Here’s a hard truth: Many businesses don’t realize their content marketing is broken until it’s too late. They’re producing blogs, newsletters, social media posts, and webinars, but they’re not seeing the results they want. Why? Because no one has told them that their messaging is scattered, their teams aren’t aligned, and their content isn’t working together toward a common goal.

The reality is, most business owners and internal leaders don’t know to look for these issues. They assume that as long as content is being created, they’re doing everything right. But without a cohesive strategy, even the best content can fall flat. The good news? It’s never too late to fix it. By taking action now, you can set your content marketing on the right path and avoid scrambling to catch up later this year.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the art of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a clearly defined audience. The goal is to drive profitable customer action—whether that’s generating leads, building brand awareness, or nurturing customer loyalty. Content marketing isn’t just about blogging or social media posts; it encompasses a wide range of formats, including newsletters, webinars, podcasts, videos, magazines, and more.

The key to success lies in consistency, strategy, and alignment. Unfortunately, many organizations struggle to achieve this, often without even realizing it.

The Inconsistencies You Might Not Notice (And How to Fix Them)

In my work with clients, I’ve noticed a recurring theme: inconsistency. The problem is, many business owners and leaders don’t see these issues because they’re not looking for them—or they don’t know they exist. Here are some of the most common problems I encounter—and how to address them to get your content marketing back on track.

1. Siloed Teams and Departments

One of the biggest challenges I see is the lack of collaboration between teams or departments. For example, the person managing social media might not be talking to the person writing the newsletter, and neither might be aligned with the website team. This leads to disjointed messaging and missed opportunities to amplify your content.

The Fix: Create a unified content strategy that outlines your goals, target audience, key messages, and distribution channels. Ensure that everyone involved in content creation and distribution is on the same page. If you’re a smaller organization without a dedicated marketing team, consider bringing in an external partner (like Pixel Power CLE!) to help guide the strategy and ensure cohesion.

2. Irregular Posting Schedules

I’ve worked with clients who produce amazing content—blogs, webinars, newsletters, you name it—but they have no consistent schedule for publishing. One year, a newsletter might go out four times; the next year, it might only go out once. This inconsistency confuses your audience and diminishes the impact of your content.

The Fix: Develop a content calendar that maps out exactly when and where each piece of content will be published. Use scheduling tools and automation to ensure everything goes live on time. This not only keeps your team organized but also builds trust with your audience, who will come to expect and look forward to your content.

3. Lack of Strategic Planning

Too often, I see organizations creating content without a clear plan or purpose. A blog post is written and published “whenever.” A podcast episode is recorded “when there’s time.” This reactive approach leads to missed deadlines, rushed content, and a lack of alignment with broader business goals.

The Fix: Start with a clear content strategy that ties back to your business objectives. What are you trying to achieve with your content? Who are you trying to reach? What messages do you want to convey? Once you have a strategy in place, create a detailed plan that outlines topics, formats, deadlines, and responsibilities.

4. Misaligned Messaging

When different teams or individuals are creating content in isolation, it’s easy for messaging to become inconsistent. Your social media posts might say one thing, your newsletter another, and your website something entirely different. This not only confuses your audience but also weakens your brand.

The Fix: Establish a messaging framework that defines your brand voice, key messages, and tone. Ensure that everyone involved in content creation has access to this framework and understands how to apply it. Regularly review your content to ensure it aligns with your overall strategy.

How Pixel Power CLE Can Help

At Pixel Power CLE, we specialize in helping organizations overcome these challenges. Many business owners don’t even realize these issues exist until we point them out—and that’s where we come in. Whether you need help developing a content strategy, managing your website, or creating and scheduling content, we’re here to ensure that everything you produce is strategic, cohesive, and aligned with your goals.

Here’s how we can help:

• Content Strategy Development: We’ll work with you to create a comprehensive content strategy that aligns with your business objectives and resonates with your audience.
• Content Planning and Scheduling: We’ll develop a content calendar and use automation tools to ensure everything is published on time.
• Team Collaboration: We’ll help bridge the gap between teams and departments to ensure everyone is working toward the same goals.
• Implementation Support: From writing blogs to designing graphics, we’ll handle the details so you can focus on running your business.

Let’s Get Started Now—So You’re Ready for Q2

If you’ve been wondering why your content marketing efforts aren’t delivering the results you want, it’s time to take a closer look. Many of the issues we’ve discussed here are invisible to the untrained eye, but they can have a huge impact on your success. The first quarter of the year is already underway, but there’s still plenty of time to set your content marketing on the right path. By taking action now, you can ensure that by Q2, your content is consistent, strategic, and aligned with your goals.

