SEO
What It Is And How To Use It
Every brand wants to be considered a thought leader, but fewer can define what actually qualifies as thought leadership.
When done correctly, thought leadership marketing can help your business maintain authority in your industry.
But it is an earned strategy.
Your content marketing teams should only pursue thought leadership if your brand has the successes, perspectives, reputation, and innovations to back up your claims.
If your brand has earned your industry’s trust, then here is how to get started with this specific type of content.
What Is Thought Leadership?
When a brand or individual is considered a thought leader, others in the same industry consistently look to them for insights.
Thought leadership content may include research, opinions, personal anecdotes, or future predictions.
It may reference current events, evaluate industry trends, or spark debate among other thought leaders.
It can also take on many forms, including:
- Ebooks.
- White Papers.
- Infographics.
- Webinars.
- Podcasts.
- Op-eds.
- Original Research.
- And more!
The reality is that most content on the internet is quite repetitive and doesn’t showcase original thoughts.
So, what distinguishes thought leadership content?
Brand-specific insights that shape the larger conversations happening in your industry.
When Should I Get Started With Thought Leadership Content?
New businesses or brands will not be ready to pursue this type of content marketing.
Why? Because others in your industry are less likely to trust your insight if a depth of experience doesn’t back it.
Successful thought leadership does require a strong foundation in content marketing.
It also requires public relations, social media, and reputation management.
If your brand is actively engaging in the above efforts, you’re paving your way for a future as a thought leader.
Benefits Of Thought Leadership Content
Like all content marketing, creating high-quality thought leadership takes time and resources.
So, what are the benefits?
Earns Customer Loyalty
Thought leaders have already done the work of building credibility in their industry.
Because they have earned customers’ trust, they can use their thought leadership to gain customer loyalty.
In one Edelman and LinkedIn survey, almost 60% of respondents claimed that they found a brand’s thought leadership content more trustworthy than their traditional marketing materials.
And, thought leadership content doesn’t only influence customers.
It helps competitors, journalists, influencers – or anyone who has an interest in your space – see your brand as an authoritative industry voice.
Brings SEO Value
Thought leadership content that lives permanently on your website can rank for relevant keywords and drive organic traffic.
Off-site thought leadership content that includes backlinks to your website, whether in the author byline or within the content, sends link equity to your web pages, improving your Domain Authority and your overall ranking potential.
Unlike traditional guest posting, thought leadership can help you acquire backlinks from authoritative domains that are otherwise somewhat difficult to acquire.
Lead Generation
For B2B brands, in particular, thought leadership can help secure qualified leads.
Most B2B customers are highly knowledgeable in their fields. Many engage with thought leadership regularly to stay abreast of industry trends and innovations.
If they discover that your brand is the source of thought leadership, they are more likely to pursue you as their service provider or solution.
How To Develop A Thought Leadership Marketing Strategy
Creating thought leadership is much different than simply contributing a guest post to an industry website or offering how-to blogs on your own domain.
Thought leaders leverage their vast expertise and knowledge to bring their audience exceptional value that no one else can.
Identify Your Areas Of Expertise
When developing your thought leadership strategy, it’s important to consider what sets you apart from other thought leaders.
Think about the unique angles and perspectives that your brand can leverage:
- Do you have a differentiated product or technology?
- What do you do differently than other brands in your space?
- Have you done original research or reporting on industry topics?
- Have you found new solutions to well-known industry problems?
- What challenges or setbacks has your brand overcome?
These are just a few questions to help you brainstorm, as many topics can be utilized for thought leadership.
Remember that your unique perspectives may not necessarily be limited to your products and services.
Your workplace culture, company mission or values, growth strategy, and more can all be leveraged to create impactful thought leadership.
Choose Your Thought Leaders
The byline of your thought leadership content must be from an individual at your company with the knowledge, experience, and expertise to speak with authority.
That often means C-Suite executives, founders, directors, or key stakeholders at your organization or business.
Titles are important in the world of thought leadership.
Your audience should be confident that the speaker is intimately connected to the earned secrets of your brand.
Determine Where Your Thought Leadership Content Will Live
Thought leadership content can be valuable assets that live permanently on your website.
You may want to leverage this content in email marketing, lead generation, or other parts of the customer journey.
Like a guest posting strategy, you can pitch thought leadership to other publications featuring commentary from expert voices.
To get started with off-site thought leadership, put together a list of publications that want to feature industry experts.
Then, reach out to the editors or content managers.
Ask if they are interested in publishing your brand’s original content.
Your outreach targets should have a higher Domain Authority score than your website and display strong SEO signals.
