Creating a high-quality Knowledge Center can boost traffic, rankings, and your content marketing ROI
Studies show that over two-thirds of Americans shop online at least once a month. The internet is increasingly becoming the primary source for consumers – from paying bills to reading news to online shopping. That’s why the single best thing you can do to your website right now if you’re a business looking to capture a portion of this online revenue stream is to invest in a high-quality content – specifically through creation of a custom Knowledge Center.
But don’t just take our word for it.
Google provides detailed instructions to webmasters for creating an SEO-friendly site, starting with the following tip:
“Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site.”
Producing high quality content is hard work, though, and studies show that the biggest challenges facing companies trying to tap into the power of content marketing is insufficient time and a lack of opportunities to produce engaging content. Building a Knowledge Center from scratch requires extensive research, time and resources. So when a small business owner asks us about the payoff, we understand where they’re coming from.
When you partner with SEO Advantage, our goal is to create a comprehensive Knowledge Center that results in positive ROI for your business. Our results-driven approach means we are focused on the metric that matters to you most – your bottom line.
Talk to SEO Advantage today to learn how we can help you achieve measurable returns by creating a developing a quality Knowledge Center for your company.
What is a Knowledge Center?
A knowledge center (KC) is online library or “cache” of information-rich resources with the purpose of engaging, informing, helping, and bringing value for your readers.
Your Knowledge Center houses all of the articles, whitepapers, infographics, videos, glossaries, e-book, FAQs and other resources for your customers in one easy-to-navigate location.
Knowledge Center Examples:
A KC is an integral part of an online marketing strategy called “inbound marketing,” where various forms of content aim to attract customers, readers and site visitors and guiding them through the various stages of the consumer funnel. Inbound marketing is increasingly becoming more prevalent as paid advertising is driven out of business due to modern ad-blocking software and negative consumer feedback.
While maintaining a company blog is also important, KC articles and resources are different in that they should be more permanent in nature and more extensive. In order to gain the full benefits of a Knowledge Center, content must be relevant, authoritative, informative and – most importantly – unique.
10 Benefits of a Knowledge Center
1. High Quality Content
Knowledge Center resources, in addition to other forms of content marketing via blog posts, link building and social media outreach, provide personable, easy to navigate resources for learning about your industry, your company and what you have to offer.
In other words, you’re giving your customers a reason to stick around and explore your site, which leads to greater traffic and higher conversion rates.
Marketers who produce high-quality, relevant content enjoy audiences who spend significantly more time on their sites – an average of 37 seconds per article. (Source)
2. Domain Authority
A steady flow of informative, shareable content builds credibility and trust among your prospective customers. High quality content also sends signals to Google that your brand is authoritative and relevant, which helps boost search engine rankings. Quality KC content that shows your perceived expertise and authority also opens up opportunities for links from other sites back to yours. This referral traffic and links are an important component in search engine rankings.
From Google: “If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site.”
3. Minimal Risk/Loss
By creating a Knowledge Center, you can control how much money, and how much time, you are able to invest. As with most marketing efforts, the more you put in the better the returns. However, you can start with a small initial investment to minimize potential losses until you start seeing content marketing returns.
Content marketing costs 62 percent less than outbound marketing and generates 3 times more leads. (Source)
4. Social Sharing
Shareable KC content (i.e. through Facebook, Twitter, other channels) helps build interest in your brand, which generates further buzz that spreads around the web. When combined with strategic social media targeting, Knowledge Center resources can go viral, resulting in a spike in website traffic and conversions.
80 percent of inbound marketers have increased their focus on social media in the last couple years. (Source)
5. Conversion Potential
Although your KC content should not be turned into an advertisement, articles and other knowledge center resources do offer ways to subtly pitch your product or service to readers. Implementing tactful call-to-actions (CTAs) and internal linking strategies enable you to increase conversions organically without detracting from the primary goal of informing customers.
