SEO Content Marketing Guide: For Beginners

Did you know that 77% of internet users take the time to read and engage with blog posts? Well, it’s true! This is an extension of the 3.8 billion people that use social media. It also consists of the 73% of consumers that like to watch and share video before buying a product online.

But what do all of these numbers have to do with each other?

The answer lies in the consumption of content! Those who read blog posts, interact on social network sites, and watch videos are all engaging with some form of online content. Because this makes up… well, most people around the globe, it’s important that you use top-notch content marketing strategies for your business.

Here, we’re going to talk a bit about what content marketing is and how you can integrate it with SEO strategies. Read on to boost your ROI when it comes to marketing and to make sure that your business soars to new heights!

What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?

Content marketing is a pretty simple concept to grasp, and you’re probably already doing it even if you haven’t heard the term. It refers to the creation of online content like blog posts, video, discussion forums, PPC adverts, and graphics. Specifically, it refers to creating these things for the purpose of selling your goods and services to an audience.

Although some of it does, most content marketing doesn’t explicitly promote your brand. It just talks about the services that you provide and why these services can boost the lives of others. You usually will allude to your brand in these posts, but most of them are just informative and helpful.

How Is This Different From SEO?

Content marketing and SEO aren’t the same things. They’re just two things that complement each other. Think peanut butter and chocolate, Sherlock and Watson, or bacon and eggs. They exist independently, but when they come together is when they thrive.

SEO’s different from content marketing in that it focuses on your individual brand. You use content marketing to get people interested in services like yours, but you use SEO to get people to be interested in your specific brand as the #1 best option for those services.

The biggest difference between these two online marketing methods is in their function. SEO is technical and more narrow while content marketing is a broader term that refers to the whole of your content.

However, the technical aspects of SEO are usually applied to content marketing (eg. using high-volume keywords in an engaging and awesome blog post). It’s also the case that the only real way to succeed at content marketing is to use SEO strategies within them. Your amazing content isn’t going to gain any visibility otherwise!

How Does SEO Connect With Content Marketing?

Now, you know how SEO and content marketing are different while overlapping. Awesome! It’s time to take a look at the specific ways that these strategies connect. Here, we’re going to run through the ways that they go together to create one cohesive thing, much like rides and games make up one fun carnival!

SEO Needs Content, Content Is Marketing

Okay, so this might sound obvious, but many people don’t think about the fact that SEO doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If there isn’t content on your site, there’s nothing to optimise. SEO is a technical service that boosts your content up in search engines. Gaining visibility for that content is the full-on goal of SEO.

This means that SEO literally can’t exist without content, and the content that’s created by your website, assuming that it’s relevant and of a high-quality, is meant to market your services. This means that SEO and content marketing aren’t just an overlapping Venn diagram- they need each other just as surely as humans need water.

Content Marketing Necessitates Keywords

Any good content marketing strategy also necessitates the use of keywords. You might be asking, why is this? Why can’t you just churn out a blog post that has no keyword structure?

The reason for this lies in the way that search engines work. When someone searches for ‘Pokemon collectables near Kendall’ (awesome search, btw), the search term is a keyword. Every time someone makes a search in Google, the term that they enter into their mobile or their desktop is a keyword.

No matter what you say in your blog post, it’s inevitable that there will be keywords embedded in it. All keywords have SEO value, so creating content means that there will be some level of SEO involved no matter what.

The only choice you have is whether to blindly type whatever and hope good keywords show up. We recommend not doing this. Instead, use our free keyword research tools to find keywords that are actually going to drive traffic to your website.

Technical Site Aspects: SEO or Marketing?

Another place that the line between SEO and content marketing blurs is when it comes to technical aspects of your site.

It’s pretty clear that editing the HTML of your page to include keywords or changing the speed of your site isn’t content creation. It’s equally clear that it is an aspect of SEO. You need to focus on these elements if you want people to view and stay on your site longer than the 15 seconds that you have to engage them before they become bored and leave.

However, marketing simply refers to boosting your services and selling them in the most effective way possible. There are aspects of technical SEO that can fall under the category of content marketing. This includes tagging your blog posts and coming up with attention-grabbing titles and meta descriptions for content.

