When attempting to grow your organization, improving traffic to your website will inevitably have an impact on sales. As you begin to develop your content marketing strategy, placing an emphasis on integrating SEO can help you bolster the revenue your company brings in. Learning the relationship between content marketing and SEO can help any organization create an effective digital marketing strategy.
Also read: 5 Tips To Create A Successful Digital Marketing Strategy
What is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a set of practices that are designed to improve the appearance and positioning of web pages when an organic search result is run. Search engines such as Bing and Google will use bots that scan websites to gather as much information as possible on the topic of the content, as well as the content of any sites linked out to, to determine a theme.
By focusing on improving an SEO strategy, search engines will determine that one web page is more relevant to a search than another. This relevant page will then get ranked higher on a search result, potentially resulting in an increased likelihood for viewers to one website over another.
Also read: What is SEO? Complete Guide to Learn SEO [2023]
What is Content Marketing?
On the other side of things, content marketing is a specific type of marketing that focuses on the creation and sharing of online material including blogs, videos, or social media posts. One key aspect of content marketing is that it’s designed to simply stir interest in a product, not to actually sell the product itself.
In terms of the sale cycle, content marketing takes a longer-term angle by focusing on allowing companies to build relationships with potential customers over months or even years. After rapport has been built, viewers of the content are far more likely to invest in the product or service itself.
Also read: 8 Content Marketing Tips For Faster Success
How Does SEO Impact Content Marketing?
While SEO and content marketing can seem similar on the surface, they are distinct. Beyond this, the two work together to bolster an organization’s entire marketing strategy. It’s easiest to think of content marketing as the high-level distribution of an organization’s content, with SEO referring to how that content is laid out and organized.
For example, if a lawyer seeks to improve website SEO, they need to start by building out a content marketing strategy. This could be deciding that educational blogs will be posted to the law firm website. Once this content marketing strategy has been decided, search engine optimization enters the picture. The following questions would need to be answered as a result:
- How will the blog posts be laid out in a way that is appealing to a reader?
- How many subsections will the blog have?
- What external authoritative resources will be used to support claims?
- What relevant keywords will be included in the blog?
A website with a content marketing strategy, yet no SEO, might include a blog section that has lengthy titles and no broken-out paragraphs on each post. Search engines will look at this blog section and be less likely to promote the webpage as a whole due to the lack of organization structure.
Alternatively, a website with a content marketing and SEO strategy will have a visually appealing blog section, short yet relevant blog titles, as well as headers and sub-headers with every article. Search engines are far more likely to rank this latter page higher among search results than the former page described.
Also read: Blog SEO: 15 Tips To Optimize Your Blog Posts
5 Ways to Improve Your SEO and Content Marketing
Understanding what SEO and content marketing are is only half the battle. The second half is about improving the overall strategy of both. The following five tips can be used to improve organic traffic to any webpage while getting more eyes on your product or service:
1. Focus on on-page SEO
When thinking of improving your SEO strategy, there are two main considerations: on-page and off-page SEO. The major difference between on-page and off-page SEO is that off-page refers to content on social media or general PR, on-page refers to anything that can be done on a webpage.
For example, creating site content, designing relevant titles and meta descriptions, adding headers, and integrating feature snippets are examples of on-page SEO. Off-page SEO may look more like guest posting, link building, and external content marketing. True optimization of SEO requires optimizing on-page content, not just external marketing.
Also read: The Ultimate Guide to On-Page Local SEO in 2023
2. Advertise on different platforms
Beyond on-page SEO, an effective marketing strategy will involve using different platforms to advertise content. Social media marketing has grown exponentially in recent years and is an excellent choice for creating aesthetically and SEO-optimized snippets. Utilize platforms such as YouTube to create videos and other forms of content that stand out from the others on your website.
Also read: Blockchain Marketing: Top Tactics For Advertisers
3. Utilize high-authority links
When establishing your business in whatever niche you may be in, it’s important to also establish yourself as an authoritative and reliable source of information. By adding backlinks to verifiable websites, an organization can start to improve their website’s authority by showing they get information from a reliable place.
Also read: How to Get High-Quality Backlinks in 2023
4. Research real-time user behavior
Understanding what users are viewing most on your site can help any business determine where the majority of their success is coming from. For example, if a certain aspect of a blog draws the most traffic, it’s possible that the layout of that blog has an impact on the traffic. Use real-time tracking software to see what resonates most with your users.
Also read: Can Competitive Research Make PPC Easier?
5. Make use of keywords
Finally, keywords are an integral part of any SEO and content marketing strategy. Integrate keywords naturally throughout content that relates to the overall theme so that search engines scanning that content better understand who the target audience may be. Aim to include high priority keywords in at least the introduction and conclusion, then sporadically throughout content.
Also read: 6 SEO Keyword Research Tips For Beginners
Bolster your website traffic today
Increasing the amount of organic traffic on your website is about so much more than deciding on what content you want to advertise. Each and every piece of content needs to be optimized so that it is easy-to-view, relevant to the overall theme, and authoritative in nature. By combining strong search engine optimization with an effective content marketing strategy, any organization can take massive steps towards improving their overall digital business.
