From the outside, digital marketing can often seem very siloed. PPC is a separate thing from email marketing, which is a separate thing from social media — and so on. But the truth is that there can be substantial overlap between these areas, and there is no better example of that than SEO and content marketing.
What Is SEO?
As a baseline, let’s outline a few definitions, starting with SEO. It stands for search engine optimization, and in practice, it encompasses a mix of tactics and strategies designed to get your website in the best shape possible and improve where you rank on search engines. Because the higher you rank, the greater your visibility is.
Search engines leverage automated bots to “crawl” websites, then analyze and store them in the engine’s index. Some of the strategies that are used in SEO include:
- Creating a clear, organized site structure with a sitemap and internal linking
- Regularly updating new and fresh content with clear, keyword-rich headings
- Leveraging meta tags and image alt text
- Writing high-quality content and building backlinks
What Is Content Marketing?
The other side of this equation is content marketing, which is the strategic process of creating and distributing valuable and relevant content aimed at engaging the target audience. It’s much less about a catchphrase and more about developing things with real value that educate them and position your brand as a strong voice in your industry.
The creation aspect of content marketing is incredibly important and so is distribution, or the ways you try to ensure a piece of content reaches the people you want it to reach. Both of those impact how much engagement and interaction you get on it, which is a main goal in content marketing.
All types of content are part of this umbrella, including:
- Blog posts
- Videos
- Emails and newsletters
- White papers, guides, and ebooks
- Infographics
- Website and landing pages
How Do SEO and Content Marketing Reinforce Each Other?
While SEO and content marketing have different goals and measures of success, they are very intertwined and reliant on the other to be the most effective. Let’s take a look at some of the ways good SEO comes down to good content marketing.
Visible quality
We mentioned before when we were defining SEO that one of the things these automated search engine bots do is crawl and analyze the content on websites. But a website isn’t assessed as a whole; each page is scored for the quality and value it can bring to prospective site visitors. High-quality content targeted at the needs, interests, and questions of a specific audience are valued higher in the search engine algorithm, bringing your site greater visibility.
Keyword integration
In a similar way, content marketing feeds into keyword and keyphrase integration in a much more effective fashion. SEO research is vital for figuring out what your audience is talking about and where there are opportunities for growth, and the way you accomplish those goals is often through the content that supports it. Quality content created with and around keywords or phrases drives traffic, nurtures leads, and increases discoverability.
Trust and authority
We mentioned this just a few weeks ago, but Google is continuing to emphasize EEAT — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. They want to ensure that they’re serving users links coming from trustworthy sites. Consistently creating and distributing quality content that provides value for users helps to tell them that that website is credible, informative, and deserving of a high rank in search results.
User experience
All the click-thrus in the world are worth nothing if the visitors bounce quickly, are unengaged, or are put off by the flow of your website. Good SEO is about clarity, structure, and quality, which means content that prioritize those things can be very beneficial to your brand visibility. So it’s worth it to, not just acquire good content, but also to ensure it’s easy to access, interact with, and consume.
Backlinks
Backlinks have always been important for signaling a site that is credible and valuable, but we’re well past the days where just any kind of backlink will do. Low-quality link networks or overly aggressive link-building will get you flagged and suppressed, so this is where that high-quality content comes back in. Because if you have resources, guides, infographics, and other creations that are informative, useful, and valuable, then you’re more likely to grow your backlinks naturally as other sites find that content and point their visitors to it.
How Can You Use Content Marketing for Your SEO?
So how do you go about using content marketing to boost your SEO? And vice versa? You’ve probably already sussed out a few of these, but let’s break it down anyway.
If you try to talk to everyone, you won’t connect with anyone.
As always, we come back to the foundation of marketing: knowing who your target audience is and outlining your buyer personas so you can create content with them always top of mind. Your content will be most effective for SEO and engagement if it’s aimed directly at the needs, questions, and interests of your ideal customers.
You’re crafting content, not throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Leverage SEO research to inform the kinds of content you make so that it, in turn, can improve your SEO. Hone in on what keywords, phrases, and questions your target audience is most interested in, and design your content around that. Understand what obstacles and challenges they have and aim to try and solve them.
‘Consistency’ needs to become your new favorite word.
Note that we’re not saying frequency is important; consistency is. Because our goal is still to deliver content that’s high-quality and a value-add for users, you don’t need to be churning out slapdash stuff every day. One great, in-depth article a week or every other week is going to do more for your brand’s reputation and authority than a million shallow, chaotic uploads.
Make a plan and sync your calendars.
In order to not throw spaghetti at the wall and avoid inconsistency, you need to sit down and make a strategic plan upfront and then create a content calendar to drive that plan forward. This lets you maintain a bird’s eye view of your overall strategy and where you can grow.
Keep one foot in the present and one foot in the future.
It’s important to ensure you’re following all of the current best practices for content marketing and SEO. Integrate keywords naturally in the content, headings, and subheadings. Utilize compelling meta tags that include your keywords to help both the search engine crawlers and users in general. Structure your content so that it’s eye-catching and easy to read by breaking up big blocks of text and leveraging bullet points, subheadings, and so on.
SEO and Content Marketing: The Perfect Match
Your digital marketing strategies rely on the killer duo of good SEO and good content marketing, and the good news is that investing in one boosts the other. Whether it’s produced by your internal teams or by partnering with a digital marketing agency, consistently producing high-quality content that offers real value to your target audience improves your reputation, your authority, and your credibility with search engines. And that can be a real game changer.