Together, we can create a plan that ensures your content is not only high-quality but also consistent, aligned, and impactful. If you’re ready to take the next step, I’d love to hear from you. Let’s make this the year your content marketing truly shines.

Schedule a free consultation now.

Why Small Businesses Struggle to Rank Without Quality Content

Recently, I received another inquiry from a small business owner frustrated by her website’s lack of visibility on search engines. Many small business websites struggle with SEO for one main reason: they lack high-quality, ongoing content. While technical SEO and paid ads play a role, content creation is essential for small businesses looking to rank effectively in search engines.

Core Components of an Effective SEO Strategy for Small Businesses

1. Technical SEO: Building a Solid Foundation

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is essential for establishing a solid foundation for search engines to read and rank your site. It includes optimizing load speed, fixing errors, and structuring your site in a way that’s accessible for search engines. However, technical SEO alone can’t drive rankings if there isn’t valuable content for search engines to analyze.

Why Technical SEO Isn’t Enough

Even with the right technical setup, your site won’t reach its full potential without quality content. Content creation is where most small businesses see a real boost in visibility, as it gives search engines a reason to display your site in search results.

2. Content Creation for SEO Success in Small Business Websites

Content is the backbone of an effective SEO strategy. Search engines prioritize websites that offer valuable, frequently updated information. Regularly publishing blog posts, articles, and other updates helps attract visitors, target relevant keywords, and build credibility.

For instance, the website I reviewed had very little content, making it hard to compete with businesses that invest in regular content creation. For small businesses, a steady flow of engaging content isn’t just helpful—it’s essential for gaining traction over time.

Content also does double-duty. Not only does it help with rankings, but well-crafted pages can also serve as destinations for ads, social media links, and resources to engage visitors. For small businesses, building a library of useful, relevant content is worth the investment.

3. Paid Ads: A Support Strategy for SEO

How Paid Ads Support SEO for Small Business Websites

Paid ads can be a great way to boost visibility quickly, especially if they direct visitors to optimized landing pages on your site. An effective ad strategy typically requires a solid budget (about $1,000/month for Google Ads), so consider it a complementary tactic rather than a replacement for organic SEO efforts.

Budget Considerations for Google Ads

It’s best to pair an ad campaign with ongoing SEO and content efforts, as ads alone won’t sustain visibility over time. For small businesses, blending SEO-driven content with a carefully planned ad budget is a great way to support both short- and long-term growth.

Why Content is Non-Negotiable for SEO Success

For any small business, high-quality, regularly updated content is essential to SEO success. Search engines consider the volume and quality of content, making it the foundation of a strong online presence.

If you’re a small business looking to improve your SEO, remember that results come from consistent efforts in each area. While technical SEO and ads have their place, only a well-planned content strategy can provide the long-term results that matter. Investing in quality content boosts your search engine presence and gives your audience resources they value.

Ready to get started with an SEO plan tailored to your business needs? Book a call, and let’s create a strategy that works for you.

If you own or manage a small business you’ve probably heard all about how social media and online marketing will help grow your business. Maybe you’ve even done some research into SEO and learned how to use keywords and other tactics to improve website traffic. If you aren’t quite there yet, don’t worry! This is part 2 in a series of blogs from Pixel Power, and part 1 has all the info you need to know about two beginning strategies for Search Engine Optimization. But once you’ve got the basic idea it’s time to move on to a new, more complex subject; how can you use social media to impact SEO?

This question has been debated by industry professionals for years, and the ever-changing nature of the internet does not make it easy to keep up. It seems that most people can agree that social media does affect SEO in one way or another, but what we aren’t sure of is how. Thankfully marketing industry leaders like Hootsuite, Lyfe Marketing, and others have been collecting information and conducting research to help us sort this whole thing out. But before we can jump into hard facts and statistics, let’s discuss some backstory.

HISTORY LESSON

Our story begins in 2010 with Danny Sullivan’s article for Search Engine land. In this article he claims that Google considers links shared on social media when calculating ranking the ranking of a website. This means that if a link to your website was shared on social media, all those instances of posting or sharing would count in the algorithm that determined whether your site is a trusted source of information. Shortly after this, Matt Cutts, an official representative from Google at the time, made a video publicly confirming that links shared on social media did directly influence your site’s ranking.