Content marketing conversion rates are 6 times higher than traditional marketing methods. (Source)
6. Lead Generation
In addition to improved conversion potential, a top-notch Knowledge Center is more efficient and effective at closing or attracting new leads compared to traditional marketing techniques. Experts have suggested many possible reasons for this correlation, but most agree that it has something to do with an increased level of trust from customers engaged in no-strings-attached, strictly informative content.
More than 70 percent of users preferred to get their information from articles rather than from corporate advertisements. (Source)
7. Brand Reputation
A user is evaluating your brand from the second they land on your site. If they find material in your Knowledge Center that is helpful, engaging and informative, they will value your brand higher. When they see your KC content listed at the top of the search results or published on social media, your brand will be perceived as more authoritative and trustworthy. Most of all, a comprehensive KC shows your visitors that you care about helping them with no strings attached, which boosts customer loyalty.
78 percent of consumers will trust you your brand if you create more customized content. (Source)
8. Competitive Advantage
It’s tough to stay ahead in your industry, but content marketing strategies like creation of a Knowledge Center gives you a competitive edge over the competition by showing that you’re involved in educating your potential and prospective customers.
A comprehensive KC filled with high quality content also gives you a leg up by helping your site rank at the top of the list, above all your competitors.
Digital marketing spend is at an all-time high and is predicted to grow 12.9 percent over the next year, making the internet the largest advertising medium in 2016 (overtaking TV). (Source)
9. Ranking & Traffic Opportunities
Unique search engine optimized KC content development by way of knowledge center resources helps build sustained search rankings through:
- Keyword phrases and internal links (both short and long-tail)
- Increased site traffic over time
- Regularly published content will induce Google’s “spiders” to index the site more frequently. Sites with infrequent content are not crawled as often.
While having a higher number of indexed pages doesn’t always correlate to higher traffic rates, it certainly does present you with more opportunities to rank for important search queries relating to your business.
Companies that invest in content marketing experience 7.8 times more traffic than companies that don’t.
10. Compounding Value
While building a comprehensive center of high quality content is a sizeable investment of time, it is one of the most cost-effective content marketing strategies in the long-term and offers compounding returns.
Even if your KC doesn’t yield immediate results, you will begin to see growth in a matter of months. In a year or two, you could easily be earning quadruple returns on your investment. Plus, investing in a single article can give you returns many times over in the forms of brand authority, link building, site traffic, customer support, conversions and many other areas that multiply the ROI of your investment.
An estimated 61 percent of marketers polled noticed increased sales figures after implementing a content marketing strategy.
The Case for Knowledge Center Content Marketing
Whatever type of business you manage, the benefits of content marketing – and specifically building a comprehensive Knowledge Center – can apply to you. There’s no such thing as an “unmarketable” industry. If you have customers, you better believe they have questions.
By investing in a Knowledge Center, you can secure that position of authority and be the company your customers turn to when they want answers. Launching an inbound marketing strategy is less expensive, more efficient and better performing than other traditional marketing methods
The sooner you start investing in a Knowledge Center, the sooner you can start seeing positive results and returns. Whether you’re interested in developing your KC marketing strategy for higher traffic, increased conversion rates, or improved customer/reader relationships, consider SEO Advantage for your content marketing needs.
About SEO Advantage®
Led by Stone Reuning, SEO Advantage®, Inc. is an online marketing and search engine optimization firm that helps businesses turn their web presence into a powerful revenue generation medium. Our clients enjoy dominance on Google, Yahoo and Bing through a suite of unique pay-for-performance search engine optimization and online marketing services implemented by a multidisciplinary team of SEO engineers, copywriters and web designers. You'll find us referenced in books such as "Writing Web-Based Advertising Copy to Get the Sale" and the BusinessWeek bestseller "The New Rules of Marketing & PR," as well as the popular ebook "The Small Business Blogging Blueprint." Find out more today by calling us at 1-800-366-1639 or email us here.
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