A guide to maximising the benefits of content marketing with SEO, and how you can create relevant content that increases your visibility and attracts more organic traffic.
Ieva Treiliha
On the WeMarket blog, you can find many articles about various SEO disciplines, often focusing on more technical SEO topics. For example, Free SEO with Google Search Console, 3 SEO mistakes you can identify with Screaming Frog, SEO for Images, Voice Search and more. This time, I want to talk a little more about SEO and creativity.
Almost all of us have heard the phrase “Content is king”. This simply means that it is more important than ever to create valuable content for your customers.
SEO is often seen as a very technical and geeky marketing discipline, but the truth is that SEO is both technical and creative in nature.
SEO combines the best of both worlds, so while you are conducting keyword analysis and website audits, it is just as important to dedicate time to creating quality content for your customers.
Content marketing can take many different forms – guides, tips & tricks, reviews, tests, video guides, comparisons and much more. With content marketing, the sky’s the limit.
Content marketing is a slightly different approach to marketing than what many are used to. Typically, when we work on new campaigns, the focus is on sales, ROI and traffic, but in content marketing, the main focus is on building customer loyalty.
Customer loyalty goes hand-in-hand with increased sales. That’s why it makes sense to invest time and other resources in content marketing to create material that adds value for your customers.
High-quality content demonstrates to your customers that you are passionate about your products and know what you are talking about. Quality content can be seen as a sample of what you and your products have to offer.
We have created an infographic about content marketing, the different channels and types of content you can use as part of your marketing strategy:
You can also open it in PDF format here.
SEO and content marketing may sound like two different worlds, but they are not. Yes, SEO is a more technical approach to marketing, while content marketing is more holistic, but it is difficult to succeed with one without the other.
To get your product or service to rank number 1 on Google, you use SEO. It is impossible to do SEO without content. To rank in the search results, you need words, articles, blog posts, keywords, and content on your website, etc.
To appear in search results and optimise these positions, you must have content on your website. To build links and conduct press outreach, you must also have content that is worth publishing.
When you do SEO, you typically select some focus keywords and work hard to get them to the top of the search results.
With content marketing, you can support and strengthen your keyword rankings. By creating blog posts, guides, and videos on relevant topics, you help your focus keywords achieve higher positions in the search results.
A major part of SEO is link building. Link building gives your website credibility, as Google sees incoming links to your site as recommendations. If many other websites link to your site, it signals that you have valuable content or offer quality products.
The strongest links, those that provide the most value, come from reputable, authoritative sites with relevant content in the same category as your website. But how do you get these links? you may be wondering. By having valuable content on your website!
With content marketing, you can create content that people want to view, read, share, and link to. When you produce something new, exciting, and relevant to your industry, others will want to engage with your content. By creating valuable material and conducting outreach to other media, websites, and blogs within your sector, you have the opportunity to gain links from strong sites.
We’ve covered why creativity and SEO go hand-in-hand, but how do you come up with ideas for quality content? Here are a few tips to help you get started:
To create the most effective content for your target audience, you need to know who they are. You may have some great ideas for blog posts and Facebook updates, but what if your audience is primarily active on Instagram? It would be a waste of resources if your excellent blog posts or video guides do not reach your intended audience.
To create content that delivers results, you need to know who your target audience is, what their so-called pains & gains are, and where you can best reach them.
Discover who your audience is by using Google Analytics. For example, you can use a simple demographic analysis to see the age and gender of your visitors:
(e.g. A)
(e.g. B)
Once you’ve identified those who interact with and show the most interest in your brand and/or products, you can begin to explore how to communicate most effectively with this demographic group.
In example A, we see a young audience, aged 25-34, almost evenly split between men and women. In example B, the audience is almost exclusively women aged 45 and above.
These are two very different audiences and advertising to each will be most effective using different methods and on different channels.
Before you start working on your content, you should investigate which media your target audience uses most, and what type of content works best on those platforms. You can also combine different approaches – if your audience mainly uses Instagram, you can still create a blog post on your website, but for example, use Instagram Stories to communicate it to your audience.
The next part of the process is content production itself. What are your audience’s interests? What needs do they have? What challenges can you help them solve? What does your target group value? All these questions will help you come up with content ideas that will deliver value to your customers. Examples could be “10 tips to refresh your autumn wardrobe without buying a new one”, “Everything first-time buyers need to know about purchasing a home”, or “A guide to maintaining your oak flooring”.
People appreciate guides, lists, videos, and other forms of informative content that quickly explain complex topics or help them learn something new without investing a lot of time. Is your target audience interested in saving money? Learning something new? Making the right choice before buying? Investigate their interests and needs so you can create valuable content for them!
A good example is WeMarket’s new video project: Marketing Quickfix, where complex marketing topics are explained in under 2 minutes.
What are your competitors doing? How do they interact with their followers? Have they had successes you can use as inspiration for your own content?
It’s not about copying a successful campaign your competitor ran last week. In fact, copying your competitors’ ideas can have the opposite effect. The point is to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and tendencies in your industry.
What works for your competitors may not necessarily work for you and your business. We live in a world where people have free access to information on any topic, at any time of day, at their fingertips. That’s why it’s so important to stay informed about trends and not be afraid to try new marketing initiatives. If you don’t, your competitors will – and they may gain a competitive advantage.
Be inspired by your competitors, research the market, and don’t be afraid to experiment with your marketing!
Once you have analysed your target audience and created a strong piece of content, remember to think SEO before publishing it. Consider the basic SEO elements before you publish, to give your content the best chance of reaching the top of Google searches.
SEO and content marketing can seem like two different worlds, but they are not. Synergy between SEO and good content marketing can help increase awareness and customer loyalty for your brand and products.
It might seem like double work to consider both SEO and content when developing a campaign, but the potential return on investment is often greater than running two separate campaigns focused only on SEO or content.
If you need help getting started with creative SEO content, you can contact us here or call us on 70 44 42 88. We will come up with fresh ideas that are perfectly tailored to your brand and products! 🙂
At WeMarket, we offer businesses a benchmark report that compares their marketing efforts with their key competitors. You decide which competitors we should compare against.
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