SEO and content marketing are two important marketing terms which are quite popular among online marketers these days.
Every webmaster’s aim is to popularize their content to get a good Google ranking. For that, they use many options such as search engine optimization, content marketing, etc.
There is a common misconception about the definitions of both words.
So, people use them interchangeably. But, you must know that both terms have different meanings but they are closely related to each other too.
As digital marketing becomes popular there is high competition and you need to be extra careful while choosing marketing methods.
First, you need to know the actual definitions of both words. There will be many people to compete with you. So, to stand out among your competitors, you need to concentrate on your content quality. This can lead to an improvement in your site’s organic ranking.
Just by improving your site’s SEO structure you cannot make it visible. Only quality content can save your site.
Before knowing the link between both content marketing and SEO, you need to know the individual definitions.
Why Content Marketing:
There is a famous saying that” Content is the King”. Now that, if you want to market something, quality content is essential.
Content marketing is a method of marketing products and services by creating strong contents related to it.
After creating contents, you need to distribute it through effective channels also so that it will reach to your targeted audience.
Content marketing helps to get more customers to a business and also you can make more profit from the business
Why SEO:
Search Engine Optimization is also a popular marketing technique to optimize your content for search engines.
Using this technique, you can get the search engine’s attention and bring your content to top search results. This will help you to improve your site ranking also. If you can use SEO effectively you don’t have to worry about your content reachability.
SEO monitors people’s search activity and find out what they are searching, what is the popular topic, keywords they are using to search for something, etc.
After analyzing all these, they implement certain techniques for SEO. After optimizing your content using these techniques, it will get the reachability that needs.
From the definition itself, you will get an idea of both terms. At some point, both terms will overlap. It is like two characteristics of a single person. First, we can check the relation between both
Relation Between SEO and Content Marketing:
There is a relationship between both content marketing and SEO. The relation is very strong such that if one is not there, the other one cannot exist.
Strong contents are considered as the best SEO strategy
- SEO will not exist in the absence of content marketing. If there is content we can optimize it using various SEO techniques to make it rank higher. So, we can say that in the absence of content SEO cannot exist.
The content could be anything from an article, words, keywords, blog, etc.
We can say content marketing as the practical implementation of SEO because content marketing is about making relevant and useful contents.
- Keywords are a fundamental part of SEO and content marketing needs keywords. But only by getting keywords nothing will happen if there is not any content.
Keyword optimization is an important part of SEO and with that, you can effectively market content.
With only keywords, you cannot do anything. In order to implement the keywords, the first requirement is quality content.
If you overstuff keywords and create content, you need to face penalties from Google also. So, only use relevant keywords on content and help to appear the content in the search result.
- SEO works to get Backlinks and you can only realize it through content marketing.
Without strong content, no websites will link with your content. What SEO do is to make the content as attractive as possible for the search engine to improve its visibility.
As the visibility increases, your content will get quality backlinks immediately.
- Some important SEO techniques are like improving the technical performance of your site. But content marketing demands a good user interface. Just by using keywords or by getting more backlinks, you cannot improve your site visibility.
There are some technical aspects of your site that needs optimization. Some of them are like improve site loading speed, including robot.txt file, site architecture, using meta tag, etc.
These technical aspects are important to content marking also. If your content wants to get noted you need to improve all these technical performances to give users a better experience.
- If your content wants to get noticed in Google it should be fresh. Fresh contents with new concepts and ideas always are in demand.
This will help to improve your content ranking also. In short, content marketing is an ongoing process that never ends and SEO will also have to with it. SEO needs a steady output from content marketing.
These are some important points where both terms interrelate each other. We cannot say that both are the same also because there are some significant differences too.
Differences in SEO and Content Marketing:
One of the most important differences we can say about both is their scope of development.
SEO is more about technicalities and the scope of it is narrow. But as content marketing is not at all related to technical aspects, we can say that it has a wide scope.
We develop contents to satisfy users. All contents are answers to their various queries. But when we consider Search engine optimization there are certain rules to follow such as using proper keywords.
So, SEO is the process we do to satisfy search engines and content marketing is for human beings.
How content marketing helps SEO?
