Many people have bought into the notion that search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing are two separate things.
Nope!
Maybe that was true a few years ago, but no more. The two are so intertwined today that they really can’t be separated. A smart marketer now thinks about how he or she use these tools to complement each other. Let’s check out seven tips for ensuring your content and SEO play nice together:
1) Integrate keywords naturally (but with SEO in the back of your mind!) – Gone are the days of keyword stuffing your way to top rankings, but they still play a vital role. Be sure you use your primary keyword in titles, in the front of your content, and a couple of other strategic places.
2) Don’t ignore on-page SEO – Put on your SEO hat to make sure that items like SEO title tags, Meta descriptions, URLs, H1 tags and image Alt tags are in place and correctly rendered. Although not as important as in the past, on-page moves like this still have impact.
3) Write for your readers! – These days Google is all about satisfying searcher intent. This means you need to write for your audience, and minimize technical SEO. Since it’s no longer necessary to hit X amount of keyword density on your page, that should free you up to write what you need to!
4) Get mobile ready – More than half of all traffic is now served to a mobile device of some sort, which means it is crucial that you make sure your pages are mobile-friendly.
5) Be social – Cross promote your content on social media and by all means employ social sharing buttons on your pages.
6) Utilize visual content – People process images 60,000 times faster than text, so it only makes sense to use as much visual content as possible. It also helps average time on page, which IS a ranking factor.
7) Use related verbiage – In Google’s quest to serve up the best, most authoritative content they can, they are on the lookout for content that relates expert verbiage on the topic. Don’t resort to a bunch of jargon for jargon’s sake, but by all means make sure you use appropriate lingo for your field of expertise.
Hopefully, you now understand better why SEO and Content marketing, far from being two separate digital disciplines, are joined at the metaphorical hip. Put these seven techniques to work the right way and get ready to be wowed by the branding and marketing synergy you create for your business!