The SEO power of portfolio entries, case studies & testimonials

SEO and content marketing can be tough for small businesses. Creating content that answers the frequently asked questions in your industry may not be too difficult, but getting it found in search engines is not so easy if you are a small local player. Even if you could rank a piece of content nationally, would it turn into business? Could you handle the influx of leads if it did?

The digital marketing channels and tactics you use are a strategic decision — and in many cases, traditional content marketing is not the best choice for small local businesses. This is a different story for SaaS (software as a service) companies and the like, which can easily scale users and deliver their product on a national or international basis. But for the small local guys, traditional content marketing can lead to a lot of head-scratching and wasted effort.

The SEO power of portfolios

This is not to say that content marketing is completely useless for small and local businesses — rather, that there is a strategic decision to make regarding the kind of content you create and how you promote it. And often, the key to smart local content marketing efforts is simply in the work that you do for your customers.

This is the content that really demonstrates what you do, where you do it and who you do it for, which is the information that really matters. Of course, “portfolio” is kind of a catch-all term — we are just as interested in case studies, reviews and testimonials as fair game for small business content marketing efforts, and often a single piece of content may contain one or more of these elements.

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]