How Combining Content Marketing & SEO Brings Results

There seems to be much confusion about two critical yet very different digital marketing techniques: content marketing and SEO. It is easy to see why people would be confused as they often appear in blog articles as two separate techniques, with many digital marketing agencies often drawing a clear line between the two.

The truth is that it is far more complicated than it seems to be. While they are two very different digital marketing techniques, content marketing and SEO naturally complement one another. Generating content for a page without SEO-optimising it will be ineffective.

Hence, we want to help you understand the need to combine the two strategies for effective results.

Key differences between SEO and content marketing

Content marketing and SEO may have some overlapping aspects. However, they have their key differences, such as:

• SEO is more technical: This includes using properly optimised meta tags, such as titles, ALT tags, URLs, sitemaps, and various aspects that affect your content strategy.
• Content marketing is a broader term that includes SEO but is not confined to just SEO: For example, a writer should, first and foremost, craft valuable contents that benefit users and not just one that focuses solely on SEO.

Bringing content marketing and SEO together

The main question is not of content marketing vs SEO, but one of how you can further improve the visibility and reach of excellently written content that will bring value to users with effective SEO strategies.

For example, SEO strategies, such as on-page SEO, like keywords and off-page SEO, like quality backlinks, are incredibly crucial for your content’s SEO success. However, before focusing on SEO strategies, you need to ensure that your content is properly written from a technical perspective. For instance, it is written with no grammatical errors and uses rich sentence structure. Ensuring that your content is also mobile-friendly is another way of ensuring a good content marketing strategy is in place.

Hence, successful SEO marketing means more than excellent writing. It is a homogeneous relationship between content marketing and SEO. You can effectively bring the two together if you understand the three fundamentals of SEO:

• Off-page SEO: It refers to how your website is linked other others, usually through the generation of quality backlinks.
• Technical SEO: It refers to non-content elements, such as site load speed and mobile optimisation.
• On-page SEO: It refers to the use of appropriate keywords and optimisation of your site’s content.

Here are some methods to bring content marketing and SEO together:

1. Crafting high-quality, original content

In the past, while creating solely SEO content proved useful for Google’s crawler to push SERP’s ranking, it is not as effective now. With recent updates, such as Mobile Site Names & Favicon and their recent September broad core update, the direction that Google is heading towards is connecting users to benefit and quality content.

From an SEO point-of-view, high-quality, original content that benefits readers will help you stand out from the competition. Ask yourself if what you wrote will encourage users to stay on your page for more than a minute and if it provides valuable answers to their queries.

2. Keyword research and monitoring

Keyword research is crucial for SEO and content marketing to function together effectively. You not only have to craft high-quality, original content but also ensure that your content reaches your targeted audiences. Hence, you need to match the keywords that people use to search for answers to their queries. To avoid using unnecessary technical terms that might not match what users are searching for, conducting keyword research helps to find out popular terms so you can match your language to their search.

You also want to monitor and measure to see if your effort achieves the result you are looking for. However, it takes time for SEO to show results, especially if certain keywords used are highly competitive. It is also vital to note that while content plays a huge role in reaching SEO goals, it should not be the main purpose. Squeezing in and spamming keywords might, instead, have an adverse effect on content quality.

3. Internal linking

This is an obvious SEO method that helps boost SERP rankings, as well as improve user experience. Internal linking enables effective crawling, helping pages to rank well for certain keywords and pointing users to other related helpful content that might benefit them. It is straightforward enough to apply in content creation and should be a part of your writing and editing process.

Content marketing vs SEO: Can you have one or the other?

Content marketing and SEO are different disciplines requiring varied knowledge and skills. However, each of their success depends on one another. SEO and content have to work together in order to provide users with attention-grabbing, relevant content. If you sell a beneficial product, you need to create written content that will attract potential customers, and that requires a strong SEO strategy. SEO should be a key planning process in developing a well-mapped content marketing strategy; it is not meant to be an option or afterthought.

If your content does not reach users, content marketing will not be as effective as it should be.

This is why SEO services are highly sought after by content marketing businesses in Singapore. Hence, if you are planning a content marketing campaign, you need to understand your audience and your topic to strategise accordingly, all while optimising your content for SERPs. Sounds like a lot of work, right? At the end of the day, you will surely achieve the results in the long run – just always remember that SEO and content marketing is not a sprint but a satisfying marathon.