There is something more you need to do than just create high-quality content to reach your target audience. That is why the game begins with the role of merging SEO and content marketing in a marketing campaign becoming crucial.
While SEO plays the top position in SERPs, content marketing is for creating valuable, relevant content for the audience. However, it is possible to connect both strategies in a blueprint.
This article shows how SEO and content marketing work together and why both are necessary for achieving the best results. So, keep reading to understand the importance of using both strategies in your marketing campaign.
SEO vs Content Marketing: What Are the Differences?
Though both marketing strategies have similar goals, they have fundamental differences. Before discussing deep SEO vs content marketing and their coordination, you should know them individually to experience a better understanding. So, now let’s gather some knowledge about them in a little bit of detail from the below sections:
SEO, Its Elements and Benefits
SEO is a step-by-step process of improving the visibility of a website on a search engine results page. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
In addition, it is all about optimizing a website following a bunch of guidelines provided by search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and more. Hence, SEO helps websites increase organic traffic.
From newbies to experience, it is a widespread technique in the digital marketing world to secure a top position on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
Elements of SEO:
There are mainly 3 significant elements of SEO. Let’s check them in a nutshell:
On-page SEO:
On-page SEO involves optimizing every web page according to search engine rules. In this step, you must research keywords, meta tags, URL optimization, image optimization, internal linking, and more.
Technical SEO:
Technical SEO ensures crawl ability, indexability, and, ranking on SERPs, like setting GSC(Google Search Console) and GA(Google Analytics) for your website. In addition, technical SEO solves all security issues.
Off-page SEO:
Off-page SEO refers to building the authority of a website. It helps to increase the trustworthiness of a site. Moreover, acquiring backlinks from relevant sites can result in more organic traffic on a website.
Benefits of SEO:
There are plenty of benefits of SEO for businesses. Without SEO, you can’t run an online company alone.
- SEO helps to increase organic traffic for a site.
- Increase sales
- Boosts conversion rate
- Driven brand awareness
- Decrease digital marketing cost
- Drives long-term success
- Secure a top position in SERPs
- Stay ahead of competitors
Content Marketing, Its Elements and Benefits:
Content Marketing is a strategy where businesses promote valuable, relevant, and consistent content for their target audience through various distribution channels.
Its main goal is to attract new audiences, build relationships with them, and ultimately convert those audiences into buyers. In addition, it creates quality content not only for search engines but also for readers.
Content marketing is not just about advertising products or services; it also offers educational, valuable content that solves audience problems or adds value to a specific interest.
Elements of Content Marketing:
Content can be produced in various formats. Among these four formats are used in everyday life: Audio, video, graphics, and Articles.
Well, here are some popular types of content marketing that are in trend:
- Blog posts
- E-books
- Case studies
- Video
- Infographic
- Podcasts
- Webinar
Benefits of Content Marketing:
- Develop a stronger brand identity
- Builds authority and trust
- Increase engagement with the audience
- It allows converting a potential customer to an actual customer
- Drive customers in re-engagement
- Increase loyalty
- Easy spread of helpful information about products or services
- Generating new audience
- Increase sales
Relationship Between SEO and Content Marketing
Content marketing and SEO are two different concepts that influence each other. The best practices for combining these concepts will help you get the most out of this relationship. Moreover, their intersection has created new opportunities in the field of digital marketing.
SEO and content marketing can work together mostly because of high-quality content. Hence, SEO tactics add more effort to reach the largest audience and meet your purpose.
The Way SEO and Content Marketing Complement Each Other:
Here, we are diving into the heart of this article. It is high time we explore how to combine SEO and content marketing to create a powerful SEO + content marketing formula.
It is not only about throwing two strategies together but also a journey toward reaching your ultimate destination. By aligning both approaches, you can drive more traffic, increase engagement, and boost visibility.
First of all, start by setting the purpose of your campaign. In addition, answering some questions may help you to do so. Like, who you are or your business? What do you want? Who is the targeted audience? What do they want? Will they benefit from your campaign?
For that, you can arrange workshops and surveys or use statistics to know the intent of your audience. Running a digital marketing campaign without a specific goal is like being over one’s head.
1. Deep Keyword Research:
To begin with, on-page optimization first enriches your keyword list with money-making keywords featuring low competitiveness and high search volume. Additionally, keep an eye on the search intent of your targeted audience for content marketing ideas to create content.
2. Title and Meta Tag Optimization for Content Marketing:
In this section, always try to craft a title or H1 for the written article, including the seed keyword once. Then, put hooking words to grab attention.
