Why ‘Content Is King’ In SEO

SEO and content marketing may seem like two different practices. But the two are actually vital to each other’s success.

The purpose of this blog post is to highlight how SEO and content marketing work together to boost your search rankings and drive traffic to your site.

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for ‘search engine optimisation.’ It’s the practice of increasing your search ranking (and traffic to your website) through non-paid methods.

SEO is a broad term. Think of it as a toolbox.

Marketers will often use a combination of methods (tools) to optimise for search engines. Things like keyword research, link building, on-page and off-page optimisation, and content.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing material designed to appeal to users interests that draw their clicks and eyes to your site.

Content can come in many forms, from blogs posts (like this one!) to videos, social media posts, infographics, and ebooks.

The purpose of content is not to make a direct sale. But rather to provide useful, valuable information that’s easily digestible for your readers.

How Content and SEO Work Together

Content is one of the most valuable tools in the SEO toolbox.

Technical factors are important of course. You need a well-designed site, fast load times, and links to drive traffic to your site.

But content is what attracts users interest and brings them to your site in the first place. Without interesting content, there’s little reason for users to come to and stay on your site.

The relationship between content and SEO is even more symbiotic than that. Below are a few key reasons why content and SEO work so well together:

Crawling

Content is what search engines use to better understand what products and services you offer.

They do this by crawling your site and indexing your content. The more specific the content on your site is, the better the chance of Google indexing your content correctly so you appear in search results.

Keywords

Keywords are vital to your content ranking well in search engines. And content pieces naturally give you a place to utilise your targeted keywords.

You should aim to create content that focuses on specific, and unique keywords. That way Google knows what specific keyword or phrase each piece is targeting and can better serve them up to searchers.

Link Building

Link building is another vital tool for boosting your search engine results. How do you get high-quality links you might ask? By creating high-quality content!

The better your content is, the more readers it will attract. If it’s useful, more sites will be inclined to share, reference it, and link back to you creating even more free traffic.

Quality Vs. Quantity

Before you run out and start churning out content, there’s an important factor we want you to remember. It’s the quality of your content that matters, more so than quantity.

Google’s algorithm can determine what’s duplicate content, what’s cut and paste from somewhere else on the web, and whether your content is old and outdated.

If you unnaturally stuff keywords into your content, duplicate pages with the same copy, or rip off content from other places around the web, Google may actually penalise you by knocking you further down the search engine results page.

Keep Your Content Updated

Unique, fresh and useful content will always get indexed higher than stale or outdated content. That means that you need to keep your best content updated. Especially if you want to continue ranking high for a specific keyword.

A blog post that was written two years ago about Facebook ads will be a lot less relevant than content that was written two weeks ago.

Keywords may stay the same, but trends and tactics change. So if Google determines that your content is outdated, it will give preference to something else.

You should regularly review your best content and make sure that it’s in line with best practices today. If things completely change, you should consider retiring old content and creating something new in its place.

This will ensure your content continues to get new readers, it’s helpful to those readers, and will hopefully continue to get shared around the web and generate links back to it.

User Experience Is Key

While there are many tactics you can use to boost your search rankings, we hope to make one thing clear:

The key to creating content that helps generate a steady stream of traffic is to focus on great user experience.

Research keywords thoroughly. Find out what your target market is genuinely in need of answers to.

Then, create unique, fresh, and useful content that utilises those specific keywords naturally to answer those questions. And make sure that content stays up to date.

Remember, every word on your site will eventually be read by a human being. Make it helpful to end-users, and Google will take notice.

Conclusion

We hope you can see how SEO and Content work hand in hand together. Content strategy should form a big part of your overall SEO strategy if you want to be successful.

High-quality content, that’s fresh and useful, will get more readers, more shares, and eventually generate higher amounts and quality of traffic to your website.

Speak With An SEO Expert At Yes Digital Today

Here at Yes Digital, we help create and optimise highly targeted SEO strategies for our clients. If you want to see how SEO can help you grow your business, get in touch for a free no-obligation Strategy Session today.