Content Marketing: The Future of SEO

Content Marketing & SEO 

The truth is, both Content Marketing and SEO are essential yet perform different roles. Much like your coffee and creamer, one cannot do without the other. Both SEO and content marketing need to collaborate to generate brand awareness, website traffic, lead generation, PPC, etc. 

Content marketing is what you call crafting content in a manner that speaks volumes to your readers, attracts their attention, and retains their interest to the point where they rely on your content for accurate, credible, and informative data. 

Essentially, content marketing means delivering excellent, in-depth pieces of content to solve the problem of your target audience and draw the interest of your potential clients, customers, readers, etc. And when you have crafted your content beautifully by mentioning keywords you know your target audience will be typing away on Google, you have achieved what is known as content optimization. 

What is SEO? 

Now that we have briefly touched on the difference between SEO and content marketing let’s get to the bottom of what is SEO writing.

SEO is what drives quality traffic by attracting the maximum amount of visitors to your website. Content marketing, on the other hand, entails using valuable information that is relevant to your target audience to steer profit-generating clients and customers to your digital platform. 

So, in a nutshell, SEO performs the action of optimizing the very content you had created to appeal to your market segment using potent keywords. These keywords are adequately scattered all over your website, including landing pages, articles, blogs, product description pages – you name it – so that your content ranks higher than any other site’s content shown on the search engine results page. 

The primary purpose of incorporating SEO writing into your content is simply to get the right people’s attention towards the right piece of information that will not only appeal to them but also solve their problems. 

But using SEO to mobilize high-quality traffic isn’t a walk in the park. It takes a qualified SEO expert to make the necessary tune-ups, regular alterations and use targeted optimization to pull substantially profitable traffic through organic sources. 

Understanding Content Marketing 

Before we jump into the definition of content marketing, let us first celebrate writers behind the screen who do a fantastic job of creating stellar, attractive, and insightful content to bolster their content marketing strategy. 

They are known as copywriters – or in this case, web copywriters. 

Content writing, also known as copywriting, is a form of salesmanship redefined. Instead of going door-to-door to sell your product or promote your service in person, copywriters create content that prompts the reader/user to click the ‘buy’ or ‘subscribe’ button. 

How do they do this, you may ask? That’s right, through words. Powerful, compelling words that push the user to take action without even meeting them in person! 

But what differentiates a copywriter from an SEO copywriter? Not much difference, actually. 

A copywriter is responsible for creating persuasive copy for articles, promotions, advertisements, customer engagement, etc. An SEO copywriter researches and incorporates relevant keywords to ensure the content at hand ranks higher in the search engines results pages (SERPs). 

An SEO writer will also go the extra mile to tailor the content by adding or removing keywords according to Google’s requirements (such as removing or adding certain phrases or keywords). This ensures the content stays fresh and continues to rank high, and catches the eyes of the desired audience. 

Now, back to discussing content marketing. 

As the word implies, content marketing means using content to market your product or service on a digital landscape such as your website and social media platforms to gain more traction. However, regardless of how persuasive, spellbinding, and articulate your content may be, it cannot excel without the help of SEO. 

And the same applies vice versa. Your SEO strategy is rendered fruitless if your content is lackluster. SEO is not to be taken as some sort of magic potion to fix the insufficiencies of your blog and web content. It is simply an ingredient to be used alongside coherent and impeccably detailed content to appear on the search results pages and triumph over its rivals’ content. 

How to Fuel SEO with Top Level Content Marketing

So far, we have understood that SEO and content marketing are two peas in a pod – one cannot live without the other. Here are some ways SEO and content marketing can be used in a coalition to skyrocket your content marketing plan. 

Keep search engines in mind 

Tailor your content in a way that the search engine will understand. And no, we don’t mean by stuffing in keywords to your content. We mean breaking down your content – be it your web page or blog page into individual topic segments so that the search engine can clearly understand what your page is about and catalogs it accordingly. 

For instance, if you have a furniture cleaning website, you do not want to jumble carpet cleaning and upholstery cleaning together on the same page. You would have to create a separate page for each service, detailing as much information as necessary along with using relevant keywords to that particular service. The more narrowly you focus your content using SEO copywriting, the better the search engine will allocate your page on the search engine results page. 

