A combined content marketing and SEO strategy are the perfect ingredients for the most impactful digital marketing results. They work together like magic by driving more organic traffic and establishing authority, trust, and loyalty. Let alone content marketing take over without SEO; you will never receive considerable effectiveness. Similarly, considering only SEO without understanding its connection with content will unfortunately make no sense!

But, when you implement content marketing for SEO, you will generate agreeable outcomes, enabling you to beat the digital combination. SEO will drive you relevant organic traffic, while content marketing helps to build customer loyalty by demonstrating thought leadership.

According to HubSpot, companies publishing blogs receive 55% more traffic and have 97% more backlinks . It means that SEO content writing is a potential digital marketing tool to attract audiences since it nurtures their interests and engagement, gradually building trust.

Research by DemandGenReport concluded that 55% of buyers now rely more on content research before making purchase decisions Thus, undeniably content marketing can attract new traffic and retain existing audience while boosting your website’s visibility score.

Nonetheless, content marketing is a focused approach. It is the creation and distribution of relevant, valuable, consistent, and high-quality content for SEO. We will discuss in this blog how content marketing and SEO proffer an excellent symbiotic relationship through various strategies. So, let’s explore it in depth.   

Content Marketing Strategies for SEO

Before dwelling on the strategies, let’s have a quick look at the basics of SEO and content marketing.

What is SEO?

SEO or search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website to make it search-engine friendly for crawling and indexing. These are the two integral processes involved in search result ranking. Through SEO, you can improve the visibility of your website to reach your target audience.

What is Content Marketing?

The process of creation, publication, and distribution of content over various online platforms is known as content marketing. It includes blogs, articles, emails, newsletters, eBooks, videos, podcasts, and case studies. The fundamental goal of content marketing is to communicate relevant and useful information to your audience. It helps to nurture audience interests and engagement to attract new leads and retain the old ones.

When we speak of content marketing for SEO, it indicates the strategic implementation of content to meet the SEO goals- website rankings, visibility, organic traffic, audience engagement, and conversions. So, how to promote content for SEO? What’s included in the checklist? Let’s find out.

• Keyword Research- The journey of SEO content writing begins with keyword research. Keywords are the words or phrases that are popularly used in search queries by the searchers. The higher the search volume, the more competitive the keyword. Identifying these keywords and using them strategically in your content makes it more valuable, informative, and relevant.

Keyword research is one of the significant content marketing strategies for website ranking. It provides you with valuable insights into the queries that your target audience is actually looking for. Targeting such keywords helps your content rank higher in search engines while driving more traffic and increasing visibility. Focus on what the audience wants to discover instead of what you want to tell. It will improve inbound traffic.

• Content Planning- To create impactful content marketing for SEO, you must define a plan. Your task of content marketing does not end at creating content; you have to schedule when to publish what content so that there is consistency. To stay connected with audiences and keep them engaged, consistency is crucial. Also, there are two significant factors you must consider while creating your content- understanding your target audience and recognizing search intent.

When you understand the needs and preferences of your target audience, you can deliver more relevant and specific content, which will automatically boost engagement. Based on search intent, there are four types of content- informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional. When you implement these practices, you can create engaging content for SEO.  

• Content Types- The top three types of content are videos, blogs, and images. So, when you focus on creating content that attracts more traffic, you have increased chances of ranking high on the SERPs. However, every content type has a distinct pattern. In other words, your blogs and videos cannot have a similar structure. You have to employ a precise approach for the most impactful results.

We have listed the best practices for SEO content creation for different types of content. Check them out:

Videos:

• Choose the right hosting platform
• Create an engaging video thumbnail
• Use video transcripts
• Insert keywords in the title and description
• Embed your video
• Do not embed the same video on multiple pages
• Make your video the highlight of your page
• Your page content must be relevant to the video

Blogs:

• Choose a topic based on search intent
• Write an eye-catching title
• Optimize title tag and meta description
• Strategically place keywords
• Include captivating CTA
• Mention author

Images:

• Choose the appropriate format
• Select compression rate
• Optimize file names and image title
• Include captions
• Use Alt text
• Add image structured data
• The content must complement the images
• Insert site maps

• Link Building- Content marketing and link building go hand-in-hand. There are basically two types of link building strategies- internal linking and backlinks. Internal linking is the process of hyperlinking to other pages on your website. It encourages audience engagement while keeping them on your site. On the other hand, backlinks are external links that connect your page to other websites. The primary goal of backlinks is to drive traffic from other sources and establish your website’s credibility and authoritativeness. Businesses incorporating link building have a 45% higher success rate than those that don’t .

Both internal links and external links are essential elements of SEO content writing. They contribute to your website’s architecture and promote its visibility across various platforms. Link building strategy improves readability and navigation, which are pivotal for boosting audience engagement while reducing bounce rate. Additionally, you have better chances of lead generation and conversions. 

