It is not unusual for people to confuse content marketing with SEO and vice versa. There are a few people who believe that the two compete with each other. Well, they couldn’t be more wrong. You cannot get success with either one without the other to support it. Like the two sides of a coin, the two go together and one cannot be separated from the other. But why is that so? What is it that makes them inseparable?
The Discord and the Cohesion
Though SEO and content marketing are two separate entities, they are not disjointed. They have several differences, but they also have many things that are common. Let’s try to understand the factors that keep them together and the ones that keep them from merging into one.
- One focuses on technicalities and is limited in its approach – SEO
- The other is broad and more well-rounded – Content Marketing
Even with these very stark differences in their inherent character, they need to come together to work in the best interest of a marketing plan devised by your SEO services provider. You need content to integrate the techniques of SEO and the content can only be useful when it has been infused with the SEO techniques. The content essentially fulfils the needs of an SEO strategy.
The Needs of SEO and the Role of Content Marketing
The implementation of an SEO strategy has certain perquisites as below. Content marketing has the capability of fulfilling each one of them.
- What Is the Basic Requirement for Application of SEO?
SEO can be applied only when there are blogs, articles, video messages, descriptions of images, infographics etc. All these are nothing but content, so there is an overlap.
- What Is the Key Component of SEO?
SEO is based on the use of relevant keywords for the users of search engines. To rank higher on the search engines, the websites should make strategic and relevant use of keywords. This can be effectively done through content. Content marketing uses keywords to target its audience. This is technically nothing but SEO. Hence, SEO needs content marketing and content marketing utilises SEO. They are interlinked.
- How Do Consumers Reach a Website?
For a constant stream of users to a website, the marketer also depends on backlinks from related pages and websites where the potential consumers might be active. Getting a link from an authority or an influencer is not possible without some content of excellent quality. When a content marketing agency approaches them, they publish it and you get a link to connect people to your website. Do you see how the two are working together yet again? To get good links, you also need good content marketing.
- Technical Optimisation and Content
Several technical aspects, such as title tags, meta tags, descriptions and sitemaps need to be optimised to make it easy for the search engines to crawl your website to find a match between the search keywords and the relevance of a website for a particular query. To optimise these aspects, you once again need content that can be relevant for the said query. In return, the content, for good marketing, needs a platform that is technically sound and can provide the users with a good experience and encourage them to engage with the content. Hence, a ‘give and take’ relation can be seen between the two.
The relationship of content marketing with SEO is quite clear from the instances discussed above. While they are different from each other, it is not practically possible to take one out from the other’s existence. They have been existing together and will continue to do so.