Create High-Quality Content
The most time-consuming part of any content marketing strategy is the time and effort to create high-quality content.
But unlike other content on your website, thought leadership must meet certain requirements to be categorized accordingly.
To create content that actually has the prestige and quality of thought leadership, you’ll need to meet the following standards.
Real World Examples
Because thought leadership is all about earned secrets, the support for your claims should be drawn from real-world experience.
Your audience should feel like it’s getting an inside look at your business and the strategies or approaches that made you successful.
Personable Expert Voices
Although your brand name can carry the weight of the byline, the best thought leadership content has a genuine, personable voice, name, and face behind it.
You want your audience to feel as though it’s getting personal access to key decision makers and stakeholders at your business or organization.
Short-Term And Long-Term Value
Thought leadership content should be actively engaging with the conversations that are happening right now in your industry.
But there should also be evergreen elements to your thought leadership content that help that content rank organically in search.
You want your marketing team to be able to leverage thought leadership content for more than just the week that other brands’ hot takes show up on social media.
The best thought leadership will have long-term value, giving your team evergreen content for future inbound marketing efforts.
Informed By Your Products Or Services
Ultimately, thought leadership is still a content marketing strategy, and you can use it to earn new leads and customers.
Still, the actual products or services your brand provides are what inform the best thought leadership.
That doesn’t mean a front-and-center sales pitch. Your products and services should have a more subtle presence and be seen as a key source of where your expertise comes from.
Promote Your Content And Thought Leaders
Building a thought leadership presence means creating content and sharing it on social media sites with the loyal audience your organization has worked so hard to earn.
Most thought leaders are active (and verified!) on websites like Twitter, where real-time conversations take place in response to industry happenings.
Journalists also look at thought leaders to provide insights or expert sourcing when reporting on industry news and love to cite content that can serve as strong evidence in their reporting.
You can use your thought leadership content to enhance your PR outreach, as journalists will prefer to feature prominent thought leaders over less reputable sources.
Conclusion
It will take time and proven success to reach the status of a thought leader.
But, once earned, thought leadership marketing has a fantastic way of enriching all other areas of your digital strategy.
Deploy this strategy consistently, and you’ll earn the loyalty of industry professionals who are always waiting to hear what your brand will say next.
More resources:
Featured Image: Andrii Zastrozhnov/Shutterstock
SEO
Google’s Search Engine Market Share Drops As Competitors’ Grows
According to data from GS Statcounter, Google’s search engine market share has fallen to 86.99%, the lowest point since the firm began tracking search engine share in 2009.
The drop represents a more than 4% decrease from the previous month, marking the largest single-month decline on record.
U.S. Market Impact
The decline is most significant in Google’s key market, the United States, where its share of searches across all devices fell by nearly 10%, reaching 77.52%.
Concurrently, competitors Microsoft Bing and Yahoo Search have seen gains. Bing reached a 13% market share in the U.S. and 5.8% globally, its highest since launching in 2009.
Yahoo Search’s worldwide share nearly tripled to 3.06%, a level not seen since July 2015.
Search Quality Concerns
Many industry experts have recently expressed concerns about the declining quality of Google’s search results.
A portion of the SEO community believes that the search giant’s results have worsened following the latest update.
These concerns have begun to extend to average internet users, who are increasingly voicing complaints about the state of their search results.
Alternative Perspectives
Web analytics platform SimilarWeb provided additional context on X (formerly Twitter), stating that its data for the US for March 2024 suggests Google’s decline may not be as severe as initially reported.
From our data (Search Engine website category, US, March 2024) it doesn’t look like we’re there yet: pic.twitter.com/RBUJp4ZLeb
— Similarweb (@Similarweb) May 1, 2024
SimilarWeb also highlighted Yahoo’s strong performance, categorizing it as a News and Media platform rather than a direct competitor to Google in the Search Engine category.
Don’t underestimate Yahoo. They’re doing great. On our platform they’re categorized as News and Media, and hence not a direct competitor to Google in the Search Engine category. But they rank #10 worldwide, #6 in the US, and #1 in their category. Much higher than Bing and OpenAI. pic.twitter.com/O4yJu5QEK6
— Similarweb (@Similarweb) May 2, 2024
At the same time, Google is slightly declining 👀 pic.twitter.com/9i7paeU1QG
— Similarweb (@Similarweb) May 2, 2024
Why It Matters
The shifting search engine market trends can impact businesses, marketers, and regular users.
Google has been on top for a long time, shaping how we find things online and how users behave.