Write a meta tag including the seed keyword and a concise idea to encourage the audience to view the entire article or content. A perfect meta description is part of successful content marketing.
3. Image Optimization for Content Marketing:
Optimizing images is essential for both SEO and content marketing. A well-optimized image features fast load, alter tag, high resolution, and reduces file size. Hence, it improves SEO and content marketing as well.
4. Internal Linking and Content Promotion:
Internal linking refers to building connections between related pages for a better navigational experience and content promotion, as well as enhancing the crawl ability of search engine bots or targeted audiences.
5. List of popular tools used for on-page optimization:
Here are some tools you can use, provided in both paid and free versions:
1. Choose Quality Backlinks:
Backlink refers to building links with external websites owned by others. However, there are some criteria for building external linking. The most important thing is relevance; you have to develop a link between the same industry or niche websites.
For example, guest posting on the same niche sites. It plays an important role in both SEO and content marketing to meet your purpose.
2. Use Social Media:
Influencer content marketing is on trend nowadays. You can promote your content on social media platforms following the trend. Because social media shares, likes, and comments are often overlooked in SEO, they are essential in content marketing. Hence, it is another way to build authority and relevance to search engines.
3. Use tools for off-page optimization:
Semrush and Ahrefs are both popular and handy for backlink audits.
Technical SEO and content marketing are two internally connected components. Here, technical SEO factors like page load times, mobile responsiveness, and site navigation play into content marketing roles. Also, improving user experience and reducing bounce rates.
Schema markup is another tactic of this part that can help SEO content marketing by making your articles, products, or events more discoverable in rich snippets on Google.
Tools you can use for technical SEO optimization:
To perform technical SEO, digital marketers usually use GSC and GA; these tools help ensure website crawl ability, indexability, and ranking possibility.
Now, you can craft SEO-friendly content while maintaining the criteria discussed above. The main point to remember is that in the digital marketing era, content is king at the end of the day. Hence, it is obvious to craft content focusing on audience demand. SEO makes the content simple to reach an audience.
Tools like GSC (Google Search Console) and GA (Google Analytics) will help to measure your website performance. GSC shows monthly visitors, website time, bounce rates, keyword performance, CTR, and SEO health.
Again, Google Analytics tracks how many visitors view your content, the average session duration, and more. It will help you learn how well your content engages the audience.
Also, track how often your content is shared across social media platforms. For that, you can use tools like Buzzsumo. For instance:
Hubspot is a famous brand name in the customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Recently, they made a successful example of combining SEO and content marketing. They consistently crafted SEO-optimized blog posts, videos, infographics, and research-based content that addresses the pain point of their audience.
Again, Hubspot has the full advantage of using social media platforms for content marketing. This strategy not only helps content marketing but also enhances SEO.
They also practice “historical optimization,” where they update older content. It helps content to keep it relevant and ensure it continues to rank well on search engines.
Therefore, HubSpot shows how combining SEO and content marketing can grow a company’s business. It is possible to bring in the right traffic using SEO and retain and convert that traffic into customers through content marketing.
Things to be Considered
By combining SEO and content marketing in your campaign, you’ll hit the jackpot. But some issues may occur. Let’s have a look at them.
SEO and content marketing are two varied processes. Each process includes different working efficiency. Sometimes, without knowing about them, blending these strategies into one digital marketing campaign can cause loss. So, it is advised to learn each technique first.
In vast digital marketing land, running a marketing campaign is not a piece of cake. Here, experience plays a vital role. Compounding two marketing tactics in one package needs balancing as SEO and content marketing complement each other.
Search engine authority often changes their rules and regulations. Hence, missing any updates about rules can cause you to lose your position in SERPs.
Running a digital marketing campaign needs a reasonable budget. Therefore, before running this kind of project, be aware of your income and expense sources. Also, try to plan to get the most from lower investment.
Well, every niche has its competitors. It is essential to keep your finger on the pulse of what they are doing in their marketing campaigns. Keep an eye on both their recent and older activities. In the long run, you will learn valuable lessons. Hence, you will know what steps to take next.
Final Words
SEO and content marketing together can have a significant impact on online marketing trends. Many well-known brands combine these two strategies and find great success.
That is why it is smart to merge them, create a clear plan, apply it, measure the results, and make adjustments if needed. Additionally, keeping both strategies updated regularly will help you get the most out of a smaller marketing budget.
