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Content Marketing Helps SEO
Content Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) go together like peanut butter and jelly. You can’t increase your search engine results page (SERP) rankings without having quality and relevant content.
All your keyword research will mean nothing if you don’t utilize it throughout your various pieces of content. There are many components to drive traffic to your site, including quality content, backlinks, keywords, and more. But before you can increase your SEO, you will need to understand what exactly SEO is.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. Pretty simple explanation but there is so much you need to know about SEO and what it really means.
Understanding SEO
Search Engine Optimization is about gaining quality traffic. You can have all the traffic going to your site, but if you are not selling what consumers want and searched for then they are not considered quality traffic.
Your goal is to have quality visitors to your site, those who are genuinely interested in the products you are offering. Not only having quality visitors to your site but you’ll want to make sure you are increasing the traffic to your site.
You can increase your traffic through SERPs, and search engine results pages. SERPs are the organic traffic that comes to your site without you paying for Ads. Ads make up a portion of the SERP and are indicated with text stating it is an Ad.
How SEO Works
Here’s how search engines work:
Google (or your preferred search engine) has a crawler that goes out and gathers information or content throughout the Internet. This crawler then brings back all that data to the search engine to build an index. The index is then fed through an algorithm that matches all the data with your search queries. The algorithm changes often, as Google finds more ways to get the right information in the hands of consumers. This is all done within a matter of milliseconds, showing all the pages on the search results page.
That is a brief overview of “SE” in SEO. The important part is“O”. Optimization is made of several parts, the Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, Internal and External Links, and Content. Optimization of content is what Digital Marketing is responsible for and ensuring that their content is clear and understandable for the Google Crawlers.
If you’re a complete novice in SEO, then start at the very beginning and read the Beginner’s Guide to SEO.
What Is Content Marketing?
Explaining what is content marketing can be quite difficult depending on who you are talking to. It is different than traditional product marketing, like sales. It includes things like educational articles and blog posts, eBooks, videos, webinars, and infographics that answer specific questions people might have.
Content marketing provides them with something they can’t get somewhere else, and it is the best way to gain consumer trust. Once you become a credible and authoritative resource on the topics covered on your website the more likely your business will be discovered.
When you earn consumers’ loyalty and trust your brand is strengthened, relationships grow and ultimately lead to an increase in profits.
How Can Content Marketing Improve SEO?
Content is the reason you have a website, without relevant content you wouldn’t be in business. There are many variables when it comes to creating content with SEO guidelines.
When creating a content strategy you have to look at what is strategy is for the search engine results. Important questions to ask are, “where are we ranked in the search engines?”, “where do we want to improve?”, and “what do visitors to my site need?”.
Once you and your marketing team come up with strategies you can begin applying SEO guidelines to your content.
Content, SEO & Keywords
An essential element of SEO is researching and finding relevant keywords and keyword phrases. You’ll want to make sure those are used throughout your content. Using relevant keywords in your content will increase your ranking on SERP. Which is one of the main goals of SEO?
It is important to use keywords in an appropriate manner and follow a very strategic approach to utilizing them properly. You should never try to fill the page with keywords and essentially over-optimize the content. SEO and content work in balance with each other. Attempting to override SEO guidelines will result in being “punished“ by Google by receiving lower rankings. Keyword strategies are imperative for effective search engine marketing.
If you need guidance or assistance in creating optimal SEO strategies and content strategies you should contact your local digital marketing and SEO agency. They will search for the top websites, as well as competitive keywords that are closely associated with your business and industry. They will be following a logical approach as well as using Google Keyword Planner and other SEO tools.
Another invaluable SEO tool is SEMrush. SEMrush has a Keyword Magic Tool that allows you to analyze the most popular keyword by volume and what your competitor’s top keywords are ranking for. SEMrush provides many crucial tools for combining SEO and content.
Another benefit of hiring a local SEO agency is their experience in SEO service, SEO campaigns, and content creation. A reputable company will have different departments handling the various aspects of your website.
Embedding targeted keywords throughout your blog post and content pages is essential to rank well and boost your traffic. Following a strategy and not overstuffing keywords into your content will also lead to an increase in traffic and your ranking on SERP.
Quality Content Over Quantity
Consistency is required when using SEO and content together. You want to make sure it is fresh unique and creative. The more creative content the rapid index and ranks higher and lower value and repetitive content.
Content must be able to be attractive to your clients as well as solve a particular issue the consumer is having. You can write about influential content by using important keywords and targeting your visitors. This is an essential factor in which Google analytics will determine the relevancy of your page and ranks that piece of content.
As a content marketer, you should be taking the time out to brainstorm all the creative ideas and how to embed keywords into the content. Ensuring that it sounds natural and flows smoothly between thoughts and ideas.
U/X – User Experience
SEO is not only about, blogs, articles, keywords, or backlinks, but it is also about optimizing the technical aspects too. Technical optimization is about optimizing robots.txt, enhancing metadata, and using tags appropriately.
Technical optimization is ensuring that the webpage appeals not just to user experience (UX) but to the search engine bots. Ensuring there are no broken links or error codes.
Unfortunately, there are many websites that don’t maintain their page and as their pages are scoured you will find 404 errors, missing images, and outdated information. Google will rank web pages with several 404 errors as not relevant, not maintained, and therefore are low ranking on SERPs. Technical optimization is vital to the success of any SEO campaign.
Having a good site map ensures an easy approach to content for all users including all of the Google bots. You’ll also need to manage all the subcategories and their links to ensure that they are user-friendly as well as not have 404 errors.
You will want to ensure that all the content has the appropriate tags (title and meta) so that it provides the understanding and superior indexing for your research results. Tag headers and title tags benefit the user by strategizing the content in a way that is useful for readers and simple for search engines.
A good title tag ensures a great UX as the visitor can recognize the information from the page before they actually click on it. Header tags hold great importance to differentiate headings and subheadings within the content to make it well-organized and easy to read.
Website Traffic
Another major factor of SEO is linkbacks, link building, or inbound linking. Connecting your links with high domain authority sites can increase your SEO ranking.
Creating content where you are an expert and then linking to other expert websites will increase your authoritativeness and your trustworthiness score in the Google algorithms.
Having links to trustworthy sites and experts in the content topic will also increase your dwell time on your website. Increasing traffic analytics will raise your brand awareness, authoritativeness, and expertise.
Conclusion
The old days of thinking SEO and content are separate entities are long gone. Blue Water Marketing can help you fully understand that SEO and content marketing are not separate departments, they need each other. Content marketing is only successful with the appropriate SEO strategies.
SEO and content together will lead to an explosive website that reaches the target audience, and new audiences, and will continue to drive traffic. Give us a call to understand how content marketing helps SEO.
