The world of marketing has changed immeasurably over the course of the last two decades. The day to day life of a marketer today vs. that of a marketer in the 90’s couldn’t be more different; with daily activities having a heavy focus on digital, social media and content marketing; none of which even existed as little as 15 years ago.

Even within the realms of online marketing itself, there have been significant developments in recent years.

Since Google started implementing  their algorithms with a series of animal themed updates (you may have heard of the Panda, Penguin or Hummingbird updates), websites which may previously have been able to ‘buy’ their way to the top of the rankings by way of purchasing links suddenly found that their listings disappeared overnight. Prior to said updates, link building was one of the highest priority online marketing tactics, with some websites relying solely on this practice as a way of generating rankings. Then, all of a sudden, links became something to be extremely cautious about; with website content and the production of new, quality content and articles coming back to the forefront.

Short of shedding out chunks of cash each month on a PPC campaign, which will of course generate you instant listings but fail to have a long-term cumulative effect on your website’s rankings, the most widely acknowledged way of boosting your website’s performance in today’s online marketing world is through content marketing.

Content marketing is basically the process of adding fresh, relevant content to your website and pushing it out via your social media channels. Content can come in many forms – videos, infographics, webpages and blogs – the combination of which to use will vary depending on the nature of your business.

But how does content marketing work and why is it so important?

In essence, content marketing works to show Google that you have a wealth of knowledge about your business, that you are serious about what you sell, that you are taking the time and effort to provide customers with information about your products/services, and altogether that you are an authority in your business area. When it comes to ranking websites in your industry, therefore, the website that seems to have the most amount of knowledge about a product or service is significantly more likely to be placed higher than a website that hasn’t been updated in the last 6 months. Simple, eh?!

There’s no doubt about it, making your website work hard for you requires a great deal of time and effort, or indeed an investment in employing external content writing services. But with your competitors probably doing it, and the world of digital marketing moving on at a pace, can you really afford not to make that commitment?