Who Is The Google Ranking Champion (& What it Means for Your Content Marketing)

3 Content Marketing Tips To Help Sell Stuff (Research)

While Wikipedia offers a wealth of information, long gone are the wild west days when marketers could get their products and companies listed with backlinks.

Since not all of Wikipedia’s pages are created equal in terms of quality, quantity and links, marketers wondered about its rate of appearance on Google’s first page – marketers’ holy grail. Recently, several research studies examined these dynamics and found that Wikipedia is no longer the reigning champ – Amazon is. These changes provide three important implications for content marketers.

Wikipedia SERPs Research

SpyFu’s research, the latest and largest entry in this discussion, revealed the following three trends. (Note: SpyFu’s database tends to be more oriented towards words and terms companies tend to pay to advertise on. Since these are the terms marketers are looking to rank for, it shouldn’t be a big issue. Further, we looking at trends not specific numbers.)

1. Amazon is top of the SERPs, not Wikipedia. Also, by contrast, eBay tends to be lower than Yahoo.
2. Yahoo is declining. Given the management issues and company changes, this isn’t a news flash.
3. YouTube is on a growth trend. This is important to consider.

What does this change in Google rankings mean for content marketing?

Amazon’s ascendancy in the Google rankings doesn’t surprise me. Amazon provides lots of content containing very specific product information including photographs and customer ratings, reviews and related discussions. In my online marketing classes, I used to kid that Amazon was a media site that happened to sell product. Since then, Amazon has enhanced its media approach by allowing third party sites to advertise on their product pages.

While most companies don’t have the resources to build a comparable site or develop Amazon’s trust as a retailer, here are three ways marketers can take advantage of this recent research.

1. Supply Amazon with relevant content to sell your product(s). If you’re selling product(s) through Amazon, consider what you can add to enhance your offering in this competitive marketplace. Bear in mind that Amazon is a must check site for many buyers and may be used even if customers buy elsewhere.
2. Build content marketing on your own brand site. While you may not be able to build another Amazon, you can develop useful content that attracts prospects and customers to educate and/or entertain them. The goal is to become the go-to answer site for your offering. Where possible focus on your niche, the smaller the better. Marcus Sheridan’s work for his pool company shows how a small firm can counter economic trends and grow by being the encyclopedia that answers customers’ questions.
3. Develop videos containing useful and/or entertaining content to build a presence on YouTube.  In addition to this research, YouTube is currently the number two social media platform after Facebook and the number two search engine. Therefore integrate video creation into your overall content marketing plans. When you post it to YouTube as well as your website, ensure you’re included relevant search optimized text.

The major take away for marketers is that content marketing is critical not just to attract customers and support sales but also to support your search strategy. Therefore think in terms of  detailed product information, photographs, video, customer ratings and reviews and other related content to answer your prospects’ questions and drive them to buy your product.

What’s your perspective on this research? Do you see it as changing your content marketing plans?

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen

Here are links to the other research:

• Spyfu’s Wikipedia Research
• Conductor’s Wikipedia Research
• Intelligent Positioning’s Research (Note: UK only)
• Search Engine Land’s Discussion by Matt McGee
• Search Engine Watch’s Discussion by Danny Goodwin