You’ve discovered SEO content writing and that it can be a useful strategy to help you rank on Google. They’re actually comprised of two parts: content writing and SEO. No shit Sherlock, I hear you say. Well OK, how much do you know about their relationship? How does one help the other? Are there considerations to making them work even better together than what you might already know?
Let’s Describe the Relationship Between Content Marketing and SEO
SEO doesn’t work without content. Content is pointless if no one sees it. If you create problem-solving content that’s been optimized for search engines, you’ll not only get the traffic to your blog that you so sorely desire, it will also lead to revenue. That’s right, people will actually pay you once they read your content… IF it gives them the confidence that it will help them solve their problems.
The relationship between content marketing and SEO is essentially symbiotic. Each can exist without the other, but each is better with the other. Artificial Intelligence can create content in bulk, but if it doesn’t consider the real human situations that drive people to search for that content, people won’t engage with it. Similarly, there are robots that can seemingly game Google’s SERPs to rank at the top without investing into a good content strategy. Does it last? Never. The connection between these two is humanity.
Content Marketing Best Practices
Consider this a primer on content marketing best practices. There are more complete essays on the interwebs that can assist, but hopefully this brief list will put you in the right direction
- consider structure and format: what sort of content does your target market actually enjoy? Videos? Images? TikToks? Written articles? Interviews? Is there an opportunity to get into a different format that no one else is currently doing?
- make it better than the first guy: in the general sense, if you make your content the same as the person who’s ranking number one for your keyword but make it better, i.e. longer, more content rich, better structured, etc. It will rank higher eventually.
- rich media is always better: in general, if you have things like videos, audio or even just images, it’s better than words alone. That’s because Google knows that these can act as better engagement points than just text. People relate to people better they can see and hear.
SEO Best Practices
Similarly, this three-pointer is not the be-all of SEO. Just some big tips from my experience so far.
- Long-tail is better than short: long-tail keywords are an opportunity to get your foot in the door with Google if you’ve never considered doing SEO properly before. Write good content optimized for long keywords and eventually, you might get to the shorter, more general ones.
- buying intent is better than browsing: you should always be trying to rank for buying intent keywords. They tend to also be long-tail, but if you want results early, look for keywords that have “review”, “versus”, “comparison” in them, as it means people have wallet in hand and are looking to buy.
- play the long game: this last tip is the most important of all. SEO is not a silver bullet. It won’t happen overnight. It won’t happen in a month. Reasonably, if you’re doing the right things, give it at least six months. SEO is the classical exponential growth graph: for a long time, next to nothing then BAM! Speed grows, as do rankings. It’s worth it, play the long game.
So that’s the relationship between content writing and SEO. Hopefully those three-pointers at the end have helped as well. Anything I didn’t cover that you want me to? Let me know in the comments, I’ll be happy to have a look!