Ok, hold on to your hats because content marketing and SEO gets us really excited: It is quite simply here that the magic of business growth is created! Small business owner or CEO, it doesn’t matter: get these two working together and your (business) life will change beyond recognition.
Content marketing and SEO together are the Ant and Dec of selling things online. get these two things working hand-in-hand and your results will amaze you – you’ll find yourself on page one of Google before you know it. Let’s quickly make sure we know what we mean by each term:
What is SEO?
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is done by skilled people – ideally Google certified people – who are able to look at the way people are searching for your service or offer and create a strategy to maximise your website’s individual pages of being found for each different search. This strategy will apply to your overall website and then page by page optimisation.
There’s technical stuff in SEO too, remember.
To be successful on Google a website must also be technically correct, i.e. it must load quickly and be marked up in various ways that Google recognises, so a good SEO setup involves your web developers and SEO technologists.
For business leaders and owners such as myself this can sound rather boring but actually it is anything but: Certainly once you start looking at your competitors actions and trying to outsmart them with content marketing and SEO it becomes really rather exciting and fun!
SEO Key Points
- Each piece of content is something for Google to index and then to show people
- Each piece of content should be optimised for a keyword in line with an overall strategy
- SEO is not a one-off event. It is about having expert eyes on the changing trends, your competitors etc. all the time.
Content Marketing and SEO: An example of some of the SEO analysis that is applied to every single new article we publish.
Below is a snapshot of our RankMath software in action: It guides us on the effectiveness of every single article we publish. It really helps our writers get it right but only when it is part of an overall strategy which Liyana and Wes, our SEO wizard and wizardess have created.
Content Marketing is when you create articles, guides, blogs, informational videos etc. and place them on your website. Once Google sees that people are finding your articles useful and helpful it will send more and more people to you by moving your article up on to page one of its results. Content marketing is an unbelievably powerful way of bringing people to your website.
Three articles per week is the golden number
Content marketing sends a signal to Google that you are engaged website owner and that single is only sent if you write at least three new items every week of every year forever. This is not a mythical number but it’s clearly based on research from the likes of The Marketing Insider Group, Hubspot and Impact in the USA.
Content Key Points
- Each piece of content you create might be the precise answer that someone is looking for
- Each piece of content is a sign to Google that you are active and therefore a ‘good’ website for people to visit.
- Google wants people to find answers. If you help Google, Google will help you.
‘Hey Nick, what if we just do a load of technical SEO because writing articles and filming videos is really hard?’
Whilst SEO can be handed to an expert, creating content is hard work there is no doubt about that. Creating useful articles and videos each week is truly something that requires a shift in the business to achieve.
That’s the great benefit of a Certified Coach from the world’s leading inbound content methodology. They will transform you or your business into a content machine that produces content effortlessly.
But let’s be very clear: SEO without content is almost pointless.
Once you’ve tried to rank for the pages on your website, then what? What about all those other keywords for your site ( there are way more than you think). Given that a web page can only rank for one keyword then how will you tackle the rest?
Your competitors will be blogging regularly and will use content marketing and SEO to beat you to page 1 of Google. Over-taking them will prove impossible, no matter how good your SEO wizards are. You’ll end up paying for PPC forever. Content Marketing and SEO working together are the only way to guarantee your success.
‘ We’re really good at writing articles and creating videos but we haven’t really bothered with any of the SEO stuff.’
We see this a lot. It is sad because people are putting an awful lot of effort into creating blog content which is then not getting the traction their effort deserves. Often they’ve read the inbound content masterpiece ‘They Ask You Answer’ by Marcus Sheridan and are inspired immediately – they know what to do in terms of the content and it’s fantastic…
But Without SEO expertise they are wasting their time to a large degree.
Blindly writing without making sure each article hits a keyword is pretty much useless. Without having your Complete Digital Footprint organised, Google will never fall in love with your website.
A preview of the Google snippet to show how Content Marketing and SEO must work together
Still not sure about Content Marketing and SEO? Here are some perfect next steps:
Content Marketing and SEO are a beautiful combination as you can hopefully see. Working together means really long lasting success without expensive PPC.
We appreciate that often you need to convince others of the need for both working together.
Some recommendations:
- Buy a book called ‘They Ask You Answer’ by Marcus Sheridan. Just read the first few chapters if you are in a rush.
- Talk to me, Nick Burrage. I loved the book so much and saw its success for us that I became their first ever UK coach. I’m always up for a chat to help.
- For a business to really be won over I have an inbound workshop that is really powerful 3 hour session for the whole team. It never fails! Ask me about it.
For SEO questions, just be in touch with us and we’ll be able to help you understand your current position and answer your questions.