Two years later, in 2014, Matt Cutts makes a second video saying that Twitter and Facebook are treated like any other website, but activity on these platforms is not considered a ranking factor for other sites and goes on to give a few reasons why. So now things have changed from our previous understanding that sharing links on social media counts toward backlinks. The following year in 2015, Google began including more and more social media pages to their search results. This changed the meaning of social media from a business perspective, allowing for another way to increase reputability and brand consistency. The following infographic from Hootsuite shows the number of URLs from Facebook included in the top 100 search results and illustrates that sudden increase in 2015.

Another year passes and in 2016 Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes responds simply “no, we don’t” to questions on Twitter about whether Google takes social media signals into account when ranking sites. Although the increase in social platforms in search results may have led some to believe Google would begin calculating site ranking from connected social media, this was not the case.

WHAT WE DO KNOW

After years of Google denying using social signals as a ranking factor, we can speculate that social media’s affect on search engine ranking is more of an indirect correlation than a direct cause. The following infographic from Lyfe Marketing helps explain our current understanding of the relationship between social media and search ranking.

The common theme here is that social media creates not only brand awareness and visibility but the potential for interaction and sharing. Although we know social media shares don’t directly count in ranking, they increase the audience of consumers who might be interested in your business. But all that potential goes out the window if your social media is filled with irrelevant or even incorrect information. Incorporating social media into your SEO strategies is about fostering interaction with your audience, but before they will interact they need to know you can be trusted. So, when curating content for your website and social media, be sure you’re sharing accurate information. If you want to link a relevant article or outside web page, make sure that link is to a secure and trusted site or else you risk your carefully built online reputation!

Another way social media helps boost your rank indirectly is through branded searches. Usually Facebook and Twitter posts contain links to the company website where you can get more info or make a purchase. But Instagram does not allow links in the captions or comments of posts. So, if a consumer sees something on Instagram they want to know more about, they simply Google it. So if someone from Instagram is interested in your handmade earrings, they will likely search for “Your Brand earrings”. When this happens, your brand name is being associated with the keyword ‘earrings’. If enough people search for your brand name with that keyword, Google will understand that you are a reputable source for information on earrings, and your site might come up in other searches for earrings, not just searches for your specific brand. We will talk a bit more about this later on.

Facebook and Instagram are very popular platforms for digital marketing, and even Twitter is utilized by most brands. But there are some alternative platforms to consider if you have the right audience. Included in that group is You Tube, which is the second most used search engine right behind Google! This is partially because Google owns You Tube so when you use their search engine, video results from You Tube are presented. But that doesn’t change the fact that You Tube is an underrated tool in marketing. Though the atmosphere of You Tube is a bit different from other platforms, it should not be counted out. A You Tube presence would be helpful for companies who already have a following on social media of people who are interested in the brand. This is a great platform for promoting new products or services with detailed unboxing or behind-the-scenes footage, accompanied by a link to your webpage in each video’s description to boost traffic. This same ‘sneak peak’ can be accomplished on Instagram, but people aren’t searching Instagram for videos on “how Your Brand earrings are made”. And although searches within You Tube provide little value to your overall Google ranking, consumers will see your videos in search results from Google. Most importantly, an active You Tube will give your brand some depth and personality which your consumers can identify with. Remember, social media sales is less about business and more about lifestyle.

STUDIES AND STATS

At this point, we understand that social media link sharing doesn’t guarantee a higher search engine ranking. But a 2013 report from Hub Sports State of Inbound Marketing supports the idea of an indirect correlation in finding that companies who are active on off-site blogs and social media platforms had 97% more inbound links than those who were barely or not at all active on social platforms. These 97% more backlinks lead to an increase in site traffic, and there for ranking. A more recent study from 2016 called the Search Metrics Ranking Factors Study also supports this idea. They found that “top-ranked websites in Google’s rankings displayed vastly more social media than all other pages”. This is partially because of the larger brands who are already reputable with high-traffic sites and active social media. But even when those larger popular brands, like Nike or H&M, are taken out of the equation, the correlation still exists between active social media and a well-performing, highly trafficked site.

Even more recently still, a 2017 study of Fashion Nova finds that they were able to use Instagram to compete with much larger and more established clothing brands. They rank extremely high for certain keywords such as ‘jeans’ and ‘fashion’ because they have correctly utilized the branded search approach discussed earlier.

