Understanding how SEO and content marketing fit together can be confusing. This is because they seem to be at odds with each other, but once you understand content marketing, you will understand why SEO is actually about content marketing.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the use of valuable and relevant content to drive actions. The content may instruct people to share it or explain why they should purchase certain products. SEO then tries to make sure this content ranks as high on search engine result pages as possible so that as many people as possible can read the content and benefit from the information it lays out or take the actions the content asks them to.
The problem is that SEO and content marketing are treated as separate entities. Some people think content marketing will kill SEO but that is confusing and the wrong way of thinking. Successful content marketing relies on SEO to be reliable.
SEO and Content Marketing Overlap and Work Together
The connection between content marketing and SEO cannot be broken because SEO and content marketing overlap a lot. But, are there differences between the two? Of course there are, but separating the two is impossible. Although there are many differences between the two, the two most relevant ones are that SEO is a lot more technical and narrow, while content marketing is more holistic and wider.
How SEO and Content Marketing Come Together
The best analogy for how SEO and content marketing converge is thinking of it like SEO making a demand and content marketing fulfilling those demands. For example, SEO demands content, and content marketing provides that content. You either need to write the content yourself or outsource content that SEO uses. This content includes articles, keywords, words, and more. In the SEO industry, the right type of content is critical.
Another way SEO and content marketing come together is through the use of keywords. SEO demands keywords, and content marketing supplies them. Keywords are how we search for content and how we find it. SEO optimizes for keywords that people search so that you can see their content when you search for those keywords. The practical application and use of these keywords are done through content marketing.
SEO relies on backlinks and content marketing supplies them. There is nothing better than a high-authority website linking to your blog post. These links will only come to you if you have content that people would love to read. Publishing killer content that attracts the right backlinks leads to continuing SEO success.
Finally, SEO supports the technical optimizations that make finding content easier. Sitemaps are an important part of SEO as they help spiders and actual people understand your website and find content within it. In this way. Technical SEO supports the discoverability of content on your website.
Although many people cannot see the relationship between SEO and content marketing, the two are intricately linked. SEO supports content marketing and vice versa in ways that if one of them is not done right, the other will suffer.