However, as its market share drops and other search engines gain popularity, publishers may need to rethink their online strategies and optimize for multiple search platforms besides Google.
Users are becoming vocal about Google’s declining search quality over time. As people start trying alternate search engines, the various platforms must prioritize keeping users satisfied if they want to maintain or grow their market position.
It will be interesting to see how they respond to this boost in market share.
What It Means for SEO Pros
As Google’s competitors gain ground, SEO strategies may need to adapt by accounting for how each search engine’s algorithms and ranking factors work.
This could involve diversifying SEO efforts across multiple platforms and staying up-to-date on best practices for each one.
The increased focus on high-quality search results emphasizes the need to create valuable, user-focused content that meets the needs of the target audience.
SEO pros must prioritize informative, engaging, trustworthy content that meets search engine algorithms and user expectations.
Remain flexible, adaptable, and proactive to navigate these shifts. Keeping a pulse on industry trends, user behaviors, and competing search engine strategies will be key for successful SEO campaigns.
Featured Image: Tada Images/Shutterstock
SEO
How To Drive Pipeline With A Silo-Free Strategy
When it comes to B2B strategy, a holistic approach is the only approach.
Revenue organizations usually operate with siloed teams, and often expect a one-size-fits-all solution (usually buying clicks with paid media).
However, without cohesive brand, infrastructure, and pipeline generation efforts, they’re pretty much doomed to fail.
It’s just like rowing crew, where each member of the team must synchronize their movements to propel the boat forward – successful B2B marketing requires an integrated strategy.
So if you’re ready to ditch your disjointed marketing efforts and try a holistic approach, we’ve got you covered.
Join us on May 15, for an insightful live session with Digital Reach Agency on how to craft a compelling brand and PMF.
We’ll walk through the critical infrastructure you need, and the reliances and dependences of the core digital marketing disciplines.
Key takeaways from this webinar:
- Thinking Beyond Traditional Silos: Learn why traditional marketing silos are no longer viable and how they spell doom for modern revenue organizations.
- How To Identify and Fix Silos: Discover actionable strategies for pinpointing and sealing the gaps in your marketing silos.
- The Power of Integration: Uncover the secrets to successfully integrating brand strategy, digital infrastructure, and pipeline generation efforts.
Ben Childs, President and Founder of Digital Reach Agency, and Jordan Gibson, Head of Growth at Digital Reach Agency, will show you how to seamlessly integrate various elements of your marketing strategy for optimal results.
Don’t make the common mistake of using traditional marketing silos – sign up now and learn what it takes to transform your B2B go-to-market.
You’ll also get the opportunity to ask Ben and Jordan your most pressing questions, following the presentation.
And if you can’t make it to the live event, register anyway and we’ll send you a recording shortly after the webinar.
SEO
Why Big Companies Make Bad Content
It’s like death and taxes: inevitable. The bigger a company gets, the worse its content marketing becomes.
HubSpot teaching you how to type the shrug emoji or buy bitcoin stock. Salesforce sharing inspiring business quotes. GoDaddy helping you use Bing AI, or Zendesk sharing catchy sales slogans.
Judged by content marketing best practice, these articles are bad.
They won’t resonate with decision-makers. Nobody will buy a HubSpot license after Googling “how to buy bitcoin stock.” It’s the very definition of vanity traffic: tons of visits with no obvious impact on the business.
So why does this happen?
There’s an obvious (but flawed) answer to this question: big companies are inefficient.
As companies grow, they become more complicated, and writing good, relevant content becomes harder. I’ve experienced this firsthand:
- extra rounds of legal review and stakeholder approval creeping into processes.
- content watered down to serve an ever-more generic “brand voice”.
- growing misalignment between search and content teams.
- a lack of content leadership within the company as early employees leave.
Similarly, funded companies have to grow, even when they’re already huge. Content has to feed the machine, continually increasing traffic… even if that traffic never contributes to the bottom line.
There’s an element of truth here, but I’ve come to think that both these arguments are naive, and certainly not the whole story.
It is wrong to assume that the same people that grew the company suddenly forgot everything they once knew about content, and wrong to assume that companies willfully target useless keywords just to game their OKRs.
Instead, let’s assume that this strategy is deliberate, and not oversight. I think bad content—and the vanity traffic it generates—is actually good for business.
There are benefits to driving tons of traffic, even if that traffic never directly converts. Or put in meme format:
Programmatic SEO is a good example. Why does Dialpad create landing pages for local phone numbers?
Why does Wise target exchange rate keywords?
Why do we have a list of most popular websites pages?
