Content Marketing: Why Is It Important for SEO?

(Source: Cognitive SEO)

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Learning how to align your SEO and content teams can help your brand create content optimised for SEO, and in return, boost user engagement and achieve real results. It takes time and effort to rank high organically, be visible and gain traffic. Creating optimised content consistently is the stepping stone to success.

There’s no doubt about it – content marketing is the future. It’s time to adopt the best practices of ‘how to sell without selling’. When in their best form, Content and SEO form a bond that catapults a website to the top of search engine rankings and results.

The Customer-Driven World of Content

We live in a customer-driven world. Users are much more in control of their buying decisions than in past times. The customer journey is dynamic yet more complicated.

Getting customers to convert is about offering greater content experiences across all channels related to the end-user.

What is content?

Content is high quality and helpful information that portrays a story and in a relevant manner with the goal of engagement. Content can be expressed in a variety of formats, from text to images to video.

Content for SEO refers to content that helps your site rank high in search engines – including everything to do with the writing of your website's content to the structuring.

What is content marketing?

As Google puts it, content marketing involves creating and sharing online material that does not explicitly promote a brand but stimulates interest.

Content marketing is focused on using relevant content to drive sales or actions. SEO without content marketing is like a body without a soul.

The Value of SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. While we’re on the topic, it’s pretty well suited to include Google’s Co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s mission from 1998.

With the recent announcement of the removal of third-party cookies from Google chrome, content marketing is the way forward. Well, in terms of organic SEO.

Why is SEO important?

To put it simply, SEO brings brand awareness, customers and strategy to your business. These benefits are essential to keep up with the constant changes in the industry and search engines’ algorithm updates. However, it takes time to learn and implement an effective SEO strategy for your business.

SEO is one of the best ways to ensure your content reaches readers – which is why writing for SEO is so important. Other ways of distributing content and using paid advertising can bring you clients. Still, SEO is a long-time strategy that can maintain your site’s visibility in search engines with less financial investment needed.

To rank high on search engine result pages, your SEO content needs to:

• Be optimised
• Contain natural language
• Understand visitors’ pain points, offer solutions and answer questions

What are the principles of SEO?

Your business needs to stand out in search engine and social media environments. Effective SEO helps establish your brand presence online and develop brand signals – helping your business become recognisable, memorable and trustworthy.

Making it to the top of the rankings is an excellent way to build your brand. After all, if you’ve gained that #1 position, people are more likely to assume that your business is an authoritative source.

Potential customers will assume that your business has something to offer if you’re in the top spot. But it doesn't take long for them to click away if your site doesn’t showcase what you actually offer.

As a part of a managed SEO strategy you should be:

• Promoting relevant and helpful content
• Developing a unique selling point
• Increasing online interaction

Combining Content and SEO

While there are various ways to improve your SEO ranking, from your site’s user experience design to page load speed, content marketing is essential. If you’re looking to optimise your Shopify eCommerce store for SEO, you can read our recent blog post for other tips and tricks beyond content marketing on how to improve your SEO ranking.

Content impacts SEO and rankings. A high Content Performance score correlates with ranking high in Google. Pages with a higher Content Performance score experience higher search positions on results pages.

How to write content for SEO?

We’ve crafted a timeline for writing content for SEO, from keyword research to link building to higher SEO rankings.‍

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1. Keyword Research

Carry our keyword research before you start writing your content. Get an idea of the keywords you want to target, including long-tail keywords too.

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2. Find Your Topic

Build ideas of content that is interesting, will answer peoples questions, and overall keep people engaged. Avoid writing content for oversaturated environments where there is already too much content.

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3. Create a Visual Template

With user experience in mind, craft a template of how you want to present your content. Is it appealing? Is it engaging?

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4. Use Relevant Images, Audio or Videos

You want to ensure your content doesn’t bore your visitors. Include images, audio or videos to keep your visitors on the page for longer.

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5. Build Internal Links

Make use of internal linking. You want to link your content back to relevant areas of your site, which helps to establish your site’s architecture and spread link equity.

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6. Start Writing

Put your ideas into words and get going. Once you’ve done the research and planning, start writing your content.

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7. Optimise for Mobile

You want your content to transform across any device. With the increase in smartphone users, ensure your content is optimised for mobiles and tablets, not just desktops.

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8. Share Your Piece

With all said and done, you want to utilise your platforms and spread the word about your content.

The Future of SEO is Content

With a rundown on what content marketing is and the value of SEO, you should be well convinced by now that content is the way forward. Use the timeline for writing SEO content as a basis, and you should start to see success from there.

The Content Marketing Funnel is a great guide to help you move from writing content for awareness and SEO to writing content for conversion sales.

When you’ve got content marketing on lock, look at optimising other aspects of your store for SEO. Google has now made site speed a ranking factor for SEO, so that should be your next priority.

Our Digital marketing agency is highly experienced with copywriting for SEO. Get in touch and we can help you create a plan to drive results.