A common concern, or rather a mistake, nowadays is that many marketers and business owners struggle to decide:
Which tactic will help them grow their online presence further, SEO or content marketing?
There are tons of surveys and research over the web that show the importance of both:
- Proper content marketing leads to 2000% increase in blog traffic and boosts revenue by 40%
- 70-80% of consumers ignore paid ads and focus on organic results
- Search traffic beats every other channel in acquiring visitors for a business
All of this information leads to one thing: businesses must use both SEO and content marketing strategies to improve their website traffic.
This has a lot to do with consumer habits and preferences shifting greatly during the last years:
- Consumers are smarter and more careful now when they buy products/services online
- You need high quality content to rank up on search engines
- Keywords are no longer enough to achieve higher ranks on SERPs
This is why the two tactics, while being separate things, need to merge together and be leveraged equally, to produce satisfying results.
Don’t Do SEO for SEO’s Sake
When you think about merging SEO and content marketing effectively, it’s important not to focus on older SEO tactics like keyword and link stuffing. Your main focus should be on creating relevant, valuable, high quality content for your audience, which will be backed up by SEO.
This is why you need to use keywords in your text naturally, without creating an impression that you just try to get people to your website. If you are ever faced with the choice of which one to compromise keywords or quality, quality has to win, every time.
Create Wikipedia Content
Depending on the industry, marketers can find tons of topics that will be a good fit for Wikipedia articles. Wiki articles are great because the website is focused on delivering the most accurate and relevant information to readers and thus, ranks higher (usually the first or second result) on SERPs.
If you struggle to find topics on what to write on, here is something to think about: Wikipedia deletes around 1000 articles each day (mostly because it’s old and irrelevant now). This means for that there is a ton of wiki content out there that is being left with “dead links” all over.
You can just find those dead links, see which ones are relevant to your industry, pick a topic and set things right.
Focus on Evergreen Content
Evergreen refers to a piece of content that doesn’t lose value overtime. This means that readers will find it useful today, and it will still be relevant in a few years from now. This way, your content won’t be losing search rankings on Google and your investments into producing high quality content will continue to generate more and more visitors overtime.
In an effort to find evergreen topics, here are two tactics that work well:
- Use google search for common keywords in your industry and look at the result pages. You are looking for content that has been published 3-5 years ago, but since it’s still relevant, it will be on the first page of search results. This is how you will identify evergreen content and get an idea on the topics you want to choose.
- Update your content if its statistics heavy. Whenever you create content that focuses on statistics like this one “Google’s 200 Ranking Factors”, update your content from time to time. These kind of topics evolve overtime and you can maintain higher search rankings if you constantly follow the latest trends and update your stuff.
Combining SEO and content marketing is one of the best ways to grow your website traffic and attract high quality (not just random!) visitors and leads.
Start with the tactics mentioned above and don’t forget that online marketing is an ever evolving thing: keep a constant lookout for tactics that will help advance your business even further.
This is a contribution by Charles Dearing.
Philip V Ariel says
October 26, 2016 at 11:48 pmHi Erik,
Nice to be here again!
Wonderful share by Charles.
Indeed these are new this to follow.
That wikie thing is really a wonderful thing tho note. 1000 deletion per day.
That is really amazing.
Great points shared.
Thanks Charles and Erik for the share.
Best Regards
Philip
Erik Emanuelli says
November 7, 2016 at 11:27 amThanks for stopping by, Phil.
Jane says
October 27, 2016 at 2:56 amHey Charles,
You’ve hit it! I especially love your first point – don’t do it for the sake of doing it. This is very important.
Anything you don’t do naturally is unnatural. Anything you force into the system is unnatural. And Google hates unnatural when it comes to SEO.
Have evergreen, useful content on your site definitely helps with rankings.
Great points!
Jane.
Erik Emanuelli says
November 7, 2016 at 11:28 amThanks for sharing your views, Jane. 🙂
Have a good one.
Ravi Chahar says
October 27, 2016 at 6:52 amHey Erik,
I totally agree with you. People need to create the content which is evergreen. Don’t just look to the trends and write a small post.
SEO would be better if you craft your content with the quality. No doubt that the quality always wins over quantity.
Thanks for sharing with us.
~Ravi
Erik Emanuelli says
November 7, 2016 at 11:28 amThanks for commenting, Ravi.
Sherab Tenzin says
October 27, 2016 at 11:13 amHi Charles & Erik,
Couldn’t help but found myself loving your point, ‘Don’t do SEO for the sake of doing’. I feel quality value contents with SEO will reach far.
And creating wikipedia contents, it appears quite sexy. Thanks for the share!
Erik Emanuelli says
November 7, 2016 at 11:28 amThank you, Sherab.
Luke says
November 15, 2016 at 5:46 pmProducing content should always be for the better of your website, not purely for SEO. When you make content purely for SEO it loses its authenticity.
Erik Emanuelli says
November 16, 2016 at 10:27 amIt’s best to write for both readers and SEO. In other words, quality content for the users, and keywords optimized.
Adeel Sami says
November 16, 2016 at 6:34 amHello, Erik!
Good shot on the post ideas grabbing out of the Wikipedia! So interesting! 🙂
Reading is the good part to find some nice ideas. You may really find some good piece of writing on by reading the content on the good blogs who are actually regular with the content.
And, I too agree with not doing SEO for the only sake of SEO.
If we are not personal and enjoying the writing, it is not going to work at all.
So, great advises (as always), buddy! 🙂
See me often!
~ Adeel
Erik Emanuelli says
November 16, 2016 at 10:29 amHi Adeel,
glad you enjoyed the tips here.
Thank you so much for visiting and leaving your thoughts.
Sathish Arumugam says
December 2, 2016 at 4:28 pmThe points you shared was fantastic, and I totally agree with your points. And I experience the output that a quality content with SEO will surely reach a right level. Content changing and content working are not only for SEO alone, but the first thing is also to make our website better then only we need to go with SEO.
Erik Emanuelli says
December 5, 2016 at 10:37 amThanks for sharing your views, Sathish.
I appreciate your positive feedback on this post.
Haider Raza says
December 8, 2016 at 6:58 pmhey ,
thanks for the awesome tips for seo content marketing. this article is very helpful for me. wiki content and deadlink trick is very useful for me.
Erik Emanuelli says
December 12, 2016 at 11:56 amGlad you liked the tips here, Haider.
Keen says
January 21, 2017 at 6:15 amGreat post about content marketing. I definitely see how content marketers may have trouble adjusting to SEO, but, still, it’s a worthwhile practice and good experience to have under your belt. Nice work! Thanks so much for your input!
Erik Emanuelli says
January 21, 2017 at 2:05 pmThanks Keen.
Eric says
May 4, 2018 at 7:10 amGreate Articles about content markeing! Thank for your usefull information