Why and How to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Strategies

1. Why and How to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Strategies Aligning content strategies and your SEO plan with the help of SEO content writing services can enhance your online presence and prove beneficial. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing solution that aims to increase the online visibility of a website in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). Search engine optimization involves strategies such as using the right keywords, building backlinks, creating relevant content, and optimizing on-page and off-page elements. Content marketing strategies focus on providing the necessary information to customers and entertaining them via relevant and attractive content. Articles, blogs, videos, and slide share presentations are examples of good content types. It is important to understand that content strategy and SEO work better together, in other words, you need to align your SEO with your content strategy for optimal results. Nowadays, many business organizations are seeking professional digital marketing services to achieve their marketing goals faster, instead of recruiting and maintaining an in- house marketing team. This is often because an in-house team may not have the time to focus on effectively implementing SEO and content marketing solutions. Bringing SEO and Content Workflows Together An organization planning to align SEO and content strategies needs to bring these workflows together. Especially, when these functions are carried out by separate teams or departments, regular meetings and sharing updates are great ways to improve teamwork. Both teams should work with the awareness that they are equally responsible for organic search success. With changes in Google’s algorithm, search engine optimization is moving increasingly towards content marketing, and SEO content focuses on securing good links through engaging and educating target audiences. In fact, content determines how a website ranks in search. Websites with content that is engaging, useful, educational and shareable have a strong foundation for SEO. Good content ensures good user experience. Search engines prioritize sites that provide excellent user experience. Good content is distinguished by excellent readability. Ideally, your website should be acknowledged as an authority in your niche, with complete and comprehensive blogs, articles, and other forms of content. The blogs and articles you publish must be of good quality, wide-ranging and well-

2. researched. Make sure that the content is concise and easily comprehensible. Just as good content, technical aspects of the pages such as sitemaps, coding, responsive design and so on are very important. Therefore, the content writing team and the SEO team have to collaborate to ensure optimum user experience. Let us see how the SEO team can assist the content marketing team. •While the content team is responsible for idea generation, the SEO team can assist them with keyword research and niche research that will help develop content that is optimized for search. •In addition, they can also study competitor content and identify the pages that are doing well and receiving the maximum organic traffic as well as those that have the maximum links. With this information, the content team can work on those topics in case you don’t already have them on your website. •The SEO team will also perform an audience analysis to understand searcher intent, which has become very important when optimizing for the search engine. How to Align Your SEO and Content Marketing Strategies The major challenges content marketers face are ensuring that the content they create reach the right targeted audience; and gaining long-term, assured traffic. The SEO team can recommend the right topics to write about so that the content ranks better, and thereby ensure that the content marketing team have a source of steady targeted traffic. Similarly, the content marketing team can help the SEO team secure subscribers, followers and readers via better content. This is a great way to earn back links, and also encourage people to share your content and improve rankings further. Here are the steps to take.

3. ➢Identify what is considered authoritative in your business niche, and which sites are considered authorities. The next step is to study those sites’ metrics related to SEO (backlinks, organic keyword rankings, organic traffic) social media (social media followers, and what they share on each platform and how often they update each platform), and content (the type of content, how often the content is updated, and the networks used to promote the content). ➢Listen to the recommendations made by your SEO team regarding the topics to write on, and the kind of content. Typically, long-form content (more than 2,000 words) now ranks better than short-form content. Also, for some keywords, video content may rank better than text. Use the right header tags, include your target keywords throughout in the content, and use optimized meta descriptions. ➢Ensure that your content distribution strategy complements your SEO efforts. There should be a method for identifying link targets for each content form you create. Influencer marketing and PR marketing can help foster long-term mutually advantageous relationships. ➢Generate off-site content to acquire backlinks and establish authority. Off-site content you can create include infographics on relevant topics, guest posts, presentations, Quora answers, videos, and so on. ➢Ensure greater search visibility with optimized content. Optimize for on-page SEO by using the right headers and keywords in your content; use Schema.org markup to create a semantic context for search engines and make your site easier to comprehend; optimize for featured snippets to ensure the CTR for your site in the search engine results pages; use an attractive title and SEO-friendly URL, and improve site speed for better ranking.

4. ➢Include SEO metrics in your reporting. Use engagement metrics such as time on page, unique page views and bounce rate, as well as metrics such as organic traffic, domain authority, backlinks and so on. A strong content strategy can help you in achieving a higher rank in search engines and good SEO tactics can help you increase your content reach. By aligning these two, you can improve the visibility of your content, gain more traffic to your older content, and acquire new customers and a bigger audience. Once you publish any content on the internet, you should update it regularly to make sure it remains relevant over time. Web content writing services can help you in generating, maintaining and increasing the reach of your content on search engines. (631) 494-3324