SEO and content marketing are often mentioned together in the industry, but the link is missed by those paying for the services. Today’s article by guest author Shawn Byrne discusses how they’re linked, and why your marketing service provider should be offering you both.
SEO is primarily about increasing the ranking of web pages in search engines to be more visible to users and help drive traffic to a website. On the other hand, content marketing focuses on creating and distributing online material that provides real value to audiences, all aimed to stir up interest in a product or service without explicitly pushing a brand on them the way ads do.
Judging by their definitions, search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing appear to be entirely different fields. However, for entrepreneurs who need professional marketing help, both should go hand-in-hand for a much better shot at online success. After all, SEO and content marketing have a mutual relationship.
Keyword Research
One of the most fundamental aspects of SEO is keyword research, as it helps you determine what’s important to your audience. Once you find the keywords that matter, how do you use them in your content marketing to help your pages rank better in search engines?
In the not-so-distant past, keywords were often stuffed throughout websites, regardless of whether they made sense or not. Back then, Google and other search engines often actually rewarded these pages with high rankings. Of course, that’s all ancient history now…
Because of a real game changer, Google’s Panda algorithm update, the best way to utilize all those keywords you researched would be to incorporate them into the quality content you create for your website, whether in-text or within titles and meta descriptions. By doing so, your keywords would be able to help your content–and the web page that carries it–rank better in search results.
Conversely, you can’t just create content that will answer users’ questions, solve their problems, or simply provide the information they need. You have to know what they’re searching for in the first place. With keyword research, you’ll have an idea of what your audience wants. You can proceed with creating quality content that’s relevant and valuable to them around those keywords.
Quality Content = Improved SEO
One of the biggest benefits of content marketing is that you can position yourself as an authority or expert in your niche whenever you publish useful, engaging, and relevant content. The thing is, Google also reads your content.
Quality content is then optimized by an SEO to ensure relevance and target, and then added to content marketing campaigns. Once Google deems that your content is trustworthy and authoritative, it will reward your site with an appearance higher up in the search results. After all, Google does consider authority as an important ranking factor.
The more content that shows in higher up in the search engines, the more likely you are to be seen and visited. Since the content is quality, it’s more likely to get shared, which means more activity on the site and backlinks. Activity and backlinks turn into authority and so on.
Link Building
Like keywords, link building is an integral aspect of SEO, as Google counts it as a significant factor in the way it ranks pages. It can effectively drive more organic traffic to a particular website, especially when those backlinks are from high-quality sites.
However, for other high-quality and authority websites to send backlinks your way, it’s vital that your pages actually have content that is worth linking to from their end. You cannot expect to get that much-coveted inbound link if your content does not really provide search engine users the answers and solutions they need.
That’s where content marketing comes in.
By creating non-promotional but highly informative, relevant, and engaging articles, blog posts, videos, infographics, and listicles, content marketers can help increase your website’s chances of getting link love from others. The more high-quality backlinks, the better it will be for your SEO.
SEO Scratches Content Marketing’s Back, & Vice Versa
If SEO can exist on its own, then web admins might simply fill their websites with nothing but keywords, just like many of them did in the dark and early days of SEO. (Rant about craphat techniques available on this site.) You can create content of the highest quality, but in most cases, its chances of getting traffic can be low without all the work search engine optimizers put into it. SEO requires content to work its magic on, while content needs optimization to make sure it ranks well in search results.
SEO and content marketing may be separate fields of digital marketing, but the overlap between the two is undeniably extensive. Make them work together, and improve your business’ chance of success online.
Trying to pull your SEO and content into the same marketing campaign but aren’t sure how to connect the dots? Connect with us! We’ve been in the business of creating optimized content without stuffed keywords for almost two decades. Let our experience go to work for you.
