The Role Of Keywords In Content Marketing
Posted by John Verity on Fri, Jul 22, 2011
By now, everyone in the Web-based marketing business knows that keywords are 
crucial. Like the bread crumbs that helped Hansel and Gretel to find their way through the forest, keywords help search engines find pages that are “about” specific topics.
In content marketing, however, embedding keywords on the simple basis of their popularity won’t work. Instead, content must be prepared mainly to delight the human mind, not solely to entice the gimlet eye of Google and its gang.
And to sway that mind - to get your marketing message or brand name past people’s jaded eyeballs and into their consciousness and better yet, to get them to share this message via Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or some other social networking platform - your content must be crafted in a way that’s truly engaging.
Content must employ, that is, one or more of the standard rhetorical arguments, starting with logic: “The best bicycles are those that include features A, B, and C, which are vital for reasons X, Y, and most important of all, Z.“
Content can also speak with authority: “In serving medical widget makers for the past 47 years, we’ve come to understand left-handed doohickeys better than anyone else in the business.”
Finally, there’s the emotional appeal: “Imagine the sheer joy your loved ones will feel when they open a box of our juicy, red Delicious apples, each one lovingly picked by hand and individually wrapped in pastel-colored tissue paper made by Florentine ...” You get the idea.
In content marketing, prose has to be compelling, its graphics lucid, and its layout artful so that it will register well with a maximum number of discerning, interested, and motivated humans.
And the role of keywords in content marketing? They are more important then ever, but they need to be selected and employed with a different mindset than usual. Think of it in terms of harmony, or fit.
Content marketing is most effective when it gives the reader information that’s particularly useful or enlightening at the moment it's encountered. Of course, she may not even be aware of her need for certain information or insight until that moment, which is all the better.
The simple fact is that when content and need for information are in harmony - when there’s a good fit between them, that is - the stage is set for a unique and mutually rewarding exchange. Your reader gets from you information or insight that matters to her, and this triggers an “Aha” moment, however brief, that with any luck will have lasting effect.
And it’s exactly then, in return, that you earn from her a new level of authority, trust, and credibility. Your content, your brand, your voice, and your products or services suddenly stand out, above and beyond all others. And in today’s world, awash, as it is, in much too much data and information, standing out is worth a great deal.
Now, if you think about it, there happen to be many moments in your reader’s buying process when you could provide just what she’s looking for - or what she would gladly use were she presented with it.
And here is where selecting just the right keywords is critical. It’s not enough to simply tag your content with a few general and extremely popular labels like “lawnmowers” or “digital cameras,“ for example. You must, as our friend Lee Odden points out over at TopRank marketing blog, make sure your content contains keywords that address specific “pain points” - those junctures, or stages, in the reader’s process of researching a planned purchase or decision at which you can help them learn or understand something better and thereby win their attention - and, let’s hope, their trust.
Naturally, the right keywords will help your content both to be discovered in the first place and then, to get passed along to others with similar needs. So, “electric vs. gas lawnmower” is likely to resonate with a certain group of people at an early stage of choosing such a machine. Others, further along, might find your content when searching for “battery vs. cord lawnmower,” and still others might arrive via “Toro vs. Sears.”
Two vital keyword-selection tools for use in content marketing: Google Analytics and the keyword tool in Google's AdWords system.
In brief, keywords work best when they pick up on that tune your reader’s already singing to herself. You may not know the exact melody, but with a little thought, you ought to be able to play along in just the right key.