The importance of digital marketing continues to soar rapidly, with companies investing in it generously. You might hear about SEO and content marketing every day since they have become the pillars of marketing. There is a misconception that SEO and content marketing are independent of each other, but that is far from reality. SEO and content marketing correlate with each other in many ways. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of the relationship between SEO and content marketing, let’s first understand what SEO and content marketing are all about.
What is SEO and content marketing?
SEO refers to the site’s technical optimization in many ways such as using appropriate keywords and leveraging backlinks to attract quality visitors to your site as well as to increase conversion. Content marketing refers to creating quality and engaging content for lead generation and client acquisition. Content can be anything from written text, images to videos. SEO and content are two sides of the same coin. Without SEO, your content won’t rank, and without content, SEO will not be of much use.
What should you focus on?
Most marketers wonder whether to focus on content or SEO. But imagine a scenario where you get your audience to the website, but what after that? How are you going to keep them engaged? By using content! Hiring an SEO professional can only get you so far; you need a content marketing strategy to generate traffic. In simple words: SEO demands content and content marketing fulfils the demand by providing the content.
On the flip side, you can write the best content in the world, but without adding SEO elements like metatags, description, keywords, how will Google index it? How will people find your content in the first place? The answer to this is by optimizing your content for SEO. SEO is all about helping search engines like Google, to help them understand what your content is about.
Content marketing helps you create well-researched content that can help your audience, generate traffic, backlinks, increase your authority, while SEO makes sure that your content is discoverable.
How do SEO and content marketing overlap?
- Quality content
In the digital marketing world, they say ‘Content is the king,’ and nothing is more accurate than that. You want actionable interactive content to engage your audience and to keep them coming back for more. The content should be relevant to lure your target audience and help them solve their problem. What’s the use of content which cannot help your audience? They won’t return to your site if the content is fluffy. Google uses the relevancy factor to determine the page’s relevance and decides whether to rank your page or not. Also, Google loves fresh content; so quality and fresh content plus authority website equal more traffic.
- Keywords
Keywords are an essential part of SEO strategy. You need adequately researched and appropriate keywords that target your audience. You can write the best content in the world, but unless your audience discovers it, it is termed useless.
Keywords help Google tell whether your content can help people. However, make sure you lightly sprinkle them all over the content instead of repeating them more than necessary. Google doesn’t like keyword overstuffing and can decrease your site’s ranking.
- Link building
Backlinks is one of the 200 factors that Google determines before ranking your page. By getting backlinks from high-quality websites, you can tell Google that your site has authority and experience in the field. Of course, you can use one of those link-building services to generate backlinks, but they won’t be of much use in the long term because buying links is frowned upon by Google. One of the best ways to get high authority site link back to your website is to create the highest quality content.
Key takeaways
Integrating SEO with your content strategy isn’t a choice but a necessity. SEO and content marketing are complementary, and one is not complete without the other. Remember that SEO has no meaning without content marketing. You can have thousands of keywords, but you will need content to integrate those keywords. Combining the dynamic duo of SEO and content can reap considerable rewards in the long run.