Push out content regularly

Search engines not only index your page and show highly-ranked results, but it also observes how often you publish new content. And this is one reason why you should never slack off from updating or revamping your old content to comply with Google’s latest SEO policy.

Pushing out content regularly – especially new content – means one thing; that you are still staying relevant to your audience using optimized SEO content to bring in traffic. The regular publication is also great as it gives you the chance to add more keywords and topics to your search list and positions you as a reliable authority with a wide range of topics and subtopics to offer to its users. 

Technical optimization  

This is one aspect many tend to pay less importance to. Technical optimization is critical in ensuring your web pages stay relevant to the search engine. There is no room for broken links and error codes that can jeopardize your search engine ranking. 

Technical optimization entails optimizing URLs. This helps the search engine find the related subpages and then strategically categorizes different parts of your website. It does so by appropriating metadata and tags like title tags and header tags to present the content in an organized manner so that it’s easy for the search engine to identify. Appropriating tags also means much-improved indexing and, therefore, a much-improved user experience. 

Understanding Page 1 of Google

Understanding and applying SEO and content marketing is all well and good, but to determine what type of content ranks the best on Google’s 1^st page is, in fact, understanding page 1 of Google. 

It is imperative that content writers and marketers understand the first page of Google to pinpoint the type of content they should be writing to make it to the top. There are various types of content that rank well, and they are: 

• Definitions, long-form articles, knowledge graphs 
• Blog posts 
• Zero-click searches like currency conversion, weather, time zones, etc. 
• Photo gallery and visuals 
• Product pages
• Maps and local results 
• Videos 
• Tweets, top stories, and latest news headlines 
• A brand’s social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram profile 

So with the above in mind, you will want to write your content according to the results shown on Page 1, including the topics and keywords that it’s showing. 

How has SEO Evolved Beyond Presupposition?

Search engine optimization has come a long way since its infancy and the infamous practice of spamming links and stuffing keywords to rank high and mighty on Google. Thankfully though, those days are long gone, and all due thanks go to Google’s ever-changing algorithms.  

Keep reading to learn how SEO has evolved over the years. 

Quality content > Quantity content 

Ever since content marketing has been recognized and applauded as part of a successful SEO marketing strategy, filler, spammy content stuffed with keywords has been thrown out the window. 

Thanks to Google Panda’s update in 2011, low quality and poor substance content were lowered in ranking. In turn, top-notch quality content which didn’t compromise on delivering valuable information was ranked top of the list. This made sure to drive away gimmicky content creators whose sole purpose was to rank high on Google, regardless of whether or not their content was readable or provided solutions to their audience. 

Prioritizing mobile 

Ever since the release of the iPhone back in 2007, there has been a substantial exodus from desktop to mobile for browsing purposes. With this, more websites have had to become mobile-user friendly to perfectly accommodate desktop immigrants on their new digital land. 

In fact, websites haven’t had any choice in the matter. Google made it clear to reward mobile-friendly sites by indexing and ranking them well on the Google search results page. 

The demise of link schemes 

Back in the early days of using Google, it was common to participate in shady business to increase your rankings. Many used link-building schemes so that their websites would have several fake links from various sources to rank on top. 

This practice has been long demolished now, with Google penalizing, de-listing, and banning websites that perform black hat techniques. Now, Google prefers websites that have gained links organically through guest posts or have gained backlinks from other credible and relevant websites. 

Final Note 

To wrap it up, there is no denying that both content and SEO are needed to work in alliance to appeal and draw in visitors towards fresh, relatable, and well-written content. If you plan to sell a product, you most definitely need a-grade content that grabs your users’ attention – and this can’t be done without first-class SEO content writing. 

Because if you have written a persuasive copy for your product without SEO, your audience won’t be able to find you. And if they can’t find you, your product, or your service, is it really effective for a content marketing plan? We think not!

In conclusion, they both need to work in coordination to produce lucrative results. Remember, SEO and content marketing are explosive together.