Content marketing works. It drives organic traffic to websites from the most qualified, valuable visitors who are on a mission to consume and share quality information. But just like the slow-and-steady results provided by SEO and Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing tends to frustrate many marketers who aren’t seeing the immediate results they need. This ultimately leads to one thing – content abandonment.
As a frustrated Content Marketer, it’s easy to just brush this marketing tactic off as inefficient when it isn’t working as well or as fast as one would like. Why continue to put so much effort into creating quality, optimized content when it’s not bringing in any more than when you weren’t producing any content at all, right? Wrong.
Content Marketing is a marathon. Not a sprint.
The logic still stands: the more optimized content you post, the more relevant your website will be for its target search terms, the better your rankings and organic traffic numbers. But what happens when you abandon your commitment to content? Let’s find out…
Organic Traffic
In 2014, a company we will call, “Company A”, placed enormous emphasis on creating consistent, optimized content consisting of blog posts, white papers, case studies – the works. After looking at their year-over-year organic traffic results, we noticed their organic traffic increased by 23% vs. the previous year.
However, after abandoning their commitment to content in 2015, their results weren’t as pleasant as expected. Although gradually, Company A’s organic traffic took a major hit throughout the course of the year. In fact, the 2015 year-over-year results showed a decrease by -5.6%.
Referral Traffic
A website’s referral traffic is dictated by visitors clicking on a link to your website that is featured on a different website – including your social media networks. When a content marketer is left with less and less content to share, they are unable to provide their audience with quality content to share with others. In Company A’s case, the results speak for themselves.
Quality of User
When creating content, it’s important to have an idea of who you are writing for. You must always keep a targeted buyer in mind in order to provide them with any value. The statistics below will show that when content creation was put on hold, visitors didn’t feel any need to stay on this website for a long length of time – and certainly not enough to become a conversion by completing a form.
While there are many things that Google indefinitely hates about websites, continuous, high-quality content is not one of them. If you’re thinking about embarking on a new Content Marketing push, great! But don’t abandon your efforts the minute the going gets tough!
