I recently spoke with a colleague about their SEO strategy for the upcoming year and a lot of their ideas were tried-and-true. We talked about things to look for when auditing keywords, how to find inspiration for blog topics, and interviewing experts white paper claims. As we wrapped up our meeting, I was struck with the realization that most of their strategy revolved around content marketing.
After our meeting, I sent them an email with suggestions on other strategies to consider that stemmed outside of content marketing for a more rounded strategy – inspiring this blog post.
You create content, right?
Most marketers can accurately tell you what content marketing is. After all, it’s in the name! Content marketing is the process of developing page content so that users will perform an action.
Whether you’re using your site to sell software, promote photography services, or writing a blog about your favorite band, you’re going to be using content to inform and engage users as they reach a decision. This is where some marketing teams feel the blurring of the lines as most SEO strategies will often read identical to content marketing strategies, but with differing goals.
You market with Google?
The goal of SEO is to bring your pages higher in the search rankings for relevant queries. To reach this end, marketing teams will employ a myriad of content marketing strategies like making sure a blog has a representative set of keywords. However, the scope of SEO extends beyond content and into the technical factors that determine your site’s ranking, including:
- Improving their user experience
- Developing a profile of highly-quality links
- Optimizing your on-page elements for crawls
You’ll need both, Content Marketing and SEO!
The most effective strategies will take leads from both worlds, because the result should be the same – land sales, conversions, eyes on the page. However, content marketing and SEO strategies should be graded differently, as success in one doesn’t always create success in the other. Keeping this in mind as you review your site’s performance can help your team better diagnose weaknesses and quickly reach a solution.
For example, if your pages have a higher conversion rate, but struggle to rank in the top 3 positions of major search queries, then you may want to revisit your SEO strategy. Your site may do a great job in turning visitors into users, but the reach of your pages is stifled by competitors with a higher ranking. If your pages are consistently 1st position in all relevant keywords, but suffer from a high bounce rate, then you may want to revisit the content on those pages to better serve the needs of those users.
Long story short – SEO and content marketing share a mutual relationship and benefit each other in their own unique way. The stronger your SEO performs the more opportunities your content will have to engage with site visitors. The more valuable your content is the greater the likelihood of search engines raising your rank. If your pages aren’t meeting their goals then consider revisiting one of these two strategies.
SEO is challenging enough without search engines constantly changing their algorithm. Start seeing results with your SEO by speaking with an expert today by filling out our form! With 10-years of experience in developing successful SEO strategies, Strongpages has generated significant results for clients in a variety of competitive industries.
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