Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and content marketing are some of the most influential tools available to modern marketing teams, but they only work effectively when they are in dialogue. Content marketing relies on relevant SEO to fulfil its function which is primarily to attract website traffic.
There are slight differences between SEO and content marketing. SEO is used to improve the quality of traffic on your site by attracting the maximum number of visitors searching for a certain keyword. SEO uses more technical language and has a narrower audience. The intention of content marketing is to provide valuable and relevant information to your customers in order to bring about positive action on your site. A successful SEO content marketing strategy is when SEO is planned around content marketing. Read below for more detail about how to develop a successful SEO content marketing strategy for your business.
Contents
- What is SEO Content Marketing?Keyword ResearchKeyword OptimisationOrganisationPromotion
- Defining your SEO Content StrategyDefine your goalsKnow your AudienceHave an Editorial CalendarAnalyse the Data
- The Different Types of SEO Content
- Conclusion
What is SEO Content Marketing?
To understand what you are trying to achieve with your SEO content marketing is it important to fully understand the components of the process. SEO refers to the process of optimising a webpage so that it can easily be found on search engines like Google. If your webpage is optimised it will rank higher on search engines and as a result have more traffic. Content refers to the information available on your webpage, or any website on the internet. This means that SEO content marketing is content that is created with the intention of increasing your search engine traffic.
Although SEO content is made with the intention of attracting visitors to your site, if that is your only goal, you may not see the results you desire. Your content must thread the line of pleasing both the search engine and your customers. The content must be valuable to its target audience. If the content you produce is inconsequential, you may be penalised by Google. More likely, your site will have a high bounce rate but a low conversion rate. Having good quality content will encourage repeat visits to your website as well as higher ranking on search engines.
The four things to remember when creating optimised content for a website are:
- Keyword Research: Before you start writing you should have a list of keywords that will help you generate traffic. These should be incorporated into the text of your site. By focusing on keywords that already have an established search volume, you can capitalise on what people are already searching for.
- Keyword Optimisation: It is important to use your keywords appropriately. Only use them when it leads to coherent copy, and be sure to use suitable synonyms. Search engines like Google punish copy that has a lot of repetition as it thinks it is spam.
- Organisation: Make sure that your content is easy to navigate. If a visitor can easily follow your content, and navigate where they need to go they will spend longer on your webpages. The content should be organised in a logical way.
- Promotion: Once you have your SEO content, don’t forget to promote it! You can increase traction on your site by sharing links to your content on social media, and by building links to your content from other sites, as well as internally.
There is more to SEO than just written content like articles, blogs and keywords. It also refers to optimising robots.txt, metadata and using appropriate tags. Your page must be technically optimised in order to appear appealing to search engines. This includes ensuring that there are no broken links and that everything after the slug, ’.com’, is concise. Otherwise your site will rank poorly. Having a good sitemap is useful to users trying to navigate your content. Optimised robots.txt crawl your site so that the content can be easily viewed. Having the appropriate tags will ensure correct indexing and more accurate search results. Using tags in the header and title will ensure that your content is easily understood by search engines.
Defining your SEO Content Strategy
Oftentimes it can feel like creating content is a shot in the dark; you’re not sure if it will rank, or how well. Committing to a more methodical process of creating SEO content will lead to concrete success for your pages. Below are four steps to redefine how you create SEO content.
Define Your Goals
Before you start writing you should determine the goals of your website. Are you looking to secure sales? Is your site monetised with ads? Knowing your goals will decide what kind of content you should create.
If your intention is to drive sales, you should have informative, authoritative products pages that are optimised for search and conversions. Alongside this you should have blog content that illustrates creative ways to use your products, including links to products where relevant. Although try to stay away from purely promotional content on your blog.
If your site relies on ads, your goal will be to attract new readers through search engine results. You will want to create long-form content like articles or video resources that are informative, creative, or entertaining. The goal of this content is to encourage visitors to spend longer on your website, as well as encourage repeat visits.
Know your Audience
Once you have established the goals of your website, you should establish your target audience. You can better understand your customers through surveys and analytics software. A helpful way to keep your audience in mind is to create a fictional profile for your ideal customer and think about the content that they would enjoy.
Have an Editorial Calendar
Once your intentions and audience has been established, you can begin to create an editorial calendar. This is a schedule that outlines when your content will be published, and what kind of content that will be. If you are creating a blog it is important to have regular content updates to stay relevant and encourage repeat visitors. This will also save you from searching for topics last minute.
Google Calendar is an easy way to start your editorial calendar as you can share it with your entire marketing team. It also allows you to set reminders for writers so that they can stay on top of deadlines. It is ill-advised to plan too far in advance because your content should change depending on the market demands. Your marketing goals, or budgets may change and trends in industry often fluctuate so it is important to have a semi-flexible content plan. However make sure that you have allowed enough time for the multiple rounds of edits so that your content is to a professional standard.
Analyse the Data
Your site has analytics for a reason. It is important to analyse the data available to you regularly in order to understand what is worth your time, and what isn’t. A good way to measure success is to examine the number of page views, links, comments, shares, and the conversion rate. It is important to know where you’re succeeding so that you can replicate this success. What kind of content does your audience reward? Make more of that content!
Lastly, make sure that you allot time to re-opitmise old content. If you have found that a certain keyword ranks higher than another, go through old content and replace that word. An easy way to improve traffic might be to change the keyword in the title of an article for example.
Different types of SEO content
SEO content can take on many different forms, inducing the following:
- Product Pages: This is basic knowledge to website owners. An informative product page can be both SEO content and a PPC landing page. Having professional and authoritative product pages really makes a difference.
- A Blog: Having a blog is a helpful way to have regular SEO content uploaded on your site. Blogs are a great way to engage audiences on topics they care about. The also encourages sharing on social media and establishes backlinks, which builds authority.
- Infographics: Depending on what industry you are in, infographics can be invaluable to consumers. A clear and informative infographic on a single subject can accumulate a lot of page views and links. When creating your infographic it is important that you carefully optimise the rest of the page as the infographic is not readable by search engines.
- Lists: Lists are an easy way to generate content. They are essentially short articles but by using a title along the lines of “7 Ways To De-Stress After Work”, you are making the content easier for a search engine to scan.
- Videos: Generally there are fewer videos than there are pages of text on a subject. This means that it can be easier to rank for competitive keywords if you create a video over written content. Videos are also a great way to attract an audience. Examples of videos could be a tutorial on how to use your products, or an explanation of a process performed by your business. An additional benefit of videos is that you can include a text transcript of your video.
These are just some of the possibilities for SEO content marketing. Choose the right fit for your business or organisation.
Conclusion
If you want to get the most out of your digital marketing, it is vital that you incorporate SEO into your content marketing. Developing your SEO content strategy, meeting your editorial calendar deadlines, and re-optimising old content will ensure that your business gets the most out of your digital presence. Using the tips above, your business can take advantage of all of the benefits of SEO content marketing.