Content and SEO form the basis of content marketing as a whole, and you can’t have one without the other in a content marketing strategy.
The content side is your authority-builder, your trust-maker, and your relationship-forger. The content is what brings your potential customers, audience, and prospects closer to your brand so they’re more likely to engage in profitable action.
The SEO side, meanwhile, is your workhorse. It makes your content discoverable via search. It helps drive traffic to your content, bringing your potential audience and customers straight to your front door.
Just as content and SEO work together to form a content marketing strategy, they also work together to create the best possible SEO strategy. SEO doesn’t work without content! The relationship between the two is reciprocal, so once you have both in place, they bounce off each other, build on each other, and can make your web presence soar.
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So, how does it work? How does the content in your content marketing help SEO?
3 Ways Content & SEO Work Together
Why does SEO need content marketing to thrive? As you’ll see, the relationship is mutually beneficial. You need both to move upward in organic search results.
Here are a couple ways content and SEO work together in any content marketing or SEO strategy.
1. Content Quality is an SEO Ranking Factor
For your site to rank in organic search, there has to be something there on your site to warrant it.
Without content, a website serves no purpose. It has nothing to offer anyone. High-quality content provides the gasoline that keeps your site rolling in the rankings. It’s information, entertainment, or inspiration for your audience, sure, but it also provides fodder for SEO. After all, how do you rank for certain keywords? By inserting them into your content. How do you get people to link to you? With your awesome content that helps or enlightens them in some way.
Don’t forget: According to Search Engine Journal, content quality is a top ranking factor. If you don’t have it, you won’t earn a place in the search results.
SEO is nothing without content. That’s why sites with thin pages and shallow content do not usually rank well.
2. SEO Requires Keywords – Content Has Them
Keywords are basic, topical indicators that tell search engines what your site is about. You used to be able to rank by simply inserting random, long lists of keywords on your pages, but Google eventually caught on to this practice and cracked down on it with multiple algorithm updates, including Penguin in 2012.
Now, your keywords and your content must intertwine seamlessly. You can’t have keywords on your page without relevant, SEO-friendly content.
Content provides the vehicle for your keyword usage, which sends signals to search engines about how to rank your pages and which terms to use.
Think of it like this: Content is the vessel that carries your keywords. No content means no on-page keywords, which means no SEO.
3. Optimizing Your Content Gives Your Technical SEO the Lift it Needs
Pages with content that’s not optimized may rank accidentally, if at all.
For example, just writing a thorough, high-quality blog post without any thought for SEO may include natural keywords about your topic, but it won’t have them in optimal places. Ranking for a piece of content like this will be entirely up to chance.
On the other hand, pages with optimized content are much more likely to rank, and rank well, depending on the topic and your competition.
Optimized content is a rocket booster for SEO. This must include:
- Using keywords correctly and in the right places
- Organizing the content clearly and logically with subheaders
- Making it easy to read on computer and device screens
- Optimizing your title and meta description
SEO Needs Content – and Vice-Versa
You can’t separate SEO and content. They need each other to work. Content provides the fodder that SEO needs for ranking your site pages. When you provide that content with a sprinkle of optimization, the search engines can latch on and position you advantageously.
So, how do you achieve this symbiotic relationship?
You can study up on SEO techniques and how to write stellar content. That’s one option. Or, you can work with a content marketing and SEO company to create and optimize amazing, relevant content.
Need your content marketing and SEO strategies to work together? Let’s chat about how Thrive can help.
