Current marketing opinion (and Yes, I know that is a very broad brush) seems to still see content marketing and SEO as complimentary activities, and even that one can happily exist without the other.

If content marketing is a) providing pertinent and useful information to all your target citizens/stakeholders/prospects (people you want to engage with for a defined outcome), then it really is no more than sensible marcomms. If content marketing is b) a planned approach to developing and creating site content so that you can target pages to get them ranked for keywords then it an SEO activity.

These 2 versions of what “it” is unsurprisingly came from people involved in a) broad marketing strategy and b) specific content for web. Names are not important; they are both successful at what they do and their clients benefit as a result.

We know the value of linking, and the value of dynamic fresh content, so by smooshing (Yes, smooshing) them together you should be able to see content marketing as a convergence of 2 very useful activities. By having a content strategy that is informed by SEO, you can offer guest blog posts in exchange for über-targeted linking, you can get your bespoke news supplied to support your keywords, you can define the voice and message that your blog posts have.

We select SEO keywords to target the right audiences in search, and companies constantly evolve their marketing messaging and comms to target the right audiences. If that comms content is going to appear on the web (otherwise why bother with?) then it should be informed by the SEO. When we begin an SEO campaign it is often (but not always) informed by the comms strategy. Instead of taking the either/or approach, or being rigid about the relationship between the two a shrewd method is to blur the lines between them.

You’ll be able to deliver a content marketing strategy that is relevant to your SEO, and your SEO will be able to really flourish.

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