According to the all-knowing Wikipedia content marketing is all about creating and sharing content to get an audience to be interested in you. OK, that’s not exactly what Wikipedia says, but it’s the gist. In this context “content” is pretty much anything original that you produce and deposit around the web.
After digging around I discovered that there are plenty of proponents of the idea that while content marketing is great, SEO sucks. I have trouble getting my head around this way of thinking. The main argument seems to be that content marketing is you all you need, if you seed enough interest then people will come to you. To my mind this is as daft the prehistoric marketing maxim “build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door”.
The problem with leaving content marketing to do all the work- with viral video, challenging blogs, useful articles etc. is that you are missing a trick. Great content CAN do that, but why let it struggle on its own when SEO can be used to help?
The SEO aspect doesn’t have to overtake the content marketing strategy either. In fact they are beautifully complimentary activities. One scenario is where you have masses of content and its driving traffic, but you are evolving your offering and want to push one topic or set of themes over another. By using SEO you can inform how your content links back to you, and how the website supports this- with the on-page SEO matching your off-page goals.
Ultimately a site needs to be accommodating to search engines in a technical way. It’s also essential to avoid any search engine penalties otherwise you’ll not get the full value from your content, and this is where SEO shines.
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