SEO vs Content Marketing
If you’re only focusing on SEO to get some Google search engine love, you are missing a big piece of the puzzle: Content marketing. Both SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand, each having their own unique strengths that complement each other. While it’s true you could just focus on SEO, however, then you are only ranking your site to score higher on Search Engine Page Results (SERPs). You would still be overlooking customer engagement, bypassing an opportunity to connect with customers who will be looking at content on your site to make a decision to buy. If all you have is SEO-optimized content that appeals to a search engine, you may be getting lots of traffic, but a low conversion rate. To get both a high amount of traffic and conversion, you must adopt a content marketing strategy that leverages SEO when needed, but also attracts and persuades visitors to buy your products and services.
How to Use SEO Effectively
You probably already have web pages that talk about your business and your products and services. These can be optimized for SEO so that Google knows what your business is about and how to serve up ads, should you launch an Adwords campaign. With proper SEO techniques, you can optimize the content technically to appeal for:
Local Searches
– This would include keywords based on your location embedded within your website copy. This particularly useful for websites that are trying to attract foot traffic through a neighborhood business, and not just an online website. Keywords should target services or products or potential questions people might plug into a search engine.
Niche Traffic
-If you set up the SEO correctly, Google will know what your site is about and what makes it different from your competition. SEO allows you to niche content, so that you get niched traffic back to your site. You don’t want just any traffic, you want only the traffic that is most likely to include your ideal customers.
Content Topics
– SEO can be used in titles, headers, meta descriptions, and even blog categories. This indexes your site so that it becomes search-engine friendly and the right content is delivered in answer to someone posting a search in Google.
Without a good SEO strategy, you may end up with low traffic counts or traffic that isn’t interested in buying your products and services in the first place. No amount of content marketing can fix that. You have to get the right traffic first, through SEO strategies that drive niched traffic to your site.
How to Create Content for Persuasion
While SEO focuses on the technical details to make it easier for Google to index and serve up your content, your content marketing strategy should focus on the audience that you’ve attracted and how to convert them. You will want to include different types of content that entertains and educates, like videos, blogs, articles, and podcasts to establish yourself as an expert in your field, while creating a brand that is memorable to your audience. This will encourage people to come back again and again. If you don’t use SEO for video and podcasts, Google won’t even know what they’re about. Thus, to attract the audience first, optimize all content for SEO, but make sure to have a content marketing strategy that delivers top-quality, fresh, content often enough to get your site crawled regularly by search engines and browsed by loyal readers eager for new topics.
Want to know what other forms of content marketing you can use to catapult your business in front of your chosen audience? Contact Simplemachine today.
