Why is Content Marketing + SEO is the Best Strategy for You?

Individually, content marketing and SEO are both akin to titans in this era of digital marketing. And although people are typically aware that they complement each other well, they’re rarely mentioned in the same breath.

As anyone who’s tried the two together will tell you, SEO and content marketing form a deadly jab-cross combo that can knock out your competition.

But if they’re really that good together, why aren’t more businesses adopting this approach?

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Let’s take a closer look at the objectives of SEO and content marketing. And while we’re at it, we’ll try to analyze what the crux of the problem is.SEO and Content Marketing Objectives

The biggest issue, here, is that people perceive both to be completely separate and individual aspects of digital marketing. They believe that both are two very different things, but that isn’t the case.

There’s a significant overlap between the two. I might even go so far as to say that they’re two personalities of the same beast.

In fact, according to a recent survey, on-page content is the most effective SEO tactic that marketers rely on. And what is on-page content, if not a part of content marketing?

Image via Statista

To understand this better, let’s chalk out the objectives of both.

People, typically, use SEO techniques to:

• Optimize their site around keywords relevant to their businesses
• Gain new, valuable, and credible backlinks from high authority web domains

Their main goal behind doing so is to:

• Improve their SERP rankings for certain keywords
• Increase their brand awareness and visibility
• Attract more website traffic

In a nutshell, they use SEO to increase website traffic in the hopes to grow their revenue and business.

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But what about content marketing? It includes:Creating relevant, compelling, engaging, and informative content

• Using effective calls-to-action
• Generating highly-shareable content that is prone to go viral

Marketers do all of this with the objectives of:

• Increasing brand awareness and visibility
• Promoting brand loyalty by establishing thought-leadership in the industry
• Increasing time spent on site by target audiences
• Ultimately improving sales and conversion rates

To put things in perspective, SEO helps you draw users to your site while content marketing keeps them there and helps convert them. So, while SEO has a narrower and more technical approach; content marketing is more holistic in its approach.

Bringing Out the Best in One Another

We’ve established that SEO and content marketing strategies are working towards the same goal. The next question is, how can each serve to improve the other?

How Can SEO Enhance Content Marketing?

You might have written the most exquisite and engaging piece of content you’ve ever created. But what’s the point if there’s no one around to read and appreciate it? A content creation team can’t simply produce brilliant content if it doesn’t turn up in search query results.

This is where SEO can enhance your content marketing, by making your content more discoverable. It addresses the issue of content relevancy (to your business) and improves search rankings.

Simply, content that is built around keywords that are relevant to the business, will rank higher in the appropriate search results.

And it’ll appear in front of the right audience. But don’t restrict yourself to just relevant keywords. Research other SEO-related aspects like:

• Content topics that rank well for particular keywords
• Customer feedback to learn what your audience expects from you
• Content types that are performing well for your competitors

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How Can Content Marketing Improve SEO?

Savvy content consumers are looking to engage with content that provides them with value. They’ll easily see through any fluff you might be writing in your content. Especially if you’re creating content for the sole reason of improving your search rankings for certain keywords.

Once they catch on to your “dummy” content, they’ll deem your brand as untrustworthy and of little or no importance to them. They’d gladly take their business elsewhere. It’s what SEO team nightmares are made of.

Read full post at Shanebarker.com