SEO stands for search engine optimization, which refers to your content being found by search engines like Google. Content marketing refers to marketing through written content, like blogs or e-books.
Many SEO experts believe that creating high-quality content is a way to boost your SEO. That is because well-researched and -written content will be more informative and engaging.
As more people share your content or search engines pick it up, it will increase your site’s visibility. This means more traffic to your site and sales or leads for your business!
Having both SEO experts create quality content that works well for search engines and having writers write engaging and informative content can work very well together. Both contribute to boosting traffic to your site and sales or leads for your business!
What is SEO and Content Marketing?
Let’s describe the relationship between content marketing and SEO.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Content Marketing are two essential concepts that go hand in hand to improve a website’s visibility, attract targeted audiences, and generate more leads.
Before we dive into the specifics of how these two strategies can work together, let’s inspect each one individually.
- SEO aims at optimizing a website’s technical factors, structure, and content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords that pertain to the website’s theme or niche.
- Content marketing focuses on creating high-quality, valuable, and engaging content that appeals to the website’s target audience and encourages them to take action.
SEO provides the technical basis for content marketing to flourish. While content marketing fuels SEO with fresh, relevant content that keeps the website updated and relevant.
By combining these two strategies, businesses can achieve optimal results in terms of increased traffic, conversions, and brand awareness.
Content Marketing and SEO Fundamentals
How SEO and content marketing work together? Here are some effective SEO and content marketing strategies to get the two marketing techniques to harmonize.
01. Build a website
As mentioned before, having a website is a must in this day and age. People expect you to have some sort of online presence, and it is almost mandatory to have one if you are running a business.
Having a website showcases your expertise, can drive traffic to your business, and can help with SEO. Having a well-designed, user-friendly website will keep people on it longer, which will bring more traffic.
With the right content and design, your website can be both aesthetic and informative. The beauty of content marketing is that you can design your website for aesthetics or for pure information- giving both types of people what they want.
The way to truly master content marketing is by experimenting with different types of content to find what works best for your audience. Try drawing out more personal details about your business or the people it serves to draw in more engagement.
02. Create valuable content
Now let’s talk about how content marketing and SEO can work together. The best way for SEO and content marketing to work together is to create quality content.
By creating quality content, you are developing a strategy for promoting your website or business through both SEO and content marketing.
What is content marketing? It’s promoting your business or website by giving away valuable, informative resources. These can be as articles, blogs, newsletters, etc.
By creating quality content, you are gaining traffic through people searching for relevant articles or by putting your articles on high-profile websites. This raises your brand awareness and leads to more visitors to your site or conversions in sales.
There are many ways to use SEO strategies to improve the exposure of your content. We will discuss these later in the article.
03. Use SEO fundamentals
Although SEO and content marketing are separate strategies, they can work together to bring more exposure to your brand and your content.
Create content with specific keywords in mind, then create engaging content that users will want to share. This way, Google searchers will find your page and like your content, which increases traffic to your site.
By using SEO fundamentals, you can leverage the traffic that comes to your site via search engines. You can also drive traffic from social media using links to your sites as well.
By creating quality content that appeals to search engines and people alike, you are doing a good job of intertwining the two strategies.
Both Content Marketing Institute (CMI) research and personal experience show that implementing basic SEO principles into your website does not hurt—and may even help—your content marketing efforts.
04. Implement SEO best practices
As mentioned earlier, SEO can play a big role in content marketing. To give your content the best chance of being found, you need to implement SEO best practices.
Start with a title that is appropriate for SEO and captures the reader’s attention. Then, include important keywords in the paragraph and heading titles.
Create a detailed page summary and embed that into the content. Lastly, make sure your content is unique and high-quality so that it passes Google’s tests!
If you are looking for some more in-depth information on SEO, check out this article. There are some great tips for starting off, so read up!
SEO and content marketing work very well together because both parties are aiming to attract new readers.
05. Use keywords in your content
Keywords are a must when doing any form of SEO. The same goes for Content Marketing. Keywords are words or phrases that people would type into a search bar on a search engine like Google or Bing to find something.
For example, if you were looking for a restaurant recommendation in your area, you might search “best restaurants in [insert area]” or “reviews on [insert restaurant]”. These are keywords people would use to find what you are offering- restaurants and reviews!
By using these keywords in your content, you are making it accessible to search engines and listing your site as relevant for those searches.
06. Optimize your images
A major part of any content is the images used to illustrate a point or concept. Images can showcase products, services, features, or situations.
With the rise of image search engines like Google Image Search and TinEye, it has become increasingly difficult to ensure that your images are not copied or stolen.
Making sure that your image is commissioned by yourself or your company, using high-quality editing software, is one way to prevent this.
Adding appropriate keywords to your image file name and description can also help with SEO as Google now recognizes and uses these for search result ranking.
Using both content marketing and SEO together can have great results for your website traffic and exposure. By creating quality content that appeals to your audience while incorporating keywords, you will increase your site’s visibility in search results.
07. Use audio content
With the rise of smartphones, people are constantly listening to content in the form of audio content.
The news comes out daily, and people are always looking for ways to update themselves on current events. With news podcasts being a growing trend, you can leverage this trend to gain more audience.
By creating audio content, you can use SEO strategies to promote your content as well. You can put out a short interview or ask questions that can be answered in a short interview or podcast format.
You can also use your website’s content and organize it into a weekly listening list that your audience could subscribe to. Not only that, but you could also do a weekly feature piece on something related to your business.
08. Produce video content
Another great way to showcase your brand is through video content. Many brands now emphasize the importance of video content, and for good reason.
Users love videos, and search engines now give weight to videos in search results. This is a major SEO improvement made several years ago.
Making a video can be tricky, however. You need to plan out what you are going to say, where you are going to film it, and how you are going to edit it.
There is plenty of free editing software available, so that is not a cost barrier! And you can find places to film relatively close to you so that you do not have to spend too much time or money traveling.
By producing short, simple videos that answer questions or describe things, you are already doing a great job! Spread out your videos over a few days or weeks, depending on how much time you have to film them.
What is the Connection Between SEO and Content Marketing?
How can companies, large and small, increase their SEO results using a content marketing strategy?
Companies of all sizes can greatly benefit from implementing a content marketing strategy that is closely tied to their SEO efforts. By creating high-quality, valuable content that is optimized for relevant keywords, businesses can improve their website’s visibility in search engine result pages.
This will help increase traffic to their site and improve their overall search engine rankings. Whether you are a large corporation or a small business, creating customer-centric content is the key to building strong customer connections and achieving conversions.
By using factual data and best practices, companies can ensure that their content marketing strategy aligns with their SEO goals and drives the results they need to succeed.
