You’ll find articles around the web that suggest that content marketing and SEO are two separate and distinct entities with little correlation. In fact, some even talk about content marketing “overtaking” SEO, as if the two were in competition.
But the truth is, SEO and content marketing complement each other, and if you’re trying to grow your website’s search traffic and engagement, you’ll need to combine the two to achieve the most successful outcomes.
Common Goals and Objectives
The first step in SEO and content marketing working together is understanding their goals and objectives that align with the company’s overall marketing efforts.
SEO and content marketing typically share objectives such as increasing engagement, web traffic, and conversion. Clearly stating and outlining these objectives will help create a plan for when and how a brand uses SEO and content marketing to achieve its goals.
SEO & Engaging Content
Effective SEO increases search engine results. For that to occur, content must be fresh and engaging. Articles containing updated information rank higher than older articles that include errors and lots of repetition.
Using this knowledge when creating content, improves the likelihood of increased visibility, engagement, and rank.
Keyword-Based Content Increases Discoverability
Content marketing is about creating and distributing valuable, relevant content to attract and acquire your target audience.
Identifying the keywords that drive your topic and effectively incorporating those keywords into your content will allow you to tailor your content to your target audience and ensure you’re not creating content in a vacuum.
SEO not only provides essential data on what to write, but it can help content creators determine where that content should go. Main keywords, for example, should be included in both the header and body sections of a blog post or website.
Utilizing Guest Posts and Backlinks
SEO loves backlinks. And providing quality content for guest posts on popular sites that appeal to your target audience can mean more links.
The more links you have driving relevant traffic to your site, the more optimized your site will be, and this greater optimization will improve your website’s ranking.
Gaining a Greater Understanding of the Target Audience
Having a clearly defined target audience helps teams create content that’s best suited for that audience. SEO analytics provides the tools necessary to measure and track audience behavior.
Analyzing this behavior helps the content team understand user experience, pain points, and motivations. And this analysis will help creators develop even more engaging, impactful content.
SEO and Content Marketing Work Together
Both SEO and content marketing are effective ways to meet a company’s marketing goals. And you don’t have to choose one or the other. In fact, the key to SEO and content marketing working together is understanding how inherently linked they are.
Content marketing needs SEO and SEO needs content marketing. SEO and content marketing are working towards the same goal, and as such, when used together, bring out the best in each other.
Want to get started with content marketing-focused SEO? Check out the keyword research and copywriting options on Search Hermit’s packages page.
