The Web is populated with several articles on this topic covering unique perspectives in favor and against both SEO and content marketing.
Interestingly, very few looked beyond the window.
First of all, it is important to understand that SEO and content marketing are not at odds with each other, there is no competition.
Instead, they work with each other to accomplish common marketing goals.
If content is the car, SEO is the fuel. They should never work in silos and they need each other to reveal their true potential.
Let’s take a deeper look at the relationship between SEO and content marketing, and how desperately they need each other.
Most importantly, let’s find out how their mutual partnership decides the outcome of a product’s and/or service’s success online.
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What is SEO?
SEO is the process of optimizing a page’s possibility of appearing more frequently in search engine results pages. It combines several technical, on-site, and off-site elements to tell search engines that “Hey look, this site deserves to be found”.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, and promoting content that supports a brand’s online ambitions. It is all about putting valuable pieces of creative work in front of the right audience, and at the time, using the right medium.
So, if content marketing builds interest for your brand among your target audience using good content, SEO helps your target audience find your good content.
So, the relationship between SEO and content marketing is that both of them need each other to grow, they’re not rivals or can compete with each other. They work in unison, towards common goals.
The goals of SEO & content marketing
SEO seeks to drive targeted website traffic to a site, enhance the quality and quantity of inbound traffic, and generate leads by making a website appear highly in SERP (search engine results pages).
Content marketing seeks to create brand awareness, create thought leadership, attract and retain targeted audiences to a site and drive profitable customer action.
If you look closely, both of their goals are not dissimilar, they exist to make a site succeed online. If SEO drives traffic, content retains the traffic. If SEO signals search engines that a site is good, content makes sure it is.
Why content marketing needs SEO?
Finding profitable keyword ideas
The first step of planning a content marketing strategy is to make sure if people want to know about it. And this takes it to keyword research which is an SEO area.
By gathering profitable keyword ideas, you are going to hit the real people because they are actively searching about it on search engines. They need real info, perhaps better than presently available online. Finding highly targeted, low competitive but high volume keywords is the first positive step towards planning a successful content strategy.
Improving the user experience (UX)
SEO, when done well, can significantly improve a user’s interaction with a website. There are a lot of things in it. We’ll cover a few basic points to give you an overall idea.
By identifying and fixing bounce rate issues, monitoring and improving average page sessions, making site navigation a breeze, speeding up loading time, a site’s chances of retaining users increases. What it means is that people will eventually spend more time on your site, reading and engaging with content, ultimately performing purchasing actions.
Enhancing search appearance
For a well-written article (the title of which you just copied from your content marketing’s editorial calendar) to get read, first of all, it needs to be found on search engines. This is where you look at SEO content writing.
Writing SEO-friendly content includes inserting proper keywords in specific areas within the copy, creating search-friendly URL structure, adding proper headings, optimizing meta, integrating profitable SEO opportunities within the content such as FAQ block and variety of media, following a holistic internal link profile, etc.
Understanding search intent
Since web content writers are writing for the web, they must understand the search intent people carry when they come to find something online. And the best place to understand this is to see which pages are ranking on the top Google position for a given keyword.
This is a vital step to integrate into content strategy. Writing high-quality and better web content following the type of content already ranking on SERP can help a new content rank well.
So, as we’ve seen, SEO is the foundation of content that is tailored for online consumption. SEO breathes life into high-performing content if we put it in other words.
Now, this opens a question. Why does SEO need content to work?
Just think what result will you achieve if you find a highly profitable keyword opportunity, write content populated with the keyword, thoroughly optimize your content based on the SEO best practices and ignore the basic principle of writing valuable content?
The answer is no one is going to like it, search engines and users. Right?
Let’s dive in to find more clarity.
Why SEO needs content marketing?
Creative input
Search engine optimized content won’t rank just because it is optimized for the search engines. It needs to be tailored for human consumption, not search engine robots.
SEO can bring in technical maturity to content, but at the end of the day, the content needs to stand firmly on creative expectations. The quality of writing, including the thought process, word choice, phrasing, construction, punctuation, style, and tone, etc are the products of a creative thought process, not SEO.
Relevancy
Google is likely to rank a site higher on its SERP if the content is relevant to the search query. If a visitor lands on your site and leaves quickly because the content is not something s/he is looking for, it is a signal for Google that the content may not deserve to rank for the search query.
Now, to write relevant content and address the interest of a reader, the writer needs to understand basic human psychology. Structuring content in a flawless manner, using attention-grabbing content is a content writer’s job.
While SEO will bring in traffic, the content will retain the traffic and play a very important role in realizing profitable user action for a site. Therefore, SEO and content both go hand in hand towards the same destination, they’re friends, not foes.
How to prepare a powerful content marketing strategy based on SEO?
Preparing a search-focused content marketing strategy needs an understanding of the search ecosystem and human interest.
Set your goals
Have a very clear understanding of your goals or you may end up producing tons of content that’ll be of no value. Depending on your area, your goals may be to create thought leadership, to maximize site conversion, to create a community of active paying customers, etc to name a few.
Find your audience
Identify your target audience and their interests. What issues are they trying to solve? What interests them? How can you be more valuable to them than the competition? Map out their journey from the point of finding you to making a purchase.
Write most relevant content ideas
Your content needs to be optimized for the interests of your target audience, over and over again across all the steps of a buying journey. Find the top-performing content for a search query, write better content than presently available, optimize it for search and conversion. Simply put, create valuable content that is findable for search engines and that resonates with your target audience.
Choose the best distribution platforms & publish
Reach out to the right people and at the right time. Make sure your content is read by the right guys whom you want to come to your site and take action. For example, if your target audience is looking for a grammar tool, one of the distribution channels can be the writing forums where authors hang out to share writing feedback.
Monitor development and improve
See how your content is performing on the Web using analytics tools, engage in the resulting discussion, measure and track improvements, repeat strategies that worked. Provide real value to your audience by becoming their first point of trusted information.
When SEO and content don’t connect with each other
If you are writing for an existing audience who will access your content directly without needing it to be found online, meaning if you don’t want your content to be found by new people, you may not necessarily need the help of SEO. Also, going by this thought, you will not to market your content.
Conclusion
Great content builds engagements, but for people to read the great content, they need to find it. So, both content and SEO go hand in hand, you can’t leave one and go with the other. They are equally important for continued online success.
