Several words constantly get tossed around within the digital marketing world, with content marketing and search engine optimization among the two biggest.
The vast majority of online marketers tend to place these as separate entities in the digital marketing landscape when they complement each other beautifully.
Both of the specific components are essential in the creation of a successful digital marketing campaign. To understand the complete process of content marketing and search engine optimization, let’s rake them into bite-size chunks.
Understanding Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is a particular set of practices that helps to ensure specific content is visible to an audience that a digital marketer or business owner wants to target. Search engine optimization helps target a particular page with a particular keyword in the search rankings in its simplest form.
The endgame of a successful search engine optimization campaign to get the right set of people on the right piece of content. A search engine optimization expert will use various tools and optimization techniques to help a page gain more organic traffic from the search engines.
As one can see, search engine optimization requires some form of content, whether it is a long-form blog post, product description, or a video. Search engine optimization cannot stand alone; it must have content that matches the keyword or keyphrase targeted.
Understanding Content Marketing
When it seems so little makes sense, content marketing is precisely what it says it is. It is the process of marketing a service, product, or brand through content. Content marketing is the platform on which all digital marketing campaigns are based. While sharing content on various social media sites will help build traction for a digital marketing campaign, it is through search engine optimization that content and brand association begin to shoot through the roof.
This brings up the point of bad content with excellent search engine optimization. There is a general thought process that any content can rank in the search engines through search engine optimization. It is necessary to understand that search engine optimization is not the golden ticket to page one rankings.
There are several factors that search engines will take into account when deciding upon the quality of content on a website. Search engine optimization cannot fix web content that is grammatically incorrect, full of inconsistencies, or poorly written.
It is essential to produce content that a specific audience will enjoy through education or entertainment and bring value into their lives.
How to Bring Content Marketing and SEO Together
One must not look at content marketing and search engine optimization as two separate entities. Instead, begin looking at quality content you have that has never gotten the visibility it should. This content could use a boost from search engine optimization. Or perhaps, you have content ranking in the search engines that are not quality and could gain more traction by improving it by fixing grammar, adding copy, images, etc.
Creating Content With the Search Engines In Mind
When creating search engine optimized content, it simply does not mean to stuff keywords in as much as possible. It means to be mindful of the search engines and how their algorithms operate. Search engines scan websites and blog posts to understand them and index them correctly.
When creating content, dissection content into specific topics, with each of those topics being as narrow as possible.
An example of this would be an online toy store looking to market-specific brands of toys online. Generally, you would not lump Star Wars toys and Barbie dolls on the same page. It would make more sense to have a specific page for Barbies and a page for Star Wars. Furthermore, you may offer a page on wooden toys and metal toys. The more you can narrow down and focus on specific topics, the easier it will be for search engines to understand the website and rank it accordingly.
Continually Publishing Content
While these deal primarily with your content marketing strategy, search engine optimization benefits from continual publishing. One of the factors that search engines take into account when ranking is the regularity in which you publish content. This is truly advantageous for a well-established blog. However, for blogs just created, it is essential to creating a schedule in which regular content is created and uploaded.
With each new piece of content published to your website comes the ability to rank for new keywords and topics, bringing you more traffic. Additionally, adding a wide variety of relevant topics to your main niche enforces to your readers that you are an authority in that specific niche.
In this situation, search engine optimization will ensure that the content published is relevant and optimized for specific keywords.
It is best to analyze fields within your niche to find gaps in information and content that you can address with authority and remain within the framework of your site.
How Valuable Are Your Links?
There is much discussion about the value of links; in many cases, it will do little to help your search engine optimization efforts, and in some cases, it can destroy a website.
For the process of search engine optimization, it can become clear as to which websites are the most desirable for your purposes and which ones are not. Additionally, this does not necessarily mean getting links from spam or poor websites. This means if you own an exotic pet shop, you do not necessarily want to have links from a cupcake shop. They may not be relevant to your website.
This is where good content marketing and search engine optimization comes into play.
When you create good content that shows in the top search engine results, people will naturally want to start linking to you. The new backlinks directed to your website are going to grow fast. With relevant backlinks directed towards your website, the search engine algorithms will recognize your site as an authority and rank you higher in the search engine ranking results.
Can I Focus on Content Marketing and or SEO individually?
The short answer to that question is a resounding no. That is if you want to have a successful website. Search engine optimization and content marketing work best in a cohesive manner. There is no sense in creating incredible content to sell a product if no one can see it. This is where a solid search engine optimization strategy will come into play. Search engine optimization needs to be a primary thought process of creating content, not a simple afterthought.
Content marketing and search engine optimization form a symbiotic relationship when done correctly.
If you create all of your own content, it is essential to approach it professionally. You must either embrace search engine optimization or hire an expert to do it for you. Additionally, you must have a specific strategy when creating content and have basic optimization in play for the search engines.
It is a lot of work. However, the rewards are substantial when content marketing and search engine optimization work together.