Content Promotion to Build Authority

Now you know how to write content that ranks in Google. But what to do next? After creating high-quality content, you need to promote it through various channels to go that extra mile! Content promotion enables distribution and amplification of content to enhance visibility and audience reach. It helps you to achieve your marketing goals, like creating brand awareness, driving more traffic, increasing lead generation, or encouraging sales.

You can opt for multiple approaches to promote your content. We have discussed the most influential content marketing trends for 2024 and beyond that help in effective promotion. This section will be really interesting!

• Social Sharing- An estimated 4.9 billion people use social million, and it is constantly on the rise. Around 77% of businesses use social media to reach target consumers . Do the numbers sound intriguing? Well, one of the most effective ways to promote your content is via social media channels. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube are the prominent social platforms offering a variety of content promotion. Whether you consider news feeds, posts, or paid campaigns, these platforms can expose your brand to a vast audience, improving awareness and reputation.

Considering content marketing strategies for startups, social sharing can be your ultimate weapon to capture the attention of your target audiences. Undoubtedly, repeated visibility on such platforms generates brand recognition, which is ultimately responsible for building trust and authority.

• Influencer Marketing- How many times have you seen an Instagram reel where an influencer is promoting a brand or service? Many times, we guess! Today, half of the millennials trust influencer’s product recommendations. What is influencer marketing? Influencers are individuals with a long list of followers on social platforms. They are not celebrities but people with impactful digital presence. Collaborating with such influencers to promote your brand, product(s), or service(s) can help in targeted content distribution.

It is one of the prominent content marketing examples for SEO that is currently taking the Internet by storm! You can ask an influencer for quotes in your blogs or directly promote your brand through a short video or product description. Influencers charge a fee, but it is much less compared to the ROI.

• Email Marketing- Hyper-personalization is what the recent SEO content writing focuses on. It means sharing content based on individual preferences to enhance user experience and stay connected with existing clients. Email marketing is one such strategy that allows you to create and send emails with ultimate personalized content. 87% of businesses have reported success through email marketing. Therefore, email marketing is crucial for business growth. You can establish better client interaction and keep them informed about new product launches, festive discounts, etc. It is indeed a great way to keep your target audiences motivated.

For the best email marketing results, implement these practices:

• Subscriber segmentation
• Create optimized lead magnets
• Employ automation
• Create a welcome series
• Personalize your emails
• Focus on mobile-friendliness
• Choose the ideal time
• Include the email reply address
• Use email analytics

• Guest Blogging- Finally, let’s talk about blog posts for SEO. Guest blogging is an ethical and sustainable way to improve your SEO performance. You can build high-quality backlinks, driving potential leads from other reputed sources. Writing a blog for another relevant website allows you to link that site to your website. Hence, you receive rich organic traffic possessing a higher potential for conversions.

As a powerful content marketing tactic, guest blogging has come a long way. The blogs and articles include your byline, and often it is highlighted by the website’s editor. Isn’t it amazing when your blog is published in other places? So, how do you implement guest blogging?

• Define and set your goals
• Choose topics that will help you accomplish your business goals
• Determine reputed guest blogging sites.
• Pitch your ideas
• Write your blog post
• Track the results 

Track Content Performance

So, content creation, planning, and promotion are done. Now, it is time to track content performance for SEO. It is unarguably the most significant step in the overall process. You will always want to compare your results since the time you implemented your content marketing strategy.

Tracking performance is also beneficial to make adjustments for improvement. It provides you with an insight into what is working and what is not. There are metrics to monitor content performance, which are quantitative and qualitative data points. These metrics help you evaluate the effectiveness of content marketing for SEO. So, what are these metrics?

• Organic search traffic
• Number of views
• Keyword rankings
• Impressions
• Backlinks
• Brand mentions
• Traffic sources
• Conversion rate
• Return on investment
• Growth of followers or subscribers
• Average engagement rate
• Average engagement time
• Social media engagements
• Click-through rate

These are the principal metrics used to measure visibility, track your audience source, evaluate conversions and sales, and analyze engagement.

Bonus Tip: Measure the ROI of content marketing for SEO by subtracting content marketing revenue from content marketing expenditure divided by spend. For example, if you have spent $1000 and earned $1,500, your ROI is ($1500-$1000) /$1000) x 100= 50%

Thus, your content marketing ROI is 50%.

Calculating ROI is essential to determine where you must put your investment and secure buy-ins from stakeholders. 

Wrapping Up!

To achieve the best results from SEO content writing, you must have a straightforward approach and a clear insight into your marketing goals, target audiences, and distribution channels. Creating high-quality content and sharing it is hard work. It requires a team of spontaneous writers and SEO experts. Content marketing alone cannot do wonders until you combine it with SEO. Content without SEO will be far less visible, with less engagement, fewer reads, and insignificant conversions.

Similarly, SEO with thin content will be uninspiring and attract less traffic. Blending the two becomes your secret weapon to a successful business. While SEO attracts traffic, content encourages lead generation. When you combine both of them, you will have audiences coming back for more!

So, are you ready to plan your content marketing for SEO?