Marketing, SEO, and Content Consistency

Finally, content marketing and SEO overlap because they both require consistent and ongoing effort.

Google spiders like seeing new content from existing websites. They always have. They always will. This isn’t news.

Search engine crawlers also are really fast at indexing new content and looking at both its on-page and off-page SEO strategies. This newly-indexed content goes much higher in search results than older, previously-indexed content does. Because of this, good SEO strategies need a lot of new content to be produced on a regular basis.

This means, of course, that your content will be consistent! This draws in more people and lets you use this content to market your services. Once again, we have a strong connection between SEO and content marketing!

How to Execute Killer Content Campaigns

One thing’s for sure- SEO and content marketing can’t exist without the other. But now that you know this, you’re probably wondering how you can execute a content campaign that crushes the competition. Read on to learn more about how you can use SEO and the content that you produce with it to boost your webpage!

Set Goals and Objectives

Before you can begin a content marketing campaign, you’ll need to set goals for what you want that campaign to accomplish.

These goals need to be SMART. We don’t mean that they need to be intelligent (though they should also be that). We mean that you should be using the SMART method of setting business objectives that you want to get from your content marketing strategy. SMART goals are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-based

Making sure that your ultimate goals for your campaign fall under these categories will ensure that you boost your business as much as possible.

Talk to the Pros

A Reputable professional SEO Company can help you develop an SEO/content strategy that’s sure to boost your business.

If you’re unsure of how to produce amazing content that boosts your ROI, an expert will be able to sit down with you and help figure out what you should post. These professionals will not only help you to research keywords and manage technical elements of your page, but they also will produce quality content that will engage visitors.

Regardless of whether you want to purchase an SEO/content marketing package, talking to an expert can give you some good ideas on what to do when trying to interact with your target audience.

Integrate SEO and Other Content

There are a few types of SEO that you can embed within your content marketing.

The first, on-page SEO, refers to aspects of content that you can manipulate within your website to boost its rankings in Google. These manipulations include keyword research and the use of high-volume search terms. However, also included in this is HTML coding, creating a clear navigation system, ensuring high site speed, and engaging viewers with bold text and visual design elements that keeps them on the page.

The other type of SEO, off-page SEO, refers to external manipulations that drive traffic to your site from the outside. This includes link building (backlinks to reputable sites), social media management, and adverts that you put on the web. These strategies are meant to bring people in from other related sites to look at what you’re all about.

At this point in your content strategy, you need to focus on implementing all of these elements into your posts. You need to have a plan to use these tactics before you can begin to build quality content.

Develop Strong Posts

At this point, you have all the information that you need to create strong, engaging, and reliable content. You know what words and phrases to structure posts around. You know what content marketing strategies have succeeded for your competitors (and what you should emulate.) Pretty awesome, right?

We know we’re right!

But, you might be asking, how can you start making quality posts?

Well, one way that you can do this is by purchasing a professional SEO package. That’s a pretty good way to ensure that you get top-quality content made for your site that drives traffic and reels, customers, in. If you want to give DIY SEO ago, though, there are a few ways that you can make sure that your posts are tip-top quality:

• Create an outline before beginning to type the meat of your content
• Make sure that this outline is structured around the keywords and ideas that you identify as important
• Include quality information- don’t use any fluff
• Link to other relevant pages on your website and to those on other reputable sites
• Proofread and proofread some more

Check out the other resources on our website for free tips on creating effective content!

Assess and Reassess

Finally, as with any marketing strategy, you’re going to want to continuously reassess how effective what you’re doing is. Measure how many people have been looking at your content after it’s posted. You can use Google Analytics and related services to find out which of your posts are the most popular with your audience and generate the most engagement.

This is a great way to determine what sort of content marketing is working best for you and the people that you want to reach!

Start Engaging Your Audience!

While SEO isn’t always associated with content marketing, the two are 1000% linked. You can’t have one without the other.

Now that you know all about content marketing and how you can implement it along with your SEO, it’s time to get cracking! Download some of the free SEO resources that we have on our website. You can also sign up for our mailing list to get regular information on how to optimise your site, boost your traffic, and watch your business fly past the competition

We can’t wait to hear from you!