As the internet captures more of daily life with rapid advancements in digital and mobile technology, the potential for businesses to thrive online is greater than ever. With digital marketing, they can effectively reach customers beyond their local area and satisfy—or even create—international demand.
People should consider having SEO (search engine optimization) and content marketing hand in hand. After all, they’re crucial for attaining the best results in audience reach, brand awareness, and organic traffic.
How Two Digital Strategies Work in Tandem
The umbrella of digital marketing evolves and expands in accordance with digital technology. Influencer and viral marketing, for example, highlight the rise of social media and online trending topics.
Yet before smartphones and Instagram were a common sight, SEO and content marketing were already helping businesses find their footing online — and they’re still important today.
Why? Not only do they share the end goal of attracting more customers and improving awareness, but they each perform better when the other does as well.
Good content encourages readers to share links on social media and email, which improves off-page SEO. Consequently, well-executed SEO ensures that the content finds its target audience in the first place.
Valuable content that gets no clicks is wasteful. The same goes for otherwise highly optimized pieces that don’t satisfy their readers’ search intent, contributing to a high bounce rate. SEO and content marketing efforts should not be conducted separately. Instead, a collaborative approach is ideal.
Maximizing Potential Reach and Awareness
After establishing the synergy between the two old (yet reliable) fields of digital marketing, how exactly can people utilize SEO and content marketing? Here are a few simple tips:
Create Share-Worthy Content
As mentioned earlier, posts that are spread around social media benefit from better off-page SEO rankings. This tells Google and Bing that visitors actually like what they see on the website page and that they aren’t misclicks.
But don’t feel pressured — shareworthy doesn’t necessarily mean lengthy, formal, and complex. Users aren’t always looking for informative long-form articles. Sometimes, they seek entertaining and relaxing content.
With the prominence of TikTok videos, IG Reels, and viral posts on X, digital marketers now know that short-form content is a potent tool for promotion and awareness. These bite-sized pieces of content come in various forms: pop-culture quizzes (think of BuzzFeed), multi-media memes, and videos.
Including short-form content in marketing projects benefits everyone. Writers and other content producers spend less time on each piece. Businesses can distribute them more frequently online to keep social media accounts active and engaged with followers.
Users, especially millennials and Gen Z, love learning and being entertained by the latest memes and reels. Clean and fun infographics can introduce century-old companies in a whole new light to younger audiences.
Lastly, SEO professionals know that short-form content is perfect for mobile viewing: They need less bandwidth and screen real estate to load properly. Also, they entice visitors to browse other compact content on the website, increasing the retention rate.
Find the Right Keywords (They Still Matter!)
Although keywords are no longer hailed as the defining element in SEO, they are still valuable.
Google goes through billions of search queries daily as users type keywords in the search box. Every big platform today, from Amazon to YouTube, has a search engine for businesses to use.
However, don’t fret about using the exact long-tail keyword a specific number of times for every post.
Google knows when a post is merely forcing keywords in. Plus, it’s clever enough to recommend content to users with search queries that are only similar to one’s actual target keywords. Create purposeful content (whether evergreen or topical) and let the keywords flow naturally whenever possible.
Use SEO and Content Analysis Tools
Digital marketers don’t have to carry all the burdens by themselves. Content creation and SEO require keeping a ton of factors in check. It’s only reasonable to use apps, plugins, and other software to quickly analyze multiple elements.
Apart from reviewing the written content for its readability and tone of voice, the apps can offer suggestions upon checking one’s keyword density, meta description, and HTML tags.
Essentially, these tools care about how humans and robots (search engines) respond to content.
SEO and content marketing are tried-and-tested methods for raising awareness and engagement among internet users. Whether for an Etsy store or a corporate website, these digital marketing disciplines will deliver optimal results for businesses that understand their interconnected nature.
