Content Marketing is one of the fastest growing forms of digital marketing employed by businesses in 2015. Where traditional advertising (even online) has its limits, content marketing's only limit is your business's creativity.

But with all sorts of options out there for creating content, where do begin?

In this post, I'll give you a quick guide to help you focus your efforts and create the best content possible to generate more traffic, leads, and sales.

Get Your Money Pages Right First

What the heck are "Money Pages?" you're probably asking yourself.

Money Pages refer to your main navigational content that are used to pitch prospective buyers on your services or sell your products. These are typically optimized for a specific set of keywords and contain contact forms, methods to capture leads, or allow a user to navigate to an actual product page.

These are easily the most important pages on your website, as they have to be done right in order to rank well and convert users into paying customers.

But how do you do that? What makes a great money page?

There's no secret formula to creating the best money pages. It's different for each and every business, as the needs of different types of customers can vary. What's important is to follow these three simple rules:

• Go above and beyond to pitch your product and/or company.
• Design pages to be user friendly.
• Make it really, really easy for the user to convert.

Supplement Money Pages with Highly Informative Pages or Blog Posts

Many small businesses can succeed with a few well written and optimized Money Pages; however, if you want to attract more customers, rank for more high-volume or high-converting keywords, you'll need to do more for your site.

One of the most effective ways to build authority is to supplement your money pages with highly informative pages or blog posts. The goal is to create pages that can be linked to as resources and attract regular search traffic via interesting and in-demand topics related to your business.

Many businesses, such as Moz and Buffer, have benefited greatly from a content strategy of providing resources for digital marketers. This has helped the two companies build a customer base with limited traditional marketing; instead, their content contributed greatly to word-of-mouth, SEO, and brand recognition.

Have the Right Intentions for Each Piece of Content

"What are your intentions with my daughter?"

I'm sure there are many men that cringed remembering the odd situation of meeting a girlfriend's father for the first time as a teen/young adult. Well, you need to think of yourself as the father of content and ask yourself:

"What are my intentions with this content?"

Luckily in this situation you don't have to construct a lie or pander to a angry-faced father. You just have to be truthful with yourself.

You need to figure out the purpose behind each piece of content you publish to your site. Is it there to sell a product or service? Is it there to inform future buyers in the marketplace? Is it there to attract links or media coverage from industry-specific sources?

The worst thing you can do for your content efforts is to write something and not admit your true intentions. Think of it as one of the deadliest sins you can make in SEO and digital marketing as a whole.

Don't Settle for Low Quality Content

One of my biggest pet peeves is the disregard for quality when it comes to business content. Your website is likely one of the first (and sometimes only) ways people interact with your business, so you shouldn't act as if people don't read it or it's only for search engines.

Yet it seems perfectly acceptable for many small to medium businesses to simply write a few paragraphs on each page without any regard for intent or quality of information, mix in a long list of keywords, and call it a day.

Don't let this happen to your business. Not only will you not be helping your site, but you'll ultimately be hurting it by not providing Google what it wants: quality content.

What do you mean by quality content?

Quality content serves a specific purpose and is written well. Whether that purpose is to answer a simple financial question, provide commentary on a complex social issue, or sell cat toys, quality content is defined simply by doing what it was meant to do.

There are a lot of paths to get this done, but don't get stuck believing that it takes some secret skill to produce quality content. As long as you concentrate on providing value instead of cutting corners or thinking that things will just work themselves out, you'll have a leg up on a lot of your competitors. (Especially if you're a local business.)

If there's one thing you take away from this post, it's the importance of understanding your audience. When you get to know the people you're trying to convert into customers or subscribers, you will understand what makes them tick and be able to create content that they'll find valuable.

Originally Published to Wikimotive.com on December 7, 2015