Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing are two of the most important tools available to the modern marketer. You don’t often hear these two tactics talked about together. However, an SEO content marketing strategy can really help take your brand’s marketing to the next level.
SEO without content marketing is like a body without a soul. In particular, SEO is actually strategized around content marketing since every website needs words, articles, substance, keywords, etc. In order to be successful, both must go hand in hand.
Keywords
The essential element of SEO is about researching and finding relevant keywords and making use of them in your content so they rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s important to use keywords in an appropriate manner and follow a strategic approach. You should never stuff a page with keywords and overoptimize. SEO and content work in balance.
Quality Content
SEO and content marketing require consistency. Fresh, unique and creative content gets rapidly indexed and ranks higher than low-value and repetitive content.
Content must be able to lure your clients as well as solve a particular issue. One can write influential content by using important keywords and targeting visitors. This is the most important factor through which Google determines the relevance of a page and ranks a piece of content. Brainstorming creative ideas and embedding the most important keywords is the key to acknowledged content.
User Experience
SEO is not just about blogs, articles, keywords and linkbacks but also about optimizing robots.txt, enhancing metadata and using tags appropriately.
Technical optimization makes a web page appealing to the search engine and ensures that the site has no broken links with any error codes (like 404s). Otherwise, the source will be poorly ranked by the search engine. Optimizing URLs and making the slug — everything after the .com — concise drives the search engine to find the relevant subpages and categorize the different parts of your site. This is vital to the success of any SEO campaign. The technical SEO elements benefit the UX and are present so as to publicize the content.
A good sitemap ensures an easy approach to content for users, and optimized robots.txt crawls the site so that viewers can access the content. The appropriate tag provides outstanding and superior indexing and authentic search results. Tags like header tags and title tags benefit the user by strategizing the content in a way that is useful for readers and simple for the search engine to understand.
Traffic
Linkback, link-building or inbound linking is another major factor of SEO. Connecting your links with high-domain authority sites like .edu and .org drastically increases traffic. Though developing links is possible by connecting with link-building agencies, the best method is to create expert content. To get a link back and boost traffic, stellar content is worth it.
Content marketing helps businesses spread their sought-after organic keywords through their websites in an engaging, valuable way, it can also increase the number of backlinks. This will eventually lead to the improvement of your domain authority (DA).
Domain authority from Google’s point of view is the equivalent of a business’ reputation. It’s scored between 1-100 and the higher the DA, the more reliable and relevant Google perceives the website and its content. Great content and high-quality backlinks are the key to boosting your score, and in-turn being rewarded by appearing on the first page of Google SERPs.
If your website content is valuable, other websites will link back to it. Sometimes an extra bit of help is needed in order to promote your content and achieve some backlinks, this includes digital PR, social media amplification or outreach activity.
Once again, this can only be achievable if you have a content marketing strategy that will allow you to produce valuable, engaging content that is worth link back to.
There are four simple steps that organizations should follow to ensure a successful digital strategy.
First and foremost, identify and set the right goals for both SEO and content marketing. Ensure they’re both working towards the same results and are easily measurable, (for example, to increase web traffic and conversion rates).
Secondly, understand your target audience and their journey. Start researching keywords that your target audience may be searching for, this will help you produce content that is relevant. This helps you better understand their journey and will help identify the keywords you need to rank for. Industry digital marketing tools such as SEMrush, Moz and Keyword Planner are a great way to research: search volume, competition and average bid costs. These tools will give you a starting point or topic when writing content.
Create SEO friendly content that considers keywords, search volume and interest. But also make sure it’s optimised for mobile devices. Ensure that all on-page SEO factors are successfully implemented, such as: internal links, title tags, headers, meta descriptions, keywords optimisation, alt tags and content quality. This will ensure that the content will rank higher in SERPs.
Finally, promote your content on social media and through digital PR activity. If you want to go the extra mile, think about outreach content or guest posting in order to transform your content marketing effort into high quality backlinks.
It’s important that marketers bridge the gap between SEO and content marketing, merging both strategies into one. This will lead to greater conversions and leads from organic website traffic, resulting in a better ROI.
Take the next step in growing your business using digital marketing. Connect with one of our expert digital strategists to learn how Optimum DMA can help you reach your business goals.
Are you ready to dominate the web? Let’s Start!