Search Engine Optimization

What is the Relationship Between SEO and Content Marketing?

“Content is king!’

What was once a short slogan that emphasized the importance of businesses uploading helpful content to their websites has morphed into the foundation of most digital marketing strategies. Why is content important for the success of a business website?

Ask Google.

In the early days of Google’s march towards search engine dominance, the company changed its website rating algorithm every couple of months. Over the past few years, Google has changed its algorithm an astounding 500 to 600 times a year. Despite the incredible number of changes to its algorithm, one thing has remained constant.

Google values content that helps website visitors solve problems.

Does this mean Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is just another trendy digital marketing term that has vanished in cyberspace? The answer is no because SEO and content marketing can work together to boost Google’s search engine results for your business.

SEO and content marketing appear to have nothing in common in the world of digital marketing. However, when you blend the two concepts together, you get the same type of magic that was created when Reese’s decided to blend together chocolate and peanut butter.

Overview of SEO

When most business owners hear the term SEO, they tend to throw their hands into the air to send out an SOS. Through the years, SEO has become as convoluted of a term that you will find in the digital marketing industry.

SEO is simply about optimizing the website content you have uploaded for Google’s all-powerful search engine. Some of the Google rules to follow include using the right keywords sparingly and adding links to other helpful online resources. You also want other websites to link back to your business website.

Overview of Content Marketing

Helpful content that provides solutions to difficult problems comes in many forms, such as articles, blog posts, and guest posts. For example, a business website that offers sporting goods can increase traffic by uploading helpful content that describes how to choose the best tent or how to string a taut basketball rim net.

Content marketing helps your business build the trust required to attract visitors to your website.

Relationship Between SEO and Content Marketing

Because of Google’s frequent changes to its algorithm, SEO has turned into adaptive SEO. Successful digital marketers have to adapt to the rapid changes implemented by the search engine giant. Nonetheless, SEO and content marketing have developed a relationship that can boost awareness for your brand.

Look at content marketing as the background color of a painting, while SEO is the brush that creates the details that grab Google’s attention.

Content

SEO requires content to unleash its powers. The content can be in written form like a blog post or a video that describes how to do something. You upload your content, and then you sprinkle it with a little SEO for better search engine results.

Keywords

Google has dramatically changed how it views keywords. Once used often in a piece of content, keywords are now more about location in content than the number of keywords that are added to the content. Keywords represent the words or terms that people use to find the information they need. For the sporting goods owners, keywords integrated into content can include words and terms like camping, baseball glove, and hunting jacket.

Backlinks

Although backlinks are strictly about SEO, you cannot expect to get them unless your content is superior in your operating niche. Business websites receive backlinks because they provide helpful information for the customers of other businesses. This answers the question, “Which came first, content or SEO.”

The answer is content.

Improve Your SEO Marketing with Better Content

When they built the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, they did not start at the top. The engineers and architects working on the multiple-year project laid a strong foundation before slowly adding the pieces that eventually led to the top of the structure.

The foundation for your digital marketing strategy is presenting helpful content that builds trust with the visitors to your website. Effective SEO gets your content ranked higher in Google’s search engine.

Learn more about the relationship between SEO and content marketing, as well as how to develop a strategy that uses both digital marketing tactics by contacting WSI to schedule a free consultation.

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