Search Engine Optimization is a concept which had gone through a lot of changes and refreshments over the last few years and as of late, once the term content marketing came into limelight, there had been a lot of talks going around the future of SEO in light of this new discipline. However, it is essential to have a clear-cut understanding about the impact of content marketing over SEO to develop a winning strategy in terms of digital marketing.
It is a fact that many of the SEO agencies and freelancers have re-branded themselves as content specialists lately, but this doesn’t mean that SEO became obsolete with content marketing. In reality, these two disciplines go hand in hand under digital marketing, and the users need to effectively incorporate both of these to become successful in the highly competitive online market.
Content marketing and SEO
Most of the times, content marketing and SEO may overlap, but there are a lot of key differences also to be noted.
- When it comes to SEO, things are more technical. SEO discusses about the usage of apt URLs, page titles, sitemaps, and ALT tags etc. All these are elements which underpin one’s content marketing strategy.
- Content marketing, on the other hand, has higher goals than SEO. Say for example, a publisher needs to make informative content as the primary way to attract and retain the audience. In that case, the content alone stands to make it happen.
There are some critics who have the perception that SEO is all about creating quality content for search engines to index pages. Those who are into it also agree that developing quality content is vital, but there is something more than that to be worked on. All your efforts may still go in vain if you don’t pay attention to SEO and just focus on producing quality content.
Say for example, if a site is blacklisted by Google or other search engines and its pages don’t get indexed properly, then it is essential to hire some Baltimore SEO agency expert to repair it. This is the reason why SEO experts and content development teams have to work hand in hand. However, with the level of confusion that now exists as to which has more weightage, a balanced association is not happening at many places, which only results in loss. To have a better insight into it, let us discuss some ways in which SEO and content marketing work together.
Creating quality and unique content
Back in the day, experts would use low quality content just to get Google’s crawlers to index a website or webpage, but this is not at all effective now. Weaker content may not be able to attract the real customers and retain them. From an SEO perspective, it is very important to have engaging and unique content on the web pages, which should set one apart from the competitors. Quality will not just help to get the pages indexed, but can really attract the real audience and give them something to get engaged. While considering the quality, determine whether the content has what it takes to inspire people and deliver something valuable to them.
Evergreen content
Evergreen content is information or advice which won’t fade away overtime. Researching for such topics and creating evergreen content will not only help improve search engine rankings, but also will help make your site a highly sought-after reference place. It is true that a piece of fresh news may often do well on Google when it is hot, but will fade overtime.
High quality content ensures long-term traffic. If you achieve this, it creates a virtuous circle as higher search rankings naturally will end up in more popularity, which naturally leads to higher number of links, again contributing to betterment of rank and so on.
Doing adequate keyword research
Keyword research is of utmost importance when it comes to content marketing and SEO. At the first point, the content you produce should be of top-notch quality, but you must also ensure that such content also gets the exposure it really deserves. In order to meet this goal, the content you developed must go well in line with the most popular search terms or keywords.
However, when you use too many technical terms or keywords in one article, the phrases you use may not match exactly with what the users searched for. In order to overcome this, run an adequate keyword research to find out which terms are the most popular and try to optimize your content with the same.
Tracking the keyword goals
Once you identify a list of relevant keywords and phrases to be targeted in light of your business goals, it is essential to keep on monitoring the performance of your content efforts and the returns they bring in. Always ensure that the content hits the mark, and if not, you may have to constantly upgrade it to ensure the best results.
However, you shouldn’t expect any overnight result. It may take some time naturally before you see any appreciable shift in searches. For some more generic keywords, it may be highly competitive. There is no guarantee for success when it comes to keyword-centric content marketing, but a well-thought strategy with focused content will surely pay off over a long run. It is also worth saying that even though content plays crucial in achieving the SEO goals, it shouldn’t be counted as a slave to those goals.
Link building and SEO
Having great content can attract backlinks, and this in turn will help enhance the SEO performance. Make sure that the links are distributed effectively to become largely influential to a wide range of audience. There is no rocket science behind it. Simply create content which common people may want to link to and see how the outcome is. A good post may be able to win over 200 to 1000 backlinks over a course of time. However, some may go really viral and receive up to 10000 or more links.
To be constantly present on the web space and gain more and more links overtime, you need to focus on the evergreen SEW articles, which have the capacity to impress masses over generations. If the content can be a useful resource to the common public, and if it stands relevant over time, it can surely win plenty of links naturally.
Internal Linking
This is another obvious method to use content for meeting the SEO goals and also to improve the overall user experience. Internal linking will help Google to crawl a web page more effectively. It will also help pages to get ranked well against certain search terms and to point the users toward specific contents, which are relevant to what they used to read. This is a simple concept to be put into practice effectively, which should be considered while developing a content strategy.
Measurement and search tracking
Along with releasing valuable content, it is also vital to measure the effect of the content in light of the SEO goals. If you are focusing more on improving the ranking, then there are some essential tools to be used in order to track ranking positions and also to see the results of your efforts.
You also have to make use of analytics effectively to make assumptions from the gathered data. Content marketing metrics should also be taken into consideration as to what types of articles are valuable to the target audience. The other metrics like bounce rates, total time spent on page, and top pages in terms of visits everything should move in the right direction.
Finding adequate headlines
When it comes to developing contents for marketing and SEO, choosing appropriate headlines are so important. Those should be attractive as well as descriptive to make people click. Let’s take a look at few of the great headlines:
- “5 effective tips to get more leads through your landing pages”
- “5 awesome tips to improve results through your landing page and become a millionaire”
The second one seems to be too good to be true. It may be ideal to go with the first one to be more realistic.
While writing headlines, you need to consider the phrase and keyword to be included in the headlines. The headlines should be written for the web by understanding what people search and how they will find your article. Headline length is also important for these reasons:
- Google will trim down the long titles on search engine results. So, if you want to have the full headline visible, keep this mind while making headlines.
- Headlines also should be ideal for social sharing. A header should be short enough to let people retweet it and share it comfortably.
- If you are planning to make it circulate as a newsletter through email, the title should be short enough to be fully visible on the subject line.
In summary, content marketing and SEO are closely related disciplines which compliment each other. Both of these require specific knowledge and skills to accomplish, but the success of each of these will be dependent on one another.
Content teams should work with a good understanding of SEO relevance, and they should also know about the SEO technical aspects like internal linking, keyword density, optimization of headlines etc. On the other hand, SEO teams should also work closely with content creators by being aware of the goals they can only achieve through content.
Author Bio:-
Alexander Fernadise is blogger and content writer who write many articles on SEO, Business, Web Design and Technology. He enjoys reading new thing on internet. He spends lot of time on social media.
