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How Content Marketing Helps Move the Needle With SEO

 

There is a constant battle within the digital marketing industry for people to define SEO. As of late, SEO has been branded a negative term by people within the industry, but the reality of the situation is that business owners and brands are still looking for SEO as a service. When it comes to effective SEO, there is still an old-school versus new-school way of thinking.  While nothing is actually definitive, due to personal experience, I have found that when effective technical SEO is coupled with content marketing, it can really help move the needle. Let’s look at the different elements of my personal experience with effective SEO, and how content marketing plays into them.

Various Elements of Technical SEO

Meta Tags

In my opinion, meta tags serve two purposes. First, they are written to enhance the user experience when he or she types in a search query into Google. In the eyes of Google, they are supposed to be written to aptly describe the title of the page, and a 155-character snippet is written to offer a short description of the page. From a technical standpoint, they are written with keywords to tell the search engines to find those words so they may rank your website. There MUST be a balance between the two to accomplish a successful marketing campaign. If you make your meta tags too keyword heavy, then even with good rankings, users will not click on your result. If you make your meta tags too user friendly, then you will struggle with the search engines not finding them relevant for the keywords that you’re after.

How Content Marketing Helps

If you’re writing relevant, exciting information on your products or services, then the keywords should happen naturally within the title and description of the page. Keep the content on your website relevant to your industry, and your meta tags will come naturally to best serve the search engines and your users.

Link Building

Link building is truly one of the most highly debated elements of technical SEO, and Google has set many restrictions to link building with algorithm updates Panda and Penguin over the years. Now, all external backlinks that point back to your website need to happen as organically as possible. And, surprisingly enough, one of the primary ways to accomplish that is through content marketing.

How Content Marketing Helps

If you’re generating amazing, relevant, and interesting content on a regular basis, people are going to want to share it. So, maybe they will share it through their social media or their own blog–if they do, that’s creating a natural external backlink to your website. One of the biggest proponents of this type of viral content marketing is BuzzFeed. I’m obsessed with BuzzFeed, and I read it every single day. In fact, companies like Tablespoon, The National MS Society and Budweiser, are all writing promoted content on BuzzFeed, which is an aspect of their content marketing strategy. BuzzFeed has those super easy share buttons that, with one click, allow you to share that piece of content on your Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, Reddit or StumbleUpon.

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Content Optimization

Back in the day, keyword density for content used to be valued as an actual percentage (3-5% if you’re wondering), but now, there is no magic number. In order to be found for a particular keyword, you are going to have to include that keyword within your content. What’s changed is that Google is smart enough to read it without it having to be an exact phrase. Selling sports equipment in Dallas? You don’t have to say Dallas sports equipment in every instance on the page, and you can make it so it’s more organic to the user rather than technical for the search engines.

Another important aspect of content optimization is that once you’ve optimized the content on your website, that’s it. You’re done. Small tweaks here and there can happen, but it’s not going to really move the needle if you’re looking to increase your search engine visibility. This is why it’s so important to add new content.

How Content Marketing Helps

New content gives the search engines more and more reasons to regularly come back and read your site and learn more about your business. Would I still go and read BuzzFeed everyday if they didn’t new content? The answer to that is no.  Also, would I learn about the 21 Struggles Everyone With Long Limbs Will Understand, or learn about the inspiring 17-year old Nigerian Immigrant Who Was Just Accepted to All Eight Ivy League Schools (You go Harold Ekeh!). Adding new content gives users and search engines a reason to come back to your website. It also gives the search engines an opportunity to find your website more and more relevant through your keywords, which allows you to move the needle and increase your rankings/visibility.

I could go on and on with various methods of technical SEO and how content marketing helps play into each one of them, but I feel like you probably get my drift. What I want to know is how does content marketing play into your digital strategy, and how has it helped you get found online?

If you’re interested in SEO / Digital Marketing services in Orlando, Atlanta or Wichita, contact us today!

Best,

Erica