The immensely positive change content marketing has brought to the digital marketing space cannot be understated. Businesses with an online presence have a better understanding of how to sustain traffic and satisfy audience needs and demands through various content.
On the other hand, SEO has been practiced for longer because priorities were centered around fast results and traffic alone. This is because planning content contributed little to ranking on SERPs.
However, with Google’s regular updates of what was needed to rank, businesses became more intentional about their content generation.
Content marketing and SEO now go hand in hand because prospects and audiences who discover your content cannot trust you if they do not see you as an authority in the business.
While you may choose to implement content marketing and SEO strategies separately, your sales will do much better if you roll these strategies into a unit and apply them.
To get a clearer insight into how you can improve your sales with SEO content marketing, we are going to split the term into two, define them and their roles in digital marketing and examine how they interact and can boost your sales.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and practice employed by marketers to improve their website placement on search engines when users query for services related to what they offer.
Businesses and companies usually employ SEO best practices to find their target customers and improve their organic traffic.
There are three primary types of SEO, they are:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
You are more likely to rank when you use all three SEO than if you employ one.
Other SEO practices can be classified under any of the three mentioned.
Terrible SEO practices can harm your chances of ranking and get your website blocklisted.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a collection of principles and techniques used to make your content stand out. Content marketing helps you to create content that suits the demands of your target audience and have them interact with your content to achieve your business goals.
It takes a lot of work to sustain the attention of your customers.
Providing value alone is insufficient because your prospects cannot appreciate the value they haven’t found.
And this is why content distribution is an essential pillar of content marketing. Content can be distributed as infographics, whitepapers, YouTube videos, eBooks, and podcasts.
Content marketing differs from traditional marketing because it is centered around permission and establishing authority and trust.
However, the latter is intrusive and too expensive to sustain consumers’ attention.
Is Content Marketing Part of SEO?
Content marketing is not part of SEO, but it can be used to make your SEO techniques stick.
Their goals may be the same, attracting more consumers, but how they go about it is slightly different.
Here is how they are different:
Optimization
For SEO, web pages and websites are optimized according to the set rules of target search engines and how their algorithms work.
Content is optimized in response to users’ needs, reactions, and interactions in content marketing.
Structure and Planning
Content is structured and planned based on keyword research for your topic and niche, but with the potential risk of the search engine updating the algorithms.
In content marketing, the plan of the content you put out and its structure is based on what your audience likes and would love to see more, irrespective of the traffic numbers at any given time.
Optimization Purpose
The purpose of optimizing your website for SEO is to grow your viewership by attracting new eyes that most likely have yet to come across your content.
Content marketing plays two roles: attracting new and sustaining old audiences.
At the end of the day, SEO requires a potent content marketing strategy for long-term results.
This is because trust is critical to keeping the traffic SEO attracts. Content marketing also needs SEO to thrive because first adopters are vital to any marketing strategy.
How SEO and Content Marketing Come Together
Now that you’ve understood that utilizing SEO and content marketing strategies gives your brand broader coverage and visibility, the next step is knowing how to implement both seamlessly.
We’ll show you how.
Write for Humans and Optimize for SERPs
In an attempt to optimize your website to rank high, your blog posts and articles may come across as too mechanical and lacking human connection.
Search engine algorithms are more intelligent than they’ve ever been. They can tell when readers do not find your content valuable.
It records how long users spent on your website, how soon they exited, and the number of sites they visited after your site.
This is why you should target the needs of your users above all else, which may involve delivering content in different forms and from several angles if your industry intersects with several industries.
Publish Content Often but Prioritize Quality
SEO and content marketing intersect so beautifully here. Google’s Penguin algorithm was released to combat the wateriness of content being put out because, back in the day, marketers utilized content mills to generate content just enough for backlinks but not readers’ satisfaction.
In the same vein, a website’s usefulness is also determined by how often they publish content, which can be confusing if you are just starting out as a content marketer.
Content marketing helps you navigate these SEO obstacles and rules because you plan ahead, consider readers’ demands in every content you publish, and have a long-term strategy with possible topics and keywords to build newer content.
The content marketing practices of having a framework and catering to your readers’ needs align perfectly with the frequency and consistency of quality requirements for ranking on SERPs.
Evaluate Content To See What’s Working and What’s Not
Expert marketers review content data and statistics to know what strategies need tweaking and the type of content that gets all the love.
However, the goals and objectives of content differ across brands and content marketers. And as such, so does the KPI of interest.
There are several ways to measure and grade how effective your content creation, distribution, and optimization are.
