SEO and content marketing are both great methods for marketing your brand. While they are thought to be two very different forms of marketing, they are interlinked far more than we think. In fact, SEO changes are the most important issue for 61% of B2B content marketers.

content marketing issues

Image via Content Marketing Institute

Using them together can help you achieve your business goals. To help you out, I’ve got Aaron Agius with me. He’s a serial entrepreneur and digital marketer and serves as the CEO of Louder.Online. In addition, he’s a member of the Forbes Agency Council and has authored two books with Neil Patel.

Before we get to how SEO and content marketing can help you, let’s look at some of the differences between them:

SEO and Content Marketing – The Differences

SEO and content marketing have more in common than their differences. However, there are some fundamental differences between the two.

SEO is more on the technical side and has a narrower scope than content. You need to follow certain best practices to get your SEO strategy right. Content marketing, on the other hand, is broader than SEO and is more on the holistic side than the technical.

Now that you know how they differ, let’s look at how you can use them to your advantage.

Using SEO & Content Marketing Together

1. Keywords

Keywords are critical for SEO, and you need to find and use relevant keywords in your content so that you can rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). They should be used appropriately by following a strategic approach.

You can use the Google Keyword Planner and KWFinder to find relevant keywords. Stuffing a page with keywords can lead to over-optimization which might be penalized by the search engines.

You also need to use your keywords in your title sections and URLs along with the body of your blog posts. Finding keywords and determining how many times your content should feature them is a part of SEO. However, inserting keywords naturally in your content is content marketing all the way. This way, the mix of both can help you utilize keywords properly.

2. User Experience

SEO is all about creating a good user experience for search engine users. Websites which provide a great experience to their users are likely to rank higher up in the SERPs.

You may have all of your technical parameters right such as broken links, error codes, etc.

However, if your website isn’t able to provide a quality experience to searchers, it’ll be pushed down in the search results.

Your website needs to have quality content that can provide value to the searchers. This is where content marketing comes in. You can create high-quality content that gives actionable advice and valuable information to visitors.

Doing this increases their time on page, reduces their bounce rate, and increases their chances of becoming repeat visitors. These factors can help improve your website’s SEO.

Additionally, technical SEO focuses on improving the browsing experience of your website visitors. By increasing the page-loading speed, providing a good sitemap, etc., you can improve the user experience. In fact, a 100-millisecond delay in page loading can reduce your conversions by up to 7%.

These technical factors directly relate to content marketing again. You need faster page-loading speed and sitemaps so that the visitors don’t need to wait long to read your content and can find it easily.

3. High-Quality Content

To get the best out of SEO and content marketing, you need to create high-quality content regularly. Fresh, unique content can index quickly and starts ranking higher in the SERPs compared to low-quality, repetitive content.

Your content should target a particular problem that is faced by your target customers, and it should solve it. You should write your content while keeping this target audience in mind. At the same time, you need to incorporate keywords into your content as a part of SEO. This incorporation has to be done such that it doesn’t seem forced and apparent. If it seems forced, the quality of your content will be negatively affected.

Keywords are one of the most important ranking factors through which the relevance of your website will be ascertained. You need to look for high volume low competition long-tail keywords which can get you higher up in the SERPs with relatively less effort.

4. Backlinks

Each backlink that your website gets is a vote for its authenticity and quality of the content it provides to visitors. One of the most common ways of getting backlinks is by writing guest posts on other blogs.

This is where content marketing comes into the picture. You can write high-quality guest posts for high-authority websites and get backlinks to your website through them. Without quality content, it can be difficult to get approval for a guest post on other websites.

At the same time, if you publish killer content, which is useful for your website visitors, people may link back to it. This can earn you natural backlinks without any extra effort. In this manner, content marketing supports SEO. Remember, linkworthy content is the key to get backlinks.

5. Consistency

As mentioned earlier, you need to come up with high-quality content regularly. Google gives preference to fresh content, and this helps it in ranking higher up in the SERPs. Even if your website doesn’t have a high domain authority, you can expect this content to rank quickly in the SERPs.

Good SEO, thus, means that you need to come up with unique content regularly. This, in turn, means that you’re doing content marketing as well to come up with this content. Through consistent posts, you can increase your rankings in the SERPs.

Final Thoughts

SEO and content marketing are different forms of marketing; however, they are two sides of the same coin.

To get your SEO strategy bang-on, you need to have a solid content marketing strategy as well. By consistently coming up with fresh and high-quality content, you can improve your SEO. This can help you earn backlinks and even improve the user experience.

Lastly, keywords are essential to rank higher up in SERPs, and you can use them naturally only through content marketing.

If you need any assistance with SEO or content marketing, you can get in touch with me.

Shane Barker

Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, product launches, sales funnels, targeted traffic, and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.