Why SEO Is Actually All About Content Marketing

Content marketing is still a buzzword. And with this buzzword, every company has its own definition - which leads to confusion.

SEO companies were the first to jump into Content Marketing as links and content are intrinsically linked to more traffic, but there are lots more to it than SEO. In doing your research, there are several questions you might come across:

Yes, they do for together. SEO is actually about content marketing and vice versa.

SEO (search engine optimization) refers to the technical process of increasing the quality of traffic and attracting maximum visitors to your website. SEO without content marketing is like a body without a soul. In other words, SEO is actually strategized around content marketing since every website needs words, articles, substance, keywords, etc.

So to start, SEO refers to every action you take on the website to make it rank higher for keywords in search engines like Google. These tactics work together to help certain pages on your website rank well when users search words or phrases related to your industry or service.

SEO encompasses quite a few different strategies:

How SEO and Content Marketing Work Together

SEO and content marketing have a mutual relationship. There is a good bit of overlap between the two. Another way to look at it is like this: SEO makes demands. Content marketing fulfills those demands.

Your content should include highly searched keywords in your industry or niche that helps your website rank better in search engines, meaning it will attract more traffic. Hence your content is more effective in reaching your marketing goals.

Adding strong content to your site will improve its domain authority which will, in turn, give an extra boost to your overall SEO.
In short, the better your SEO, the better your content will perform and vice versa.

SEO demands keywords. Content marketing means using keywords.

One important feature of SEO: Keywords. Keywords are the fundamental component of SEO - researching them, utilizing them and tracking rank on Search Engine Results Page (SERPs). SEO requires keywords to perform properly. Content cannot perform without keywords.

How does one apply the use of keywords? How is all the research funnelled into its practical application? This is what content marketing is. The only way you can use your keywords is to be employing them strategically throughout your content. This means you have to research, track and utilize the keywords to rank your website at the top of search results. Through the use of articles, blogs and other online content, you can use more keywords relevant to what your site is about and what people are searching for. On the other hand, you need to avoid overstuffing your content with keywords - a tactic search engines now penalize.

SEO demands consistent output. Content marketing requires consistency.

Google likes fresh content, and they have for a long time. It is a fact that fresh content gets rapidly indexed and registers higher in the SERPs than older low-value content.

When fresh content is updated on a website with high domain authority, you can be sure that it is going to offer a SERP boost. Good SEO, then, means a consistent output of content. Consistent output means that you’re doing content marketing, and you're publishing often. This is the best solution. Content marketing is an ongoing process, so think of it as a regular investment.

SEO demands backlinks. Content marketing encourages backlinks.

Over the years, backlinks remain one of the most powerful Google ranking factors. If you want to substantially boost your site's SEO and improve your Google rankings, link building is one of the best ways to do it. Link building activities should try to get as many links to the target page as possible.

But the best way to build links is by publishing killer content and letting sites link back to it. This is the real way to continual SEO success.

Otherwise, you can build links by contracting with link building agencies. Guest blogging and infographics can also be good for link building.

SEO demands content. Content marketing is content.

Content is king. There is no such thing as SEO without content. We do not need to argue about that anymore. It’s a truism of the SEO industry. Content content content is everywhere.

And what is content marketing all about? It’s about content - as the name would suggest. The practical application of SEO is the very substance of content marketing. When SEO shouts, “We need more content!” content marketing responds, “We're on it!”

SEO demands onsite technical optimization. Content marketing needs great UX.

SEO is not just content, articles, blogs, keywords and backlinks. SEO is more about optimizing the robots.txt, utilizing tags, enhancing metadata, and constructing a strategic sitemap. This technical checklist includes meta tags, breadcrumbs, meta descriptions, call-to-action, headers, and responsive design.

These technical optimizations are for the benefit of users when they are searching, selecting, or reading content. Their enhancements are required from a user experience (UX) perspective. SEO and UX go hand-in-hand in creating a successful website experience. SEO components like metadata, site map, robots.txt are present to serve the user better and promote your content.

The elements of great user experience have been rolled into SEO best practices.

Why do you want a good sitemap? So people can easily find and access your content. Why do you want an optimized robots.txt? So search engines can better crawl your site, and so readers can see the content. Why do you want the right tags in the right places? So your content can get indexed fast, resulting in accurate search results, and more readers of your content. Again, it all comes back to content.

The Difference Between SEO and Content Marketing

Now that we’ve established the relationship between the two, it is time for us to dig into what precisely separates content marketing from SEO. And while they have points of differentiation, you still can not separate the two entirely.

One key contrast: SEO is narrower and more technical whereas content marketing is broader and more holistic.

1) Audience

Any type of content should always be created with your target audience in mind - this is an elementary rule. This means that your writeup, graphics, and formats should be designed to suit your viewers best. Always try optimizing the pages you host your content on, but do so in a way that doesn’t detract from the content that you post.

SEO, on the other hand, requires in-depth knowledge about search engines and their crawlers. In fact, search engines weigh keywords, title tags, headers, and other code-related elements much more heavily than your average visitor.

2) Approach

As a result of these different audiences or end-users, the approaches taken toward content marketing and SEO are slightly different. When doing SEO for your site, you should take an analytical approach to all changes you commit to the website. Use tools like Google Analytics to dig into the hard data, and research keywords to determine new opportunities for growing your traffic and rankings. You need to concentrate on a data-based strategy when it comes to SEO.

There’s no proven formula for success with content marketing, in other words, there are no hard data and facts available to work as a baseline. But if you are a creative individual, it could be a great opportunity to experiment with new topics and formats.

3) Value

This should come as no surprise, but content marketing and SEO each have their own way of adding value to your website and marketing strategy. SEO primarily attracts qualified traffic to your website and relates to the ways in which you reach new visitors. Whereas content marketing has more to do with keeping those visitors engaged and interested once they arrive on your website, and moving them closer to becoming customers.

Wrapping up

Overall, it is essential to keep up with Google’s latest updates and ensure your website is relevant to both Google and your customers. Though there are frequent search algorithm changes every year, the bottom line is that valuable, authentic content always wins. You create content to meet your content marketing objectives. As content marketing is becoming increasingly relevant, it is vital for a website to provide quality, informational content regularly. And SEO is intimately tied to content marketing. Remember a simple formula