You will find measuring these KPIs useful regardless of your end goal:
- Keyword traffic and rankings
- Shares to social media sites and bookmarks
- Page views, bounce rate, and average time spent on your site
- Quality of inbound links and backlinks
Inbound links and backlinks increase your site authority and let you know that other content creators and your target audience see you as a resource for high-quality content.
And the same goes for social media sites and bookmarks.
Reviewing the bounce rate and time spent on your site helps you understand how readers engage with your content. Do they find it interesting enough to stay for longer? Or are they put off by the lack of quality of your content?
Analyze these stats to determine if they tally with the goals of your content. If they don’t, that’s your cue to tweak your strategy accordingly.
Advantages of Combining SEO and Content Marketing
There are several advantages to combining SEO and content marketing. They are:
Brand Credibility
People are more likely to do business with brands they trust, and prospects are more likely to trust brands others trust. So, your website ranking high on SERPs clearly indicates that others trust and find your content helpful.
Improved Brand Visibility
SEO or content marketing alone cannot give you the same level of brand awareness as when you combine both. If your site appears regularly on the first SERP for keywords within an industry, your website will soon become associated as an authority in that field.
More Sustainable
SEO and content marketing may be challenging to combine, but they have a high return on investment, and their results are typically long-term. Unlike paid advertising, SEO content marketing drives traffic to your site even after discontinuing its practice.
Best Practices of Combining Both
Ranking high on SERPs demands consistency in your content marketing and SEO optimization efforts.
How you balance both strategies determines your ranking results, and you have to implement them in a way that one complements the other.
Make Your Content Readable and Scannable
You can make any topic engaging by adopting a scannable content structure and using the language that suits the audience you are writing for.
This way, your audience can better understand the message you are trying to pass and get the most value from your content.
Test different formats to see the most favorable. Also, the intention of your article should determine the format and type of content you choose to publish.
Use listicles for entertainment and educational purposes, white papers to prove industry expertise, and eBooks to generate leads.
Build Links
Search engines use a set of conditions to classify websites in their catalogs, one of which is internal links. If utilized well, internal links can keep readers on your site for extended periods because it takes them into the content rabbit hole.
On the other hand, external links will lead readers away from your site. You may be led to think a reader leaving your site for another via a link is bad for business, but it isn’t. This tells the search engine that your content is valuable and well-researched.
As you create valuable content, other websites will link to your page and lead visitors your way.
The search engine interprets more websites linking back to your page in two ways:
- The content on your website is informative
- More people trust and value your perspective
You can earn or build backlinks to your website through guest posts or sharing your content on social media.
SEO Content Marketing Strategy
To create an effective SEO content marketing strategy involves, you must:
Know Your Audience
A successful SEO content marketing strategy begins with knowing who needs what product or service you are selling.
You can analyze your competitors and follow existing market trends if you are just starting out. And if you have been in the business for a while, classify your current client base based on shared interests and other demographics.
With your buyer persona sorted out, you can then plan and develop content on what you think they might search for online.
Conduct Your Keyword Research
Conduct comprehensive keyword research and make a list of those that the buyer personas of your businesses interact with the most.
Rank the keywords with the most searches and interactions, and plan your content accordingly.
Develop Great Content
Develop the content ideas and topic obtained from the keyword research.
Utilize different content formats to make the most of the research. In addition, ensure that you take out time to update pre-existing content on your website as you come across more info.
How SEO and Content Marketing Can Boost Your Sales
Attention is an important commodity that marketers leverage to make sales, and SEO content marketing is a means to gaining users’ attention.
When users come across a brand, its uniqueness determines their interest levels. Their interest can only be sustained with continuous value delivery, and trust follows afterward.
With trust established between users and your brand, a sale is only made because you have effectively been identified as a specific problem solver.
When you eventually sell, their testimonials can be spun into new content for your site.
And your sales process is effectively shortened to four steps, thanks to the testimonials of your previous clients available on your page.
- First contact
- Brand familiarization
- Brand association and trust
- Sales
The exact online content can be retargeted and redistributed across different media platforms for free, bringing in more sales. The same cannot be said for other types of marketing. This is how effective SEO content marketing can boost your sales.
Hire the Best Content Marketers To Boost Your Sales Today
Finding the ideal content marketer who gets your business needs and how to satisfy them can be demanding. The fast-paced nature of the content marketing world is unforgiving and punishes the tiniest mistakes.
But what if you can find experienced and exceptional content marketing talent? WriterAccess is a content marketing platform that streamlines your workflow. Begin your journey to being profitable in style.
