Integrating Content Marketing and SEO for Online Success

The relationship between content marketing and SEO is a strong one; together, they have taken the digital marketing world by storm.

Digital marketers and SEO experts refer to content marketing and SEO as going ‘hand in hand’, but in reality, one can’t work without the other.

When you go in-depth into the process of creating content that your audience would appreciate, it would be even more worth your time if that content ranks high in search engines too.

And even though Google’s algorithm is just an algorithm, it’s not as robotic as you think.

In many ways, it works in your favor because Google ranks highest the same content your audience wants to see – the same content you should be creating for them.

This is where the synergy between the two is created: SEO actually strategizes itself around content marketing.

You can’t have SEO without content marketing because you can’t know the right keywords Google wants you to use without actually having anything to use it for.

At the same time, content marketing won’t work without SEO because you’ll be aimlessly creating content and won’t know how to target it. That way, no one will be able to see it – it’ll be content without the marketing.

For all these reasons, an SEO content marketing strategy is integral to your marketing strategy.

And to develop and implement and effective one, you need to understand what SEO and content marketing are, and how they come together to get your brand to where you want it to be.

What is SEO?

SEO, short for search engine optimization, refers to the ways in which you bring in organic traffic to your website from search engines.

In other words, it’s what you do to get your site to rank high for certain keywords on search engines.

It’s comprised of a set of techniques that match your content or webpage to the specific audience that you want to target and the keywords they’re looking for, or their search query.
Google places extreme emphasis on SEO efforts because it wants to make sure it gets the right content to the right people.

Through targeted optimization of on-page elements and keywords, you’ll get your site to rank better when users look for those keywords or for phrases related to your industry.

This is because search engines like Google base the rank of their results on the relevance of the content of the results to the user researching that keyword.

Businesses therefore use SEO to optimize their content for search engines based on keywords relevant to their target audience in order to improve their online visibility.

What is Content Marketing?

To put simply, content marketing is the process of creating and sharing content that is valuable and relevant to your audience.

As with any type of marketing, the goal of content marketing is to eventually gain leads through that content and move them through the sales funnel.

However, your goal doesn’t have to end up in a sale – it can also be to drive any kind of customer action, such as downloading a resource you offer on your website or even subscribe to your content.

But in either case, your content has to be either genuinely informative or entertaining for it to be relevant, valuable, and useful to your audience and ultimately attract them.

That way, your content can be used to build relationships with your leads and customers. Which is why demonstrating your expertise is one way to build great content, and being informative will help them make a smarter purchasing decision.

How SEO and Content Marketing Work Together

SEO and content marketing don’t just make a strong force, they are complementary of each other. One is incomplete without the other.

We’ve talked about how the other half of content marketing is the marketing aspect, which is promoting the content you’ve created and getting it out there to its respective audiences.

This is the exact part of the content marketing process which SEO binds forces with because SEO helps you improve the visibility of your content and guarantees it reaches its intended target audience.

But that doesn’t mean that the ‘putting it out there’ process is the only aspect SEO plays a part in. In fact, you bring SEO into the process as soon as you begin designing and creating your content.

SEO begins with researching and finding keywords relevant to you, your business, and your industry that your leads are also looking for.

You begin the process of content marketing by then creating content that’s focused around those keywords. This improves your online visibility because it helps your content and pages rank higher on search engine result pages.

Here are some of the aspects that SEO and content marketing help cover when they join forces.

Considering Your Target Audience and Creating Content for Them

In simple words, this is how you factor in SEO into your content marketing.

When you design your content marketing strategy beginning with the type of content you’re going to be targeting and creating, you probably base your plan around the amount of value that your content should offer your audience.

This is how SEO guides you in the right direction when it comes to content marketing and content creation: it helps you understand what your audience is looking for so you can center your content around it and make it relevant to them.

You do this through a keyword search, one of the most important tactics of SEO, which is how you determine what your audience is researching on Google and how they phrase their questions.

The next step then comes easy; you create relevant content because you know what they’re asking and looking for. You’re answering their questions.

Designing Your Content with Search Engines in Mind

The basics of the SEO content marketing process is that SEO helps you find relevant keywords that you can then use in your content to reach the right audience and consequently improve your SEO – it’s a full circle.

But this doesn’t mean you should just mindlessly add these keywords to your content and hope it ranks high just for including them.

Search engine algorithms like Google’s are becoming increasingly aware, which means you’re going to have to factor in how they work in your content creation process and reflect that same awareness in your content.

This is the step where you properly optimize your content with keywords that make sense for your business. And you ‘embed’ those keywords into your content using a strategy – don’t just stuff them.

Repeating keywords or just throwing them in their could have the opposite effect on your SEO.

Being Consistent

It’s one thing to create and publish great content, but one thing SEO helps guide you with is by making sure you stay consistent.

This means staying on top of your game throughout your content marketing strategy because search engines care about how often you publish.

Continuously and consistently publishing high-quality content will not only signal to the search engine that you’re still relevant and worthy of being ranked high, but it also adds to the prospective keywords that your audience will search for.

In turn, this can increase your website traffic while also adding to your authority because you’re establishing content diversity.

SEO is important in this part of the content marketing strategy because it helps you prioritize the areas you should work on and make an effective schedule based on that.

It helps you divide your focus between the many different elements you should be focusing on as well as exploring areas that could be helpful to you.

How to Set Up Your SEO Content Marketing Strategy

We’ve talked about what SEO and content marketing touch on and cover when combined, so let’s talk about how you can work towards creating and effective SEO content marketing strategy that will do good by your business.

Research Your Target Market

For you to create content that works, and for you to be able to market that content, it needs to be focused on a target market.

That content needs to reach the audience that it’s suited for, which means knowing who you’re going to be talking to and what they’re looking for is an integral step towards creating the content and optimizing it.

Do Your Keyword Search

To be able to answer a question, you first have to know what the question is.

Keyword searches help you find out what people are typing into search engines, so that when you create your content, it’s relevant to your target audience because you’re answering their questions (which a keyword search has helped you learn)!

Create a Realistic Plan for Your Content

When you create a content plan, you need to make sure you’re setting a realistic amount of content to be created per timeframe.

You also need to make sure of the consistency of the content, as well as the diversity and value of topics it’s going to cover to ensure it’ll be unique and attract the right leads.

Create and Follow Up on Your Content

This is where you use all what you know and all what your keyword search has taught you to establish high-quality content.

Using your targeted keywords while keeping in mind your target audience and how search engines work, you can create properly optimized content that should do its job of improving your SEO and attracting new leads.

And it’s not just about creating content once and then forgetting it. You will need to follow up with your content over time to make sure it’s updated and properly optimized.

This is because newer keyword opportunities always present themselves, or you can even spice your content up in general as you get newer, better ideas for it.

Conclusion

To be able to give your audience relevant, attention-grabbing content, you need to factor in SEO into your content marketing strategy.

And to do search engine optimization for your website, you need to create content that will be centered around it.

In summary, SEO and content marketing can’t work without one another. Together, they can push your marketing performance to the roof.

After all, what is marketing but getting the right piece of content to the right people? That’s what SEO and content marketing help you with.