Content marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO) go hand in hand, though they’re often viewed as being separate disciplines.
For the best results in a modern marketing campaign, they’re best used together – with one feeding the other to get amplified results. SEO expert Marcus Miller has outlined some useful steps to bring it all together.
First, a quick reminder of what content marketing and SEO are.
According to the Content Marketing Institute: “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
For most businesses, the content they promote usually provides some advice, insight or attempts to solve problems that your customers and target audience usually face.
SEO stands for “search engine optimisation.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.
It’s important to rank highly on the big commercial terms, but this is very competitive territory for most SMEs.
How to get your content marketing found on Google
The two main options are to 1. Get your content published on a highly authoritative website where the content will automatically rank well; 2. Increase the authority of your own website and at the same time your published content.
Option 1 is great if you can achieve it by coming up with an informative and well-researched article and getting it published on a highly relevant site.
Option 2 can be more difficult as your site isn’t likely to rank as highly as an established site that has prominence in its space. So, to counter that you need to have your SEO basics up to speed for your own content. Building domain authority for your overall site is crucial, then promoting your articles individually to secure page authority.
Both options are useful. Effective SEO can help achieve you being in front of potential customers without paying per click.
Miller believes that a best approach is to identify well-linked content in your sector, and then create an improved version of that content.
His simple strategy then to drive more traffic to the content on your own site is:
1. Create great content
2. Promote that content with:
- outreach
- digital PR
- guest blogging.
To ensure you improve your visibility in organic search and rank higher in Google, Miller has listed 5 Easy wins for 2018 in SEO.
1. Research and Use Relevant Keywords
2. Optimise Page Titles & Meta Descriptions
3. Optimise Page Content
4. Optimise Your Business Around the Web
5. Build Relevant Links.
Another tip is to register your site with Moz or Google Search Console where there are various tools and reports to improve your rankings in search results.