Written content is the most effective form of content marketing for driving traffic to a website, according to a recent study by SEO news outlet Search Engine Journal (SEJ).
SEJ asked its Twitter audience to state the best “type of content” for attracting traffic, and more than 40% said that engaging prose was the most effective, which put it ahead of video content (34.3%) and visual content (25.3%). Perhaps surprisingly, not a single respondent said that they had experienced any success with audio content.
The need to produce high-quality written word news, articles and blogs to improve search engine optimisation is now essential as brands look to gain an edge on competitors by becoming more visible in SERPs.
A separate report released by Searchmetrics late last week found that fast-loading web pages are the big winners in terms of mobile searches, so brands should look to combine relevant creative with smartphone-optimised publishing formats to really drive the traffic they need to get ahead. Google’s new Speed Update, which will arrive later this month, will strengthen this link.
Searchmetrics’ Director Marketing & Communications Cliff Edwards added: “Webmasters need to be continually testing and finding ways to optimize their web pages for speed. Overall this is going to mean plenty of work for many sites as even in the top five positions 32% of search results took longer than three seconds to load.”
Google’s own blurb on the Google ranking factors states that “compelling and useful” content remains arguably the primary factor for influencing the ranking of a website overall.
