The Integrated Approach of Content Marketing & Search Engine Marketing

Are SEO and Content Marketing supposed to be separate?

Should we be treating our Search Engine Marketing and content marketing projects with different strategies?

I get a lot of client calls asking the same question, which is normal. And more specifically, where do we draw the line between content and SEO.

Well, the problem is this:

Most of the clients, currently and historically, seem to hire 2 different agencies, 1 for SEO, and 1 for Content marketing. In a situation like this, the creative agency will be the one with less technical skills, and with a lot of content writing experience; while the SEO will be optimized by a more technically oriented agency.

Solution:

Clients and agencies should work together to integrate your SEO and content marketing efforts. The benefits of marrying search engine tags with content will yield a bigger reward and a higher ROI to clients.

SEO - Search Engine Marketing using content

An Integrated Strategy

3 important quotes on this matter:

Successful SEO, is the one that is done with Content and the Client in mind.

Successful SEO is the one that is created with real human readers as an audience, and not Bots.

Successful content marketing is the one the embraces SEO completely.

What should you know as a marketer of a business owner?

Content marketing is a great way to establish trust, authority and build a strong relationship with your clients and partners, it will help position you as an expert in the subject matter, a reference.

Most of the people will come across your brand, with a question, and looking for an answer. Make sure that you are there for them with the right information, listed and categorized.

How will they find you?

  1. Through search engines
  2. Social Searches/Social timelines

How will you rank?

  1. By using good content
  2. Using the right content in the right spots
  3. Tagging the right content with the right tags
  4. Getting the right (high search volume) keywords to best describe your content

How to stay ranking?

  1. Use engaging content, Content that will keep people on your pages for more than just 10 seconds.
  2. Use visuals, infographics, graphs, pics, etc.
  3. Use videos
  4. Use strong references

So where do content marketing and SEO actually converge?

How to use content marketing and SEO

Content Marketing and SEO Working Together

 

What can Content and SEO build together?

Transforming how your marketing works, into a more successful mix.

Integrated Content Digital Marketing

Transforming from Traditional Digital Marketing to Advanced Integrated Digital Marketing

Conclusion:

It is important for all of us to start looking at SEO and Content as Allies, and not rivals.

These 2 should work together, and there is no point in the future that one will replace the other.

Yet content will continue to drift more to become more technical, and SEO will continue to drift to become more resourceful and creative.

 

 

Resources/Sources

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-is-content-marketing/

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/combine-seo-content-marketing-explosive-results/97157/

http://searchengineland.com/content-marketing-seo-bigger-picture-219796

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/combine-seo-content-marketing-explosive-results/97157/

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The Un-obsolete SEO Guide for Entrepreneurs and Businesses [Infographic]

How often do we hear that SEO is dead, obsolete, or not as important as it was a few years ago?

It is true that the Search Engine Marketing industry is in a constant change. There are continuous updates and algorithm changes across all the search engines every couple of months. That makes it seem like more of a challenge to keep up, and small business owners and entrepreneurs can easily get overwhelmed.

But the challenge does not make the practice obsolete. The use of search engines to find products and services has certainly not decreased. As long as people continue to use search engines, optimizing to rank well will continue to be a solid and smart investment.

Over the past 7 years, I have worked in SEO for agencies, Fortune 500s and small businesses. In that time, I’ve learned that there are some SEO factors that never change.

If you are hesitant about ‘keeping up’ with the latest in SEO, at the very least ensure you are capitalizing on these 6 constants.

6 Un-obsolete SEO Tips for Entrepreneurs

1. Optimizing for humans, not search engines

Although “SEO” stands for Search Engine Optimization, the optimization you do truly is more for humans than search engines. After all, the people are your customers. Not the engines

To rank well, think about the human experience rather than the search engines. Focus on human engagement, relevancy to searchers, what will be most attractive to the people, rather than stuffing in keywords just to appeal to search engines.

2. Focusing on what makes you different

What makes you different from anyone else selling a product or service? Be clear on what makes you different. Ensure you have content on your website and in your SEO strategy that highlights it. Your differentiator is what will stand out and attract attention when someone is doing a search.

I always tell my clients that SEO is more about you than it is about technical optimization and upgrades. It is about showing your business, service, product, values and unique selling point with the right content while tapping into the searcher’s intent. To do that, ask yourself, “What is my target persona thinking when they are searching for my specific product or service?” Your answer will often tell you what to highlight.

3. User experience

Always look at your own site from a visitor’s perspective.

People spend more time on sites that are easy to navigate, drive value and educate them. More time on site increases the chances of conversions (i.e. more clients/customers).

As long as there are users, the user experience will never go out of style. Make sure your site is responsive and fast to load, creating a seamless user experience.

4. Clean site structure

Clean and organized goes a long way, especially in search engines. You can know a lot about a site just by looking at the URL. Any unconventional characters, a mix of upper and lower case characters, parameters, and excessive categories and sub-directories all make for a messy site structure.

Have a structured site and clean URLs. This makes it easier for search engines to navigate your site and index your pages.

