Before you decide to hire an SEO agency, or plan to make use of a company offering content marketing services, it’s useful to understand where these two service providers intersect. SEO and content marketing are far from mutually exclusive. Using both marketing strategies at the same time may be the best way to give your small business a lasting boost in quality web traffic and business leads.
Content Marketing Can Be Your Long-term SEO Strategy
Websites that have focused on providing quality, in-depth coverage of the topics relevant to their customers have been steadily moving up the rankings. Whenever a new major update comes, sites like this are rarely penalized. As search engine algorithms become more refined, this type of value offering will become more and more valuable.
SEO content marketing is a specialized approach to SEO that takes this into account. It may not be the most fast-acting strategy, but it is the most reliable and most likely to become more valuable over time, with the least upkeep.
SEO Content Marketing is the Embodiment of the 2 Top Ranking Factors
Google may use over 200 ranking factors. However, there is just a handful that can easily tip the scales in favor of your small business. The first of these is content quality.
Content quality means:
- In-depth coverage of the on-page topic
- A low bounce rate leading to the assumption that many users find whatever is on the page worth sticking around
- Relevancy to the keywords used on that page and those that led a searcher to your page
- Fresh and updated content
- The ability to view content on any device, at any time
In addition to content quality, SEO content marketing also makes the most of modern link-building and social sharing to improve your web traffic.
Get 7.8x More Unique Visitors to Your Website
By developing an SEO Content Marketing Strategy, your business has the chance to lead the conversation. This is done by creating and posting new content based on what your current customers want or what any collected SEO data suggests would be best.
Businesses that lead the conversation like this find that their content is found nearly eight times more frequently by new, unique website visitors compared to the competition. That gives your small business the best chance to make a great first impression and gain these customers as your own.
Get the Most Leads Per Dollar Spent
Content marketing, optimized with SEO tactics, produced an average of 3 times as many leads as ads and paid search. Not only that, but compared to outbound marketing of any kind, content marketing gets that 3x return and costs an average of 62% less. For a small business with an equally-sized marketing budget, every single one of those leads is an opportunity for substantial growth.
SEO and Content Marketing Go Hand-in-Hand
In today’s world, with semantic search and AI getting better at reading websites for what they are, it’s hard to separate these two powerful marketing strategies. For a small business, combining them and working toward long-term growth may be the most cost-effective and lasting strategy.
