Anybody who has been blogging or tinkering with SEO for even a short amount of time has likely heard the phrase “content is king”. This seems naturally intuitive, as without any content on a website, what purpose would it serve? Unfortunately, many people bill content creation and marketing as an end-all, be-all solution to virtually every obstacle and challenge. While content does provide notable benefits, it is important to remember that content alone will not save you. With that being said, what does publishing content actually help you improve in your SEO and marketing strategies? We’ll talk about these benefits below and realistically outline their effects.

Content Creates Loyalty

Perhaps most importantly, the creation of quality content helps to build a fan-base and user loyalty. When people know they can turn to you for the best of the best, then they are far more likely to return to your blog or website in the future. Because of this, brands and businesses can often gain valuable attention across social media and search engines through the deployment of great content. This alone will not build your website’s audience or guarantee success, but it will ensure that more of the people who initially find your site will return in the future. Pinging users of your website with great content makes for an excellent retention strategy.

Content Creates Links

The more links you can build, the better your long-term SEO and marketing strategies will be. There are numerous ways in which to build links. You start off by creating more links and pages on your site, which search engines then index and rank accordingly in a wide variety of search results. You create links on social media as your content is shared by others, which can help boost short-term traffic rates to those pages and to your website. You earn backlinks from other sites that are discussing your content and sharing it with others, which helps boost both traffic and SEO clout. All in all, the potential for many different types of links is a genuine benefit of creating content.

Content Creates Marketing Potential

Whether you run a hobbyist’s blog or an online store-front, there is a good chance that people will not care about what you have to say or sell unless you have alluring content. The creation of content makes it possible for you to draw more people to your website through a variety of mediums. You can start periodically pinging users who have subscribed via email, alerting to new content via your mailing lists. A solid content game makes it much easier to build a presence on social media and drive traffic to your website. When you have great content, it can be downright easy to attract visitors via PPC campaigns and then integrate them with other aspects of your website. In short, content creates the initial conditions necessary for a good marketing strategy.

There are many areas where content creation can provide benefit, but not all of those areas genuinely see all of the benefits that many promote. How else have you used content to improve SEO, marketing or raw traffic? Tell us about your experience below in the comments.