Finally, just last year in 2018 Hootsuite published 90 articles with varying degrees of online promotion. One third were posted to one single site with no online promotion whatsoever as a control. Another third was posted and then organically promoted on twitter with a few posts and shared links. The final group was published with a paid promotion of $100 for 2 days. The results showed a 12% increase in views with the organic promotion vs the control and a 22% increase in views with the paid promotion vs the control. This shows that paid promotion does give a slight advantage, but organic promotion is also effective. The only thing that doesn’t work is not promoting!

MAIN TAKE-AWAY: DON’T OVERDO IT

            Social media marketing and SEO have overlapping goals; mainly to increase your visibility online and therefor increase business. Because they are designed with similar goals in mind, it only makes sense that they work best together! Include social media strategies in your SEO plan, and vice versa. Not only will this give your brand a central message, combining two time-consuming efforts into one will make your life as a one-man-band marketer a whole lot easier.

When executing your strategy, though, it is important to remember that your audience is full of real people who get annoyed with repetitive ads and redundant, robot-sounding content just like you would. The most fool-proof way to get engagement and loyalty from your online following is to consistently post interesting, relevant, and quality content. But what makes for ‘relevant’ and ‘quality’ content? Lyfe Marketing has come up with a simple method for decoding this arbitrary language into a something you can use to increase engagement with your content!

By appealing to your audience’s ego, humor, brain, heart, or personal brand you are creating content they can identify with and want to show their friends. Something that online marketers often forget is that social media is not everyone’s job. Most of your social media audience is not thinking about business or even about buying things. Social media is used as entertainment, a way to relax and indulge yourself in your hobbies and interests. The best way to get people interested in your social media presence is to give them content that is interesting and fun! (While very subtly reminding them that if they enjoy your content, they might enjoy your products or services as well!)

References

• Dod, Ron. “Analyzing Fashion Nova’s Rise to Google Dominance: SEJ.” Search Engine Journal, 5 Apr. 2018, https://www.searchenginejournal.com/small-player-big-leagues-competitive-keywords/184722/.
• Goodwin, Danny. “23 SEO & Search Takeaways from Google’s Gary Illyes.” Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Journal, 23 Oct. 2018, https://www.searchenginejournal.com/gary-illyes-whats-new-in-google-search-pubcon-keynote-recap/274273/#close.
• Google Webmasters. “Are Pages from Social Media Sites Ranked Differently?” YouTube, YouTube, 22 Jan. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=udqtSM-6QbQ&feature=emb_logo.
• Google Webmasters. “Does Google Use Data from Social Sites in Ranking?” YouTube, YouTube, 18 Dec. 2010, , Zak, and Eva Taylor. “Does Social Media Impact SEO? We Ran an Experiment to Find Out.” Hootsuite Social Media Management, 15 May 2018, https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-seo-experiment/.https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media-seo/196185/#close
• Smith, Keran. “Social Media SEO: What You Need to Know to Grow Your Business.” Digital Marketing Blog, 6 Aug. 2019, https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/social-media-seo/.
• Sullivan, Danny. “What Social Signals Do Google & Bing Really Count?” Search Engine Land, 3 Dec. 2010, https://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389.

A trend we’ve seen over the years is that many companies, organizations, government entities, and even political candidates who need a website, assign it to the nearest willing admin or volunteer. Unfortunately, rarely is the internal staff educated in all the ins and outs needed to build a site that performs. What do I mean by “perform”?

Sure, websites need to look nice, but there is a lot more to creating a website that functions in a way that will help you reach your marketing goals than just making a pretty layout. Will the new website:

• Be Search Engine Optimized?
• Have a Clear Call To Action?
• Tell the company’s brand story?
• Use a strategy that will compete with other companies like yours?
• Include a strategy for ranking in Google?

A lot of frustrated administrators struggle through a DIY website. Sometimes they know that they are missing a lot of the technical aspects and do their best to look into what to do about them – and sometimes they don’t.

Assigning Tasks To The Right People

Even without specialized staff, one of the perks of being “the boss” is the ability to come up with great ideas and then task your administrative staff with accomplishing them. But what happens when the task at hand is actually something that requires a technical skill level beyond their capabilities? This can leave Executive Assistants and Office Managers extremely stressed as they struggle to find the best solution to get the job done. Oftentimes, these struggles are the most prevalent in the area of web design and development.

Web Developers Have Highly Technical Skills

The fact is, web designers and developers are professionals who have had years of education and experience. The technical skill sets needed to do the job well, are simply not possessed by your average administrator. The frequency of changes in the digital world, especially in web design and search engine optimization is tricky to keep up with and what was once the case three years ago may not be today.

