Why SEO & Content Marketing MUST Work Together [Like So]
When it comes to SEO and content marketing, there are two horrific—and worryingly common—strategies that I’m BEGGING YOU to avoid:
Writing blog posts for your target audience but without even thinking about keywords (who’s gonna find’em?)
Writing blog posts for search engines instead of focusing on bringing value to your audience (who’s gonna read’em?)
When joined together, content marketing and SEO are more powerful than nitro and glycerin—but less dangerous.
Here’s why.
The strong relationship between SEO and content marketing
To see how SEO and content marketing work together, let’s first make sure that you understand these strategies on their own.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation, and it’s the practice of increasing both the quantity AND quality of your website’s traffic organically.
And by organically I simply mean ‘without chucking hundreds or thousands of pounds towards paid ads’.
Therefore, implementing or investing in SEO is all about making it easier for your specific target audience to find your website and ensuring that, once they’re on it, they have the best possible experience.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a strategy that consists of planning, creating, and sharing valuable online material to attract and retain a loyal and well-defined audience.
It can also involve other types of content (e.g. videos or social media posts), but since we’re talking about the connection between SEO and content marketing, we’ll be focusing on one of the most popular and rewarding content marketing strategies:
blogging on your business website.
So, in this case, content marketing is all about publishing insightful blog posts to entertain and educate your target audience by answering their questions and concerns about your industry.
So, why is SEO important for content marketing?
SEO is important for content marketing because, without taking keywords and the right SEO practices into consideration when creating content, well… nobody would find your blog posts in the first place!
Sure, you could share them on social media or in your newsletter, but you’d be missing out BIG TIME.
After all, they’d only be seen by your followers and subscribers, in most cases.
When you create an SEO content marketing strategy and start publishing SEO-driven content, you get to attract new prospects, too.
At the same time, the relationship between SEO and content marketing goes the other way as well. In fact, blogging regularly can also strengthen your SEO.
How SEO and content marketing team up for the win
Basically, don’t you ever dare to consider SEO and content marketing as two separate strategies: they can and should complement the other.
Keywords
Every blog post should bring value to your audience and be based on a different long-tail keyword.
This will help your target audience find your article when they type that query on Google.
For example, if you want to explain how they can make a morning brew even when they haven’t got their beloved coffee grinder with them, you might end up writing an article like ‘Here’s how you can have your cup of joe without a grinder’.
However, there are no keywords in there, whereas ‘how to grind coffee beans without a grinder’ gets searched between 100 and 1K times in the UK alone.
By incorporating it, you’d have the same high-quality article packed full of value, but you’d actively help it reach more people, as you’d be basing it off what your target audience is actually googling.
Backlinks
Did you know that websites with a blog attract up to 97% more inbound links?
Don’t look that shocked!
Let’s be honest: who would want to link to a company’s About or Services page?
When you create a strong SEO content marketing strategy, on the other hand, you’ll have excellent blog posts with new angles or takes on existing topics, stats, and juicy info.
It’s only natural that some other publications will want to use them as references or link to them whenever they think they could benefit their audience.
And backlinks are one of the most coveted forms of SEO juice!
Internal links
While they’re not as powerful as inbound links, internal ones are still helpful and yet another way in which SEO and content marketing work together.
Internal links allow Google and other search engines to crawl your website more easily and efficiently. They can even help them understand what your business is actually about, what kind of content you offer, and which pages matter the most.
Unlike a basic five-page website, one with a blog gives you many more chances to interlink different articles or link to specific pages.
At the same time, interlinking your blog posts strategically can help you move your audience down the funnel.
UX
Both SEO and content marketing should take user experience into account.
That’s why a website that takes over three seconds to load will penalise you both with your audience (over half of them will leave) and search engines (Google is well aware of this, so it’s unlikely to show it to them).
Same for websites that aren’t mobile-friendly.
But your blog posts should consider UX, too:
If you use dodgy clickbait titles to trick users into checking your article that doesn’t actually answer their initial question? They’ll leave. This will increase your bounce rate and penalise your SEO
If you present them with a huge block of text instead of using headings, paragraphs, and pictures? They’ll leave (and rightfully so)
You want blog posts that are full of value and presented in a way that makes them easy to digest.
How to create an effective SEO and content marketing strategy
So, what does an SEO content marketing strategy look like in practice?
You should basically write the best articles for your audience, optimise them for search engines, and find a way to move your prospects down the funnel or capture leads.
1. Always start with your target audience
Plan and write these blog posts for your specific target market, not just ‘so they can rank for this keyword that has nothing to do with their pain points and needs’.
If you’re selling luxury trips for over 60s, what good would it be to dish out content or reach Google’s first page with travel articles that resonate with penniless students?
2. Find the best keyword to describe your chosen topic
Use some keyword research tools to determine it.
For the best chances to rank with your SEO is driven content, you’ll need a specific long-tail keyword (e.g. ‘fast fashion problems’ rather than just ‘fast fashion’), some relevant variations, and a sprinkle of semantic keywords that help Google better understand what your article is actually about.
3. Use links and CTAs wisely to retain your audience
There’s something else that every single blog post should have, as well as a keyword: a call to action.
Otherwise, your target audience will read it, enjoy it, and… leave your website.
For example, some relevant CTAs could be:
To subscribe to your newsletter or follow you on social media to receive more tips
To read a different blog post that helps your audience move down the funnel (for example, if your initial article was for top-of-the-funnel leads: now that you’ve explained what causes their pain point, you can show them what solutions are available out there)
To head to a specific product or sales page, but only for bottom-of-the-funnel articles
Need a hand (and a keyboard) making your SEO and content marketing strategy work for your badass female-founded brand? 💪
Basically, blending SEO and content marketing will allow you to reach and retain a wider portion of your target audience.
Obviously, you need to know what you’re doing. Writing low-quality articles for the best keywords, or crafting excellent audience-oriented blog posts without the right SEO practices?
None of that will translate into actual results.
If you’re already skilled at performing keyword research, writing the right articles for your audience, optimising them for SEO, and taking the sales funnel into account… go, you!
Not sure where to start? I can help.
My SEO content marketing services always begin with the needs and pain points of your specific target audience, but I use all the right SEO tricks to give you the highest chances of outranking your competitors and generating more organic traffic and leads.
Ready to unlock the power of SEO and content marketing… without spending hours researching and writing the actual blog posts?
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