Do you want to rely more on content-based marketing? So does everybody else.

A recent study by backlinko.com and BuzzSumo shows that 94% of content gets no external links and only 2.2% draws external links from multiple sites. External links are critical to improving the content's search ranking and for enabling readers to organically locate the content. 

So, why is it so hard to get backlinks? There has been a dramatic rise in the amount content that is being created as content-based marketing continues to rise in popularity. As the amount of content has risen, it has become harder to get your content noticed. The good news is that despite the intense competition for readers and links if you can stand out from the crowd succeed it is possible to win big. For example, the study found that 1.3% of articles get 75% of the social shares.

So, what should you do about it? Before you dive in an assume that content market will be the solution to all your digital marketing woes it is critical to consider the baseline success rate. Given the low baseline rate, creating content without a distribution strategy is not likely to lead to the desired results. Additionally, should follow best practices to ensure that your content has the best chances of success. 

Other interesting findings:

• Favor long-form content: Long-form content gets on average 77.2% more links than short articles
• Write longer titles: 76.7% of the social shares came from headlines that are 14-17 words in length
• Adding a question mark to the headline had 23.3% more social shares than headlines without
• “Why” and “What” posts got 25.8% more links than “How to” posts 

Google – Content based Search?

Google is undoubtedly the dominant player in the search engine industry. In fact most of the companies that have adopted digital marketing have ensured to adapt to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. Recently, Google released a white paper that indicated changing the criteria it uses to rank websites to include Google’s assessment of the accuracy of the content. This has shaken few search-engine-optimization experts speculating the changes for future.

Google's paper titled “Knowledge-Based Trust: Estimating the Trustworthiness of Web Sources,” discusses ranking websites based on the trustworthiness and factual accuracy of web sources. This new system would rely on Google’s own Knowledge Vault and a number of other metrics to gauge the accuracy of the information on a page. This would mean that if one's website contains known inaccuracies, or if it simply doesn’t contain much of the relevant content, the ranking on Google would be adversely affected for that website.

I think this in accordance with the focus on content based digital marketing. In the last two years, content marketing has gained tremendous focus and it is one of the most important areas in the digital marketing this year. Some of the following stats corroborate this finding:
- 57% of marketers report content marketing is their top marketing priority for 2013.

- 60% of marketers use content marketing on a weekly basis.

- 82% of prospects say content targeted to their industry is more valuable.

- 9 in 10 organizations market with content.

As a company owner involved in digital marketing, the better the company's website ranks, the more traffic it is likely to get and the greater is the lead generation and conversions.
A Knowledge-Based Trust (KBT) signal would be a significant departure from current practice, which uses traditional linking strategies to boost a website’s “authority.” Instead of rewarding or punishing a website based on the number and quality of links it has to other websites and portals, the search engine actually would assess the content of each Web page using the complex methodology discussed in the paper. This methodology is quite complex and Google has commented that these theories are still in research and development stage and not expected to roll out any time soon. Thus, I would strongly suggest companies to not stop any of the current SEO strategies.

Google is well known for aggregating all the content published on the Internet and respond with an output on demand. The fresher the content, the more helpful it is for Google likes it as websites, blogs, and paid media strategies all require fresh content to be effective. Even social media citations are starting to populate the search results- the most recent example being Twitter releasing its API allowing its tweets to be easily displayed through Google search.

The key to a successful content marketing strategy is to provide free, no-obligation information or advice that accurately answers questions and solves problems. It is also important that the content is aggregated from all sources and is also promoted on as many platforms as possible. To summarize, even if Google is yet to release its content based search model, marketers are already spending significant resources on content based digital marketing. In essence, content based marketing is a necessity today.

 Source / Reference:

http://kapost.com/content-marketing-facts/
http://thegazette.com/subject/news/digital-marketing-google-x2014-search-engine-for-truth-20150321
http://www.brightedge.com/blog/knowledge-based-trust-a-new-google-ranking-factor/