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B2B content marketers continue to find SEO rankings a challenge

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By Laurie Fullerton | Freelance Writer

February 21, 2017 | 3 min read

With nearly 80% of content marketers saying that increasing their company's online visibility is their primary content marketing goal, a study suggests that for optimal SEO and content results, B2B marketers might want to re-think the overuse of infographics and the actual quality of their content over quantity.

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The study suggests that online visibility as it relates to search engine optimization (SEO), implies that to earn a spot on the first page of Google means content needs to be ten times better than anything found in search today.

"Content marketing and SEO are two practices that very much need each other. Well ranked content needs to be "ten times better than anything else on the subject in the search results today," according to Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, an SEO software company.

The study explored the types of content businesses produce in order to support brand awareness, SEO, and lead generation. It found that companies that focus on brand awareness tend to create infographics (19%) and product reviews (18%), while those focused on SEO and lead generation are most likely to produce research/original data (21%) and infographics (14%).

A separate study however, conducted by Moz and Buzzsumo presented evidence to suggest that content marketers' reliance on infographics should be reevaluated. The justification is that content that earns social shares typically is formatted for entertainment – list posts, videos, quizzes – while content that gets links and earned media is more informative (i.e., research-backed articles and opinion-forming journalism).

"The age of infographics is dying, and most of them are quite bad," Fishkin said. "The ones that have success do so in a slightly manipulative way. The embed gets linked back with very particular anchor texts that take advantage of search algorithms."

Nearly all-content marketers say they want to improve their company's content, the report notes, and optimizing content for access across multiple devices (26%), creating more original content (24%), and including more visual elements (21%) are top priorities.

But creating content to complement SEO efforts also required careful consideration of the specific content formats produced.

For more B2B news check out The Drum's dedicated section on the sector.

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