When I first started building websites over a decade ago, website platforms were different, Search Engine Optimization strategy was much more clear cut, and there were even tricks we learned back then to help in Google ranking that would get your website banned today.

Some reasons to hire a web design agency are for their expertise in:

• Keyword research
• When to code and not to code
• Choosing the appropriate hosting
• Content strategy
• Brand development

They will be able to deliver a more high-quality product that functions the way it should right from the start. And, most agencies have a package that includes ongoing maintenance of the site so that you aren’t left self-dependent to run updates, to upgrade or install new pieces/parts, to troubleshoot broken features, or protect your site from hackers!

Dump The DIY Website – Know When To Hire It Out

If you already have a DIY website in the works be on the lookout. If you or your personnel is saying that they are:

• doing research on how to build a website
• getting five dollar web hosting
• wondering if you need SEO
• asking “hey, what keywords do you think I should use”?

You need outside help.

In the long run you’ll be glad that you aren’t the ones building your company’s website.

If you’re unsure as to whether or not you even need a new website, this will get you started.

Having a modern and up-to-date website is extremely important for any business. As an owner, it can be tempting to settle for any functioning website just to get it done. Unfortunately, without putting any real strategy behind it, or worse, by believing that once it’s built it’s good until retirement, things can go horribly wrong. Websites need regular maintenance, updates, and new strategic plans as search engine algorithms are tweaked, website visitor tastes change, and attention spans shorten.

If it’s been a while since your website has gotten a new look or had its content (text and pictures) updated then this article is for you!

Reasons to Change your Website

1. It Isn’t Mobile Friendly

Mobile phone internet browsing has grown significantly in the past several years. Statistics show that desktop users were surpassed by mobile users in 2016 due to the increase in mobile search. This means that you need to have a website that works for both mobile phone and computer desktop users. With the help of responsive web design, you can have a website created that will readjust the display and content according to the size of the user’s screen.

2. Photos and Links are Broken

There’s no doubt that broken photos and links on your website will give you a bad reputation with your visitors. They will even cause some to leave the site as they will become frustrated with non-working links and even become concerned about the security of the site. Don’t lose prospects because of a lack of website maintenance!

3. It isn’t HTTPS

People that visit your website need to be sure that it’s safe. By now, you need to know that an HTTPS-enabled website is standard practice and will help to keep users free from potential hackers and those looking to steal personal information such as credit card details. If your site starts with HTTP and not HTTPS, users will get a warning from their browser alerting them that the site isn’t secure. It’s time to update!

4. It Simply Doesn’t Look Nice

There’s no doubt that a visually appealing website helps to retain visitors. A website that looks old, has antiquated text, or displays photos clearly from the early 2000s will make potential customers wonder if it’s also a representation of your products and services.

5. Content is Old

You may own a business website and be very proud of the work and effort that you put into it. Nevertheless, you need to ask yourself, has the content sat too long without an update? If it’s been a year or two then yes, it’s time to rethink your content strategy and employ the use of current search engine optimization (SEO).

6. Slow Site Speed

With today’s short attention spans, even a one-second delay is enough to cause you to miss out on customers. The faster your site’s speed the more likely visitors are to stick around. Additionally, search engines take into account your site’s speed for search engine ranking which makes addressing speed issues a no brainer.

7. Too Difficult to Update Content

If your website was created in a way that makes it difficult to update content, you might need to consider a new one. Some web developers try to get fancy by custom coding websites or coming up with their own platforms which can make it very difficult for your internal staff to create any new posts or perform updates on their own. By building a new website with an industry standard content management system like WordPress, tasks are a lot easier to complete and you aren’t beholden to the developer for updates.

8. Lack of Consistency

You’ve probably heard the saying, “too many cooks spoil the broth”. If you’ve had several developers tamper with your website over time, without a complete strategic overhaul, your site may lack consistency. It is important to plan out the entire site so that each component has a purpose and heads toward the same goal.

9. An Evolved Industry

Every industry undergoes periodic changes and the same goes for websites. You may be in a situation where your website is too old to adhere to the current security standards or uses software that is no longer supported. In either case, you may require a new site just to keep it functional.

10. Your Old Site Doesn’t Interest You Anymore

As funny as this may sound, your website can start to feel old or boring to a point where even you are just done with it. You might need a new one just for a fresh start.

If you’re still wondering whether or not you need a new website, or you know you do, reach out to us at Pixel Power!