images, videos, and stories or reels.
For example, suppose you’re in charge of marketing for a software as a service (SaaS) company. Based on feedback from your sales staff, you discover that your target customers respond more favorably to screenshots than videos that describe your offering.
As a result, you and your team replace the content on certain web pages with screenshots. You also tag each one with descriptors that make it easier for search algorithms to identify the content of each image. You then generate a series of LinkedIn posts promoting the content on those pages.
Soon, your company will see higher lead conversions from those screenshot pages. By providing your visitors with what they want and then promoting your adjustments on social media, you boost the effectiveness of your content strategy.
Organic content vs. paid content
While both organic and paid content can effectively drive traffic to your website, there are some critical differences between the two. Paid content involves paying for advertising space or promotion, while organic content is designed to attract traffic naturally. While paid content can quickly boost traffic, organic content focuses on building long-term relationships with your audience.
In some situations, organic content can outperform its paid counterpart. For instance, organic content may outpace paid content when it comes to:
- Authenticity. Organic content can be considered more authentic and genuine than paid content. People tend to trust and engage with content that feels authentic and comes across as less promotional.
- Shareability. Organic content is more likely to be shared and amplified by audiences, which can help increase reach and engagement. This is because people tend to share content that they find interesting, informative, or entertaining with their networks. For instance, people are 2.3 times more likely to engage and share posts with images on social media than posts without visuals.
- Cost-effectiveness. How much does organic content cost? Organic content is usually less expensive than paid content. Because it costs less, it’s an excellent option for brands with limited marketing budgets. While paid content can offer immediate results, organic content can provide long-term value and benefits.
That being said, there are also situations where paid content can be more effective. For example, paid content can get the job done if you need to boost visibility or promote a specific product or service quickly. Ultimately, the best approach is to find a balance between the two instead of making a hardline commitment to one or the other.
What makes good organic content?
Good organic content is well-written, informative, and engaging. It provides value to your target audience by solving problems, addressing pain points, and answering questions.
It also uses relevant keywords, whether in the body of written text or the description of images and videos. And because people value originality, it’s often best to get creative with your content ideas.
Examples of effective organic content can include the following:
- How-to guides. Creating informative how-to guides that provide value to your audience can be a great way to generate organic traffic to your website. For example, a manufacturing company might create a how-to guide on using a particular feature of one of its products.
- Infographics. Infographics are a visually appealing way to present complex information in a simple, easy-to-understand format. They can be shared on social media, embedded in blog posts, and used to generate backlinks to your website.
- User-generated content. Encouraging your customers to share their experiences and stories about your brand can be a powerful way to generate organic content. This could include customer testimonials, product reviews, or user-generated photos and videos.
- Strategically crafted blog posts. Creating high-quality, informative blog posts about topics of interest to your target audience can be a great way to generate organic traffic to your website. Blog posts can also help establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry.
- Social media posts. Sharing engaging, visually appealing content on social media can help increase engagement and build a community of followers. This could include behind-the-scenes photos and videos, informative posts, or entertaining memes and GIFs.
Start leveraging organic content today
Organic content is often more authentic, shareable, and cost-effective than paid content and can provide long-term value and benefits for your brand. Creating effective organic traffic can help you achieve success in the digital age.
To dive into the potential of an organic content strategy for your business, reach out to ClearVoice today.
