linkbird presents new infographic on Content Marketing in SEO

Content Marketing seems to be all the rage now. Look no further for proof than Google Trends, a tool to determine the most trending search enquiries on Google within a specific timeframe. Simply type in Content Marketing and witness the increasing popularity of the term across the board. But how important is Content Marketing to SEO, really?

Survey on Content Marketing in SEO

The Berlin-based SaaS (Software as a Service) company linkbird, developer of the SEO management tool of the same name for big and small linkbuilding and content seeding campaigns, took it upon itself to answer this question posed to them by countless customers, partners and colleagues in the German-language SEO scene. The company conducted a survey among experts from the fields of SEO, E-Commerce and Online Marketing between July and August of 2013. Over 6800 contacts in the business were asked to participate. Over 500 responded and filled out the questionnaire. linkbird now published the results in a very fun and colorful infographic as well as a quite informative PDF report as a supplement to the graphic.

What do the numbers tell us about Content Marketing in SEO?

On the whole, there seems to be a prevalent uncertainty about the actual definition of the term “Content Marketing”. Even if 19% of the respondents consider Content Marketing to be the future of SEO/Online Marketing and 74% understand it to be the spreading of creative and high-quality content, 27% are not even sure if their own marketing measures could be part of Content Marketing in the original sense of the word.

Still, more than 41% of the interviewees use Content Marketing in one way or another, and especially for online campaigns (73%), which, for 36%, already resulted in measurable successes. Content is usually produced in-house (42%), the work hours are most often put into writing blog articles (52%) and the content seeding is done predominantly on Facebook (56%). The research for good content ideas (38%), the creation of content (29%) and the assessment of content marketing campaigns (14%) are considered to be the most difficult aspects of content marketing. A lack of practical, effective tools for the campaigns has been mentioned frequently (73%).

42% of the respondents make Content Marketing for the consumer (B2C), 14% produce it for other companies (B2B) and 28% do it for both groups. Regardless of the size of the company, only a small number of the staff is directly involved in Content Marketing. The goal is to generate awareness for the brand (28%), for lead generation (31%) and for an increase of sales (28%). Even if many interviewees were not inclined to divulge any info on the size of their Content Marketing budgets (66%), more than half of the respondents (52%) already expect an increase of their Content Marketing budget in the coming months.

Finally, more than half of the respondents (51%), made up in equal parts of executives, SEO managers and SEO staff stemming from E-Commerce and SEO-agencies, admitted to being slightly influenced by well-made Content Marketing in their buying decision. 18% are quite sure about it.

On the whole, the survey results clearly show that Content Marketing is on the rise in the German SEO sector. And this makes perfect sense – for search engines on the lookout for the best content, for website operators aiming for an improved visibility and reachability, and for site visitors keen on informing, enjoyable and edifying content.

Here’s the infographic:

Content Marketing in SEO – Infographic by www.linkbird.com

Over at the site you can download and read up on a more detailed analysis of the survey results, including all relevant facts & figures. Go here: https://www.linkbird.com/en/functions/infographics/content-marketing-in-seo