This is a love story, but not just any love story. It’s about a special relationship between two marketing strategies that learned they could not live without each other.
This is the story of when SEO met Content Marketing.
Star-Crossed Lovers
Before Content Marketing, SEO was what we might call a “player” on the internet. With the right backlinks and keyword stuffing on websites, SEO could push weak content to the top of search rankings. He could talk a great game, but when it really came down to substance on those web pages, he had none of it.
Soon, Google’s Panda and Penguin updates started penalizing websites for using these SEO methods. Then came the great debate.
Businesses began to think they might need to hire another specialist over SEO – Content Marketing. Headlines read (pointed out by the Content Marketing Institute): “Content marketing usurps SEO,” “Content marketing has killed SEO,” “Content marketing overtakes SEO.”
And it was true that Content Marketing had a special something that the old SEO did not. As you can guess from the name, that something was substantial content that actually attracted and retained an audience.
But this would not remain a rivalry forever…
The Courtship
As it turns out, SEO may actually have something valuable to offer Content Marketing. Content needs to be optimized and attract people before it can be seen and appreciated, and in turn, SEO cannot be ethical and effective without content being optimized (CMI).
Here are the aspects of Content Marketing from the TopRank marketing blog:
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Involves planning
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Creation
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Promotion
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Useful information: stories, facts, studies
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Inspires, engages, attracts
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Guides a buyer’s journey and provides an experience
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Is optimized
And the new rules for SEO that complement and overlap Content Marketing rules:
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Optimize shareable content
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Use keyword research to discover what your audience wants
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Put your content all on the same domain
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Stand for something – people buy “why,” not “what”
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Make your brand and your content one entity
SEO is like the headline of the newspaper, attracting people to read the content of that article (CMI). Keyword research involved in planning for PPC campaigns is a key part of Content Marketing planning and can be used to optimize content. Relevant content then results in higher rankings for keywords. Site statistics that SEO strategists pay more attention to can help target specific audiences and discover what keywords to target to increase content relevancy.
At Imagebox, these two, seemingly separate, strategies came together to create our powerful and effective Internet Marketing strategy.
*Chart modified from Mashable.
Endless Love
Before SEO and Content Marketing came together, SEO was something used to please search engines, while Content Marketing aimed to please humans. Since 2012, the overlap between the two is much larger. Content that pleases both humans and search engines ends up higher in search results, with very few exceptions.
Essentially, think of SEO and content marketing as an opportunity to meet traffic and retention goals at the same time. Both content marketers and SEO strategists will benefit from this relationship!
These two were clearly meant to be together…in marketing strategy.