If you’ve stayed abreast of developments within the marketing world in the past few years, you’ve probably heard that SEO is out and content marketing is in. Content marketing is the big driver that’s going to bring in customers, generate leads, and make sure that you’re ideally placed among the competition to bring your product to market. Stop worrying about SEO because it doesn’t matter anymore. Right?
Not exactly. Digital Media Group has spent years working with clients to create the best possible relationship between these two divergent types of marketing. Content marketing and SEO are not integrated, however they blend and work together.
Since the beginning of search engines, websites have been working to make sure that they’re ideally positioned for search engine traffic. The goal is to get onto the first page of search results for your chosen keywords. Studies have shown that customers rarely click onto page two, after all.
For a long time, manipulative SEO tricks could position lousy pages at the top of the search engine results, but recent changes to Google’s algorithm have made that much more difficult. And this is where content marketing comes in.
How Content Marketing and SEO interact
To create great content that drives up traffic, is shared on social media, and brings in new eyes, you do need to investigate keywords and determine what your readers are looking for. That’s classic SEO. You also need to make sure that you have content that intrigues, interests, and educates. That’s what content marketing is all about.
To make the two work together, you do all the SEO keyword research that you did before Google Panda released. You see what keywords rank well for your website’s current authority, and look for opportunities to use those keywords as topics for your blog. You use them in your headline, and then use them naturally in the article itself.
Content marketing is NOT SEO, don’t confuse these two! They overlap in many ways, however they differ from one another in several areas. SEO is more technical and has to do with the structure and behavior. Content marketing is more about presentation and online exposure.
Why isn’t blogging on its own enough?
When you run a personal blog, you can talk about whatever you want. Your cat, your kids, what you made for dinner, or what you’re working on around the house. Your personal take on popular culture and what you’re reading. If your blog is a way to keep in touch with long distance friends and family, this kind of approach is fine!
But when you’re creating content for a small business, everything is targeted towards serving your customers and your business. If you want to attract those all-important eyeballs, you need to have something to offer. You don’t subscribe to Seth Godin’s blog to hear his advice on treating a cat’s hairballs with essential oil; you want to hear about his take on the latest developments in marketing.
By investigating keywords, you ensure that you’re creating the greatest possible opportunities for catching eyeballs. By creating great content, you ensure that once potential customers end up on your page, they’re intrigued, interested, and move down your sales funnel.
Content marketing also generates quality backlinks, but this is true only when you create great and engaging content. There are many link building agencies, however the best way to earn links is by creating relevant and meaningful content.
Should I use content marketing on my site?
If you want to be at the forefront of your industry, then yes, without question, you should be finding ways to bring content marketing to your business. But if this area of marketing is outside of your expertise, we understand. Let Digital Media Group do the heavy lifting for you by doing keyword research for your industry, and then creating content that will move you forward. Contact us today to find out what content marketing and SEO can do for your website and your sales.
