Digital marketing is an intricate network of equally complex strategies, all intertwined to work in unison in order to help your brand succeed in the digital as well as the offline world. Although some marketers can create brilliant strategies separately, including those for boosting your SEO and content creation, only the ones who know that they are parts of the same whole can make the most of all their digital efforts.
Essentially, there can be no truly successful content marketing strategy without taking thorough SEO into account, just as much there cannot be successful SEO without relying on great, consistent, authentic content.
For your marvellous article, let’s say, on ecommerce and social media to find its way to actually interested readers, it needs keyword implementation, it needs to cover a relevant, trending topic, it needs to be of specific length and designed to attract readers.
So much goes into crafting a single piece of writing, that it would indeed be a shame for it to forever remain in the black abyss of the second page of Google. That’s why SEO is the heartbeat of every piece of content your produce, and that’s why every piece of content is the vessel for your SEO.
Here’s how you should unify them:
1. It’s all about the audience
Just like with pretty much everything in the world of commerce today, your content needs to be customer-centric. Since search engines, trending keywords and phrases, and the most reputable guest-posting websites are chosen by those who visit them (aka your audience), then SEO tactics you need to consider are, in essence, made by your audience.
First of all, make sure you know who your readers and viewers are. Get to know them with the help of thorough research, and constantly monitor their digital behaviours. If they have similar lifestyles, they’ll likely have similar issues and challenges to cope with. This is where you and your expertise waltz in to save their day with impeccably detailed how-to articles, research-based infographics, and tutorial videos to solve their issues.
The trends your brand is looking for, the ones that will determine your relevance in search engines, are set by your audience. Conducting consistent customer research is vital to stay relevant and visible with the help of your content and dedicated SEO.
2. In-depth, value-driven content
As of 2019, every single search engine, with Google at the helm, is focusing more on the quality of the content that is posted in determining its ranking in the SERPs. With that in mind, brands need to deliver more, not in quantity alone, but predominantly in quality.
You need to go above and beyond to show off your expertise, provide exceptional value through your content, make sure its readability is through the roof, and give more actionable advice than anything found on that topic on the World Wide Web.
That single task alone can be quite a burden for your content team. That’s why many companies decide to work with reputable experts in the business to make sure their content and their SEO really do deliver measurable results.
When you find the right partner and put your best foot forward, you can expect higher organic reach, increased ROI, and a reduced bounce rate. Content in the service of SEO and your audience is the only kind of content that can deliver real, tangible results.
3. Keyword optimization and beyond
There are many keywords related to your expertise you’ll want to rank high for, but you also need to be very mindful when choosing which ones you want to focus on in your strategy. Why? Because scattering your attention to topics that aren’t really within your scope of expertise, even though you technically do know plenty about them, can just diffuse the effect of properly targeted strategies.
Combine audience research, keyword research, and focusing on what you do best and how you can deliver that content that will skyrocket your brand’s presence online. All of these factors will give you that unique content angle that only your brand can deliver.
If you want a shining example of how some experts do it, look no further than brands the likes of HubSpot that have mastered the art of creating content that ranks and that delivers useful, digestible data for all of its readers.
They don’t try to be anything else other than what they really are: experts in the field of content marketing software. And they do so with razor-sharp focus and remarkable success.
4. Earning and building links
While content creation is a massive portion of your on-site SEO strategy, it also plays into the segment of your off-site efforts to build credibility and turn your brand into the leader in your field of expertise. To achieve that, you need to apply a thorough link-building strategy paired with content so brilliant that you’ll also earn links in the process, over time.
However, you need to steer clear of black hat link-building and spammy backlinks that can wreak havoc on your digital presence and ranking in the SERPs, as Google will not look too kindly upon any shortcuts to earning credibility.
Focus on natural linking as the lifeblood of your link building strategy. Match only the things that make sense, and search engines will recognize the value your content is producing for your readership.
The constantly-changing algorithm of Google can be quite unforgiving of any transgressions in terms of forced links, so make sure that yours are as organic as possible. As you build authority and write that brilliant content of yours, earning links will become all the easier and more natural, which will in turn infinitely improve your SEO as well as your content reach.
Content in the service of SEO alone is by no means the end goal of any digital marketing strategy out there. As intertwined as their existence and creation are, you need to be mindful of that one thing that binds them and gives them purpose: value.
Put your customers first, aim to deliver value with everything from your targeted keywords, your technical SEO, your content readability, all the way to the links you place in your content and on the Web, and these two pillars of digital success will work in your favour.
