Visibility is key to improving awareness of your products and services. To build this visibility, people need to see your brand repeatedly in search results, on social media or in their inbox. With 64.4% of the global population using the internet and 59.9% on social media, online platforms come with a lot of promise to get your brand in front of people. However, many other companies compete for customer attention, and there is a lot of noise to cut through and achieve visibility.
Content marketing and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) are two strategies that can improve visibility. Content, such as eBooks, blogs and case studies, gives your company valuable information to share, and SEO puts your content on the map. What is the relationship between content marketing and SEO? Without SEO, even the most well-crafted content can go unnoticed. Without good content, your SEO efforts may be in vain.
What is SEO?
SEO refers to practices that improve a website’s visibility in search engine results. Google, which remains one of the most used search engines, has developed its algorithm in the last 25 years so that users find information most relevant to their search query when searching for content. SEO is necessary for improving your website’s chances of appearing high in search results and getting organic traffic.
When Google ranks content to serve users, it leverages factors such as keyword relevance, website quality, page speed and links to external sources. SEO includes these factors to increase a page’s value and ranking in search engines.
I will not spend too much time on SEO here because Resonate’s CMO has written about it previously, and I recommend reading that blog.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing focuses on creating and sharing valuable content to educate your target audience and drive an action, such as downloading a gated resource or contacting the business to start the sales cycle.
Content marketing focuses on providing relevant content and educating the audience rather than giving them a sales pitch. It builds trust and credibility with the audience over time.
Good content marketing strategies use diverse content types. Using blogs, eBooks, videos, infographics, case studies (and so on) gives your audience various ways to engage with your brand. For example, someone might find your blog via Google and then download your eBook.
How does SEO inform content marketing?
SEO informs your content marketing efforts in the following ways:
Choosing the content’s angle
You might have a great idea for a topic you want to write about, but you cannot write one long blog covering every facet of that topic. Moreover, if you want people to find your blog, targeting specific queries is best. So, SEO informs content marketing by giving you an angle to take on a specific topic.
By discerning the information your target audience most seeks, you can write to those topics, deliver relevant content and increase the likelihood of engagement. However, while search demand is important, balancing what users are searching for and what genuinely caters to their needs ensures your content remains accessible and valuable.
On-page SEO
SEO brings somewhat of a scientific approach to content marketing. To improve the chances of a page ranking highly, you need to optimise the title, subheadings, meta description and, of course, infuse an organic balance of the target keyword into the copy. Please note that the SEO element should not overtake the content’s quality.
SEO also requires well-structured pages, which generate two benefits. By organising content logically, using headers, and maintaining a clear hierarchy, crawlers can more easily interpret and index a webpage’s content. Similarly, readers benefit from a coherent structure, allowing for easier navigation and comprehension.
How does SEO support content marketing?
SEO brings people to your website. Content marketing keeps them there.
Improving brand visibility
High search rankings support efforts to boost your brand’s reputation. People click on Google’s top result an average of 27.6% of the time. Position 1 is also ten times more likely to receive clicks compared to the page in position 10. What does this mean? Even if someone clicks past Google’s first page, their chances of clicking on your page significantly diminish.
It is not enough to write content for SEO; you need authoritative content that cements your brand’s trustworthiness. Your organisation demonstrates expertise and thought leadership by producing well-researched, informative, and accurate content. Pairing this with evergreen content — that remains relevant over time — ensures sustained visibility, allowing your brand to remain in the spotlight and continually attract new audiences.
Bringing organic traffic to your site
There is little point in creating content that people will not see. According to Hubspot’s latest State of Marketing report, web traffic is the second most important metric for measuring content marketing success, behind sales.
SEO increases the amount of organic traffic to your site. By understanding and targeting keywords your audience frequently searches for, you can create content that directly addresses their queries. Unlike paid traffic, which stops once advertising spending ceases, organic traffic is sustainable and cost-effective in the long run. Furthermore, users often trust organic results more, seeing them as unbiased and genuine compared to advertised content.
Conclusion
The relationship between content marketing and SEO gives us a structured way of creating meaningful content that drives thought leadership and brand visibility. SEO is the technical side that optimises website elements and aligns content with search engine algorithm requirements. Content marketing delivers value to the audience by providing relevant information and establishing brand authority.
SEO supports content marketing efforts by becoming a starting point to find different content angles and causing content creators to optimise or change part of the content. When done right, SEO and content marketing can improve brand visibility and bring organic traffic to your site.
Resonate can build your SEO and content marketing strategy
We are a full-stack B2B marketing firm. Part of our marketing strategy includes content that aligns with target keywords and SEO best practices to help your solutions rank on Google. We specialise in building various content types, from blogs to eBooks, to create a content library showcasing your thought leadership and expertise.
Please reach out to us if you want to begin marketing your company. We are experts in optimising SEO to drive leads and sales and believe in taking a strategic approach to getting the best results. Visit our Marketing page for more information on what we deliver.
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