If you have been an active user in the spectrum of online marketing for quite some time then you would have noticed the terms “Search Engine Optimisation” (SEO), and “content marketing” used more and more. But, if you’re new to the online marketing industry, these 2 terms can often lead to a bit of confusion.
And, with good reason as many people find it difficult to draw a line between the both. In the world of digital marketing, you have professional individuals who specialise in content marketing and SEO experts working closely together. This is because SEO and content marketing have a tightly knitted relationship. So, if you are looking to excel with your online marketing efforts, then it’s important to know the difference between the both, and how they collectively work together.
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
SEO is the process of improving a website’s presence, and visibility in the search engine results pages which are otherwise known as SERP for short. The primary purpose of SEO is to increase a website’s traffic and ultimately drive more sales.
SEO often involves multiple people from different departments within a business. This includes marketing, graphic design and content production. While the majority of SEO work revolves around business analysis and strategy, the biggest challenge faced is battling with the constant algorithm changes on the search engines. You may see your keyword rankings jump up or down overnight, which can dramatically affect the amount of search traffic you are getting. Using a Google search API you can watch over how your keywords are doing and know when a major change occurs. Nevertheless, a general rule of thumb is that websites that contain higher quality and resourceful content, more external referral links (known as backlinks) and more user engagement from visitors will generally rank higher on the search engine results pages. Many of those who have been working in SEO for years have different ways of approaching the task of SEO. But, an SEO process generally consists of 6 different phases.
Research
SEO research includes business research, keyword planning, competitor analysis, current state assessment, link prospecting and setting targets.
Strategy Planning
This phase includes deciding what type of content should be created, how to handle the content, how referral links will be obtained and from what websites/webmasters, deciding how social media will be used to complement the SEO efforts and what keywords should be used and when.
Strategy Implementation
This is where the strategy is implemented to start increasing a website’s ranking on the search engines. This includes reaching out to webmasters with content to secure referral links on external, optimising regular blog content, making on-site improvements, continued link prospecting, creating business listings (sometimes known as performing a NAP) and working with web designers to further improve a website’s usability and loading speed for ease of use.
Monitoring
This phase generally takes place at the same time as strategy implementation. It includes monitoring any search engine algorithm changes that might ultimately affect the core strategy,
Assessment
This is where the planning and strategy implementation phases are evaluated to assess the impact it has had on a websites performance, visibility and ultimately the amount of increased traffic it has received a result of the SEO efforts.
Content Maintenance
Optimising existing content is a way of ensuring content remains relevant; therefore, continually generates new users to a website. It also includes assessing whether a secured referral link is continuing to provide positive effects for a website. Sometimes this isn’t the case and those who are running the SEO campaign need to request that the link is removed from the webmaster’s website.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is all about providing resourceful information that a reader finds engaging and useful. In basic terms, it’s all about marketing a business through the sharing of insightful and educational content that will help improve the lives of the readers. Content marketing is not about forcing a sales pitch onto the reader, but more about helping them go towards a call to action that may or may not result in them buying a product or service.
Content marketing is seen as a strategic approach that focuses on the distribution of valuable and relevant content to attract and retain a clearly defined target audience to indirectly drive consumers to act and ultimately drive profitability.
Blog articles are ultimately how content marketing came a thing in the broader digital marketing spectrum. And, they have now become highly popular and commonplace in the world of business because it allows users to access high-quality and useful information without having to pay for it. When content is shared for free, it often builds trust between a consumer and business because they will see them as a credible source of useful information.
What Is The Relationship Between The Both?
SEO and content marketing might be two different things, but they do have a very close relationship as work for each other and share one goal, and that’s getting more people visiting your website. Content marketing is a way of drawing in and engaging with an audience by appealing to them and providing resourceful content which is a key mechanism for SEO. A typical SEO and content marketing relationship works like this:
– Content provides the opportunity to include specific keywords for the purpose of search engine optimisation.
– Creating content means that new pages can be added to a website. This means that each page that is added is more content that Google can index. The quantity of content isn’t enough to increase a website’s ranking, but it does provide the opportunity to add more keywords to rank for.
– Good quality content can increase your domain authority. What this means is that it can increase your search engine ranking even higher. Valuable and informative can also attract more inbound links to a website.