From the list discussed above, you might have got an idea of the relationship between both terms. So, we can say that both are linked to each other.
Content is the basic requirement that leads to a company’s SEO effort. We all know quality content is essential for SEO effort to succeed. Here are some important points related to content marketing’s role in SEO efforts
1. Quality contents attract search engine:
If you can create good content with all required information on a topic it can attract search engine towards that page.
Only by using keywords or phrases search engine will not come. There could be some negative effects to that also.
If you created a content based on a topic by copying many other articles and implanted keywords in irrelevant places, it will not give you the result you expect. For that. You need quality content relevant to your topic and it should satisfy users also.
2. Content marketing can bring more links:
The number of inbound links is very important when it comes to ranking. It is not easy to get links to your content.
For that, the content should be valuable and informative. If you choose a topic then work hard to include every point related to it in your content. This will attract search engines and users.
If you can get that popularity among users, you will get quality backlinks automatically. You don’t have to go anywhere else to get links to your content. Just maintain your content quality and there you go.
3. Create more shareable content:
The number of social shares is important when assessing your content quality. If you have created a quality content then people should like it and share it.
The reason could be many such as when they find your content entertaining, informative or even funny.
When Google looks for a content quality it will assess both the content and response that it received from users.
If your content got more social shares, Google will consider it as quality content. This pays for your SEO efforts.
4. Content should be engaging and entertaining:
When the search engine considers a site for ranking, it will check the time each user spends on it.
If they click on your contents and suddenly go back to listings then it is a bad sign. That means there is some problem with your content.
Sometimes it could be because of its quality, problem in appearance, language, irrelevancy, etc.
If your content quality is good, users will spend more time in it for reading. So, if you can engage them and make them stay longer on your site, it will help to improve your ranking.
If many users check your content and leave from it immediately then something is wrong with your content.
You should reconsider your content quality then. Don’t leave it as a small thing. Making engaging content is very important in getting a higher rank.
5. Content quantity also matters:
Always it is not about the quality of content, the quantity of them is also important. The search engine will check the freshness of contents.
If you really want to market contents you need to produce a lot fresher content. Produce contents regularly and update your site more often.
All popular websites with higher ranking produce fresh contents regularly. This will help them to be more visible.
You need to cover as many topics in your area as possible to get that visibility. If a user looks for something related to your genre, it should be there on your site. This will help your site to get more popularity and good ranking too.
6. Keyword research:
Keywords are the search term people use related to a topic.
You can find them with the help of Keyword search tools. With only quality content, the search engine will not get noticed. For that, you need to find the most using keywords related to your topic.
After that include some of them in your content naturally. Don’t use only primary keywords because they are very competitive. You can include secondary keywords too. It is one of the important content marketing strategy related to SEO.
7. Optimize your content:
If you can inspect your site for existing contents this will also help in content marketing. Check for duplicate contents because this will reduce your site reachability.
Make sure to remove all duplicated content by conducting a site audit. Also, remove all copied titles and meta descriptions.
Check your links for its gentility. Remove bad backlinks from your content because it may cause a negative impact on your site. Also, make all your contents up to date according to new changes.
Don’t create content, just keep your site active. Make relevant contents and it can help with your SEO activity very well.
These are some important area where content marketing plays an important role in SEO. So, don’t think both the terms as different. They are connected to each other in a way. You cannot market content without optimizing it.
Final words:
No content marketing is possible without a strong SEO and vice versa. That’s why they say that SEO is all about content marketing. One exists with the support of the other one. SEO is only giving a small support to make the content visible to machines.
So, if you want to get a good search engine ranking only way is to make quality content. Create contents for human beings and the rest of the job will be done by SEO. There are not any rules you can follow for content marketing. Just know your audience and create contents that entertains them.
You can do some research before creating content. It will help you to know current trends that are going on your topic. Always it is best and easy to follow the trend. This will help you to get noticed easily. Digital marketing is the current trend and in this, content marketing plays an important role.
You can only market your content well with the help of good contents and SEO. These are like backbones of your content marketing. Hard work and determination to create excellent content will bring you success.
Creating good quality content is the key strategy of content marketing. A content without SEO is like a road without direction. So, make use of SEO technologies and make your content noticeable.