As this Twitter user points out, these articles will never convert…
…but they don’t need to.
Every published URL and targeted keyword is a new doorway from the backwaters of the internet into your website. It’s a chance to acquire backlinks that wouldn’t otherwise exist, and an opportunity to get your brand in front of thousands of new, otherwise unfamiliar people.
These benefits might not directly translate into revenue, but over time, in aggregate, they can have a huge indirect impact on revenue. They can:
- Strengthen domain authority and the search performance of every other page on the website.
- Boost brand awareness, and encourage serendipitous interactions that land your brand in front of the right person at the right time.
- Deny your competitors traffic and dilute their share of voice.
These small benefits become more worthwhile when multiplied across many hundreds or thousands of pages. If you can minimize the cost of the content, there is relatively little downside.
What about topical authority?
“But what about topical authority?!” I hear you cry. “If you stray too far from your area of expertise, won’t rankings suffer for it?”
I reply simply with this screenshot of Forbes’ “health” subfolder, generating almost 4 million estimated monthly organic pageviews:
And big companies can minimize cost. For large, established brands, the marginal cost of content creation is relatively low.
Many companies scale their output through networks of freelancer writers, avoiding the cost of fully loaded employees. They have established, efficient processes for research, briefing, editorial review, publication and maintenance. The cost of an additional “unit” of content—or ten, or a hundred—is not that great, especially relative to other marketing channels.
There is also relatively little opportunity cost to consider: the fact that energy spent on “vanity” traffic could be better spent elsewhere, on more business-relevant topics.
In reality, many of the companies engaging in this strategy have already plucked the low-hanging fruit and written almost every product-relevant topic. There are a finite number of high traffic, high relevance topics; blog consistently for a decade and you too will reach these limits.
On top of that, the HubSpots and Salesforces of the world have very established, very efficient sales processes. Content gating, lead capture and scoring, and retargeting allow them to put very small conversion rates to relatively good use.
Even HubSpot’s article on Bitcoin stock has its own relevant call-to-action—and for HubSpot, building a database of aspiring investors is more valuable than it sounds, because…
The bigger a company grows, the bigger its audience needs to be to continue sustaining that growth rate.
Companies generally expand their total addressable market (TAM) as they grow, like HubSpot broadening from marketing to sales and customer success, launching new product lines for new—much bigger—audiences. This means the target audience for their content marketing grows alongside.
As Peep Laja put its:
But for the biggest companies, this principle is taken to an extreme. When a company gears up to IPO, its target audience expands to… pretty much everyone.
This was something Janessa Lantz (ex-HubSpot and dbt Labs) helped me understand: the target audience for a post-IPO company is not just end users, but institutional investors, market analysts, journalists, even regular Jane investors.
These are people who can influence the company’s worth in ways beyond simply buying a subscription: they can invest or encourage others to invest and dramatically influence the share price. These people are influenced by billboards, OOH advertising and, you guessed it, seemingly “bad” content showing up whenever they Google something.
You can think of this as a second, additional marketing funnel for post-IPO companies:
These visitors might not purchase a software subscription when they see your article in the SERP, but they will notice your brand, and maybe listen more attentively the next time your stock ticker appears on the news.
They won’t become power users, but they might download your eBook and add an extra unit to the email subscribers reported in your S1.
They might not contribute revenue now, but they will in the future: in the form of stock appreciation, or becoming the target audience for a future product line.
Vanity traffic does create value, but in a form most content marketers are not used to measuring.
If any of these benefits apply, then it makes sense to acquire them for your company—but also to deny them to your competitors.
SEO is an arms race: there are a finite number of keywords and topics, and leaving a rival to claim hundreds, even thousands of SERPs uncontested could very quickly create a headache for your company.
SEO can quickly create a moat of backlinks and brand awareness that can be virtually impossible to challenge; left unchecked, the gap between your company and your rival can accelerate at an accelerating pace.
Pumping out “bad” content and chasing vanity traffic is a chance to deny your rivals unchallenged share of voice, and make sure your brand always has a seat at the table.
Final thoughts
These types of articles are miscategorized—instead of thinking of them as bad content, it’s better to think of them as cheap digital billboards with surprisingly great attribution.
Big companies chasing “vanity traffic” isn’t an accident or oversight—there are good reasons to invest energy into content that will never convert. There is benefit, just not in the format most content marketers are used to.
This is not an argument to suggest that every company should invest in hyper-broad, high-traffic keywords. But if you’ve been blogging for a decade, or you’re gearing up for an IPO, then “bad content” and the vanity traffic it creates might not be so bad.
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