Content Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are like the Scooby and Shaggy of the digital marketing world. Some are cognizant of their perks, but, they aren’t sure how to combine them to best serve them and their online pursuits.
Many keep content marketing and SEO in two different buckets thinking they are very different from each other. Truth is they do overlap and blend together very well. You may have a solid SEO strategy for your website but without good content marketing tactics, you cannot make the most impact.
There is no doubt that SEO and content marketing, when done correctly, can have a major impact on your traffic and conversion rates. We’re going to discuss the benefits of this integrated strategy. And more importantly, how this blended strategy can help your brand and help you reap the benefits of both.
Benefits of Integrating SEO and Content Marketing
While Google claims their algorithm can look for intent or purpose of a website, there’s no way that it can in a way we humans can. They still rely on the presence of certain indicators – keywords are the prime example.
Your web copy, headings, and alt text on images can only go so far. In order to really maximize your chances of being “seen” by search engines, you need to develop quality content. When you start creating a steady flow of blog posts optimized with relevant keywords, such chances increase considerably.
Valuable, informative, approachable, and relevant content keep your website visitors hooked for a longer time, resulting in lower bounce rates thereby increasing your chances of ranking higher.
Combining content marketing and SEO helps you widen your reach and increase customer conversions (whatever they are by your definition) by giving your visitors exactly what they want when they want it.
How to Integrate SEO and Content Marketing
1. Take Advantage of Influencer-Driven Content
If you want to improve the ranking of your website, it is strongly recommend that you publish new content consistently. Based on personal experience, know that it isn’t easy to keep creating fresh content regularly, imperative, but certainly not easy!
To improve your website’s search engine rankings, it is essential to produce fresh and engaging content. Otherwise, there’s a good chance that your search engine rankings will drop quickly. In fact, Google has made this point clear numerous times over the years.
For this reason, teaming up with influencers can be your Green Lantern Ring. Influencers are experts at creating innovative and engaging content. This can help you fill any voids in your content schedule. Fresh, informative, and engaging content from influencers can improve the ranking of your website. They can create excellent authentic content for your brand. It can be in many forms –
- Photos
- Blog posts
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Even interviews
Influencers can even encourage their followers to share innovative content creation ideas. This increases the engagement between the influencers and their loyal followers.
Before you try out this strategy of combining SEO and content marketing, here’s a heads up – If you want to be successful in implementing it, your influencer must be relevant. You must ensure that their followers’ interests and preferences match those of your target audience.
And remember that your influencer doesn’t necessarily need to be a celebrity. A great deal can be accomplished by collaborating with influencers, or even micro-influencers in your niche market.
Here’s an example of how it works: Invite influencers to try out your products or services and ask them to write about them on their blogs. You must provide them with the keywords and phrases that you are desiring to rank for as well.
Although most influencers like to be paid in exchange of such reviews, sometimes you may be surprised at how things work out. In some instances, they will write in trade for product or service, and every so often they will write and share just because they love the product or experience.
There are many influencer marketing platforms available that can help you find and connect with relevant influencers. Platforms like Grin and Intellifluence are networks of influencers for hire. They are easy-to-use and can help you find suitable influencers based on your niche, reach, and engagement requirements.
It is also recommend to ask your influencers to write reviews about your products or services that include links to your website (see #2 – it’s next!)
2. Build Quality Backlinks – Even If You Don’t Have “Connections”
According to Moz, backlinks are still an important factor in the ranking of your website on the SERPS. You may be wondering how to gain quality backlinks. Here’s what we recommend:
The best way to gain quality backlinks is by writing guest posts. By writing guest posts on high-authority, influential websites that are relevant to your niche, it helps you gain quality backlinks to your site.
One thing to keep in mind when selecting websites or blogs for submitting guest posts is that they must have high Domain Authority. Backlinks generated from these high-authority websites are of high-quality and they help with increasing the ranking of your site.
When it comes to backlinks, both quantity and quality matter. Don’t collaborate with influencers to simply create and promote sponsored posts for your product. Make sure influencers are building high-quality content-driven marketing campaigns for your brand.
This content can include tutorials, product reviews, how-to videos, or informational guides. These can all be a great source of high-quality backlinks which can help improve the rank of your website in the SERPS.
3. Conduct an SEO Audit
It can be pretty expensive to hire an SEO expert or digital consultant who can perform SEO checks and recommend useful strategies. The good news is that there are many SEO experts that can help you monitor, evaluate, and improve various aspects of SEO.
SEO experts start with tools that can help find the keywords that your competitors are ranking for. Yes, even the paid ones.
The tools they use collect data from search engines like Bing, Google, and Yahoo and using their detailed reports they can see if their SEO strategies are working or not. And if they are not, they’ll adjust their tactics until they do work. One of the many reasons that SEO is a long term strategy that will pay off in the short and long run.
A good SEO will analyze competitor websites as well as optimizing your web pages. It’s important that they make SEO improvements accurately so that your website has a better chance of ranking well in the SERPS.
Conclusion
Content Marketing & SEO are like yin and yang – powerful partners that can amplify results when combined. This can generate high-quality traffic, improve rankings in the search engines, and even increase conversions.
Producing a beautiful website and great content isn’t enough (you know, the “build it and they will come” myth?) – we recommend trying the above-mentioned strategies and integrating good SEO practices, or hire a qualified SEO team to improve your content marketing and your site rankings.
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