5. Abiding by the rules

Search engines are smarter than we think they are. Whatever trick you are thinking of pulling on Google… trust me, Google has seen it before.

Avoid playing tricks, or any black hat SEO. More often than not, it’ll end up getting your site penalized by search engines. And that is hard to recover from.

Creating value and driving traffic through hard work is rewarding and effective.

Don’t put yourself or your client in a bad situation or at risk of getting penalized for petty rankings.

6. Creating great content and driving value

“Content is king!” Ten years ago, marketers and SEO specialists lived by this mantra. And it is still true today. Great content is simply great SEO.

Content is not only text. Content is video, images, slides, white papers, pdf, etc.

When you have a valuable piece of content that will educate your client, share it and tag it properly.

Take Away

When it comes to investing in SEO, don’t hesitate to invest out of a mistaken belief that SEO has little impact, or that what you do today will be obsolete tomorrow. SEO is an integral part of digital marketing. The six factors above don’t get a lot of airplay these days, only because they aren’t shiny and new. They are tried and true tactics for ranking well. Use this article as a guide for your SEO efforts and the investment into your website will pay for itself many times over.

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The Easy SEO Guide: How to do a DIY basic site audit without using fancy tools

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The Easy Audit: A guide to auditing your site SEO without tools or magic

Nobody likes an audit. Any kind of audit! And when it comes to an SEO audit, digital marketing specialists have a tendency to overcomplicate things.

The truth is, most of the big-ticket items impacting your SEO are things you can easily look into on your own to see where you stand and what you need to do to bring your site up to par. You do need to know your metadata from your messaging, but you don’t need to be a digital ninja/guru/magician.

Digital SEO Audit for my business site

Here are the 6 most important factors to look at in your basic SEO audit.

1. Page Titles, Descriptions, & URLs

I said it would be easy. I didn’t say it wouldn’t be a bit tedious! Yes, you need to look at these things for every page you are intending to audit.

The page titles, descriptions and URLs are what appear in Google, Bing or other search engine results pages.

Title

  1. Is it between 40 to 70 characters?
  2. Is it informative (Does it adequately describe what the business does or the content of that page)?
  3. Does it include the keywords you want to rank for?

Description  

  1. Is it between 120-155 characters?
  2. Is it informative?
  3. Does it include the keywords you want to rank for?
  4. Does it intrigue the searcher to click on your search result?  

URL

  1. Is it HTTPs? HTTPs is preferred over HTTP across the whole site.
  2. Is it informative?
  3. Are all characters lowercase?
  4. Are you using hyphens instead of underscores? Hyphens are preferable.  
  5. Is it free of any unconventional characters?
  6. Are all URLs across the site free of inconsistent parameters?

2. Content Quality

Keywords are a start. But there’s more to quality SEO content than hitting the right keywords. Relevancy, consistency and value to the reader are all critical elements of good SEO content as well. When auditing your content, look for the following quality factors:

  1. Is there a consistent use of keywords across the site and in tags?
  2. Is there a good keyword density?
  3. Is there both dynamic and static content?
  4. Is the content relevant to the industry/product/service?
  5. Is the content share-worthy?
  6. Does the content drive value to the reader?
  7. Are you targeting a select number of keywords vs. keyword stuffing?

3. Content Quantity & Diversity

The amount of unique content on your site is also a factor.

  1. Is there a good amount of text on each page?
  2. Is there a good text to code ratio?
  3. Is there a diversity in which content is shown?
  4. Are you capitalizing on text, PDF, video, images, slides, etc?

4. Site Structure and Index-ability

We’re moving into a more technical territory, but everything here is fairly simple to look into without any fancy tools.

  1. Are the pages, posts, and properties mapped properly?
  2. Is there a clean and up-to-date sitemap?
  3. It there a proper interlinking approach implemented on site? (i.e. linking to other pages, and posts within your site.)
  4. Are you using your robots.txt file properly? The best way to check is to type www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt into your address bar. This file will show you if you are accidentally de-indexing your site.
  5. Is the site free of broken links? Broken links are a sign that your site may need technical optimization.

5. Page Speed and Functionality

  1. Does each page load quickly? To see if something is slowing down your site, try the Google Page Insight test.
  2. Is the site free of broken links?
  3. Is everything on the site loading properly? (images, videos, forms, menus, etc.)
  4. Is the site mobile friendly? To check, try Google’s Mobile Friendly test here: https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

6. User Experience

Last, but not least, ensure your site is easy to use.

  1. Is the site easy to navigate?
  2. Is there proper internal linking?
  3. Is there a call to action and/or a clear message on the site?
  4. Can visitors easily and quickly understand what your business is about?
  5. Do you have the most important elements on your site above the fold?

 

Takeaway:

You don’t necessarily need a specialist or a set of pro-tools to audit your site. All you need is some attention to detail, a little time and to know where to look. The time you invest in your audit and any optimizations based on your findings will pay off, big time. If you are intending to take things to the next level, then consider hiring an SEO expert.

If you are looking for more advice on how to audit your site feel free to reach out :)

Email: t@rimanagency.com

Twitter: @tarekriman

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