At times, content marketing may seem to be at odds with SEO because of the unfortunate tendency to prioritise one over the other. Perhaps you’re focusing too much on keywords at the expense of your content or maybe you’re not using enough keywords to inform your content – how can you reconcile both aspects of your advertising strategy?

Customers come first

Curating content for your clients is the most important part of content marketing. Avoid unnecessarily peppering keywords throughout your pages just for the sake of it. It reads terribly, and is very transparent for web users. User experience should come first, but customers should also know what it is you’re selling. Use keywords effectively in a way that maintains the high quality of your website’s content.

SEO needs linkbacks

You know what makes SEO thrive? Linkbacks. And do you know what builds these linkbacks? Yes, link building agencies, but the most important factor? Killer content. If you’re producing content that is likeable, shareable and engaging, you can let the masses do the rest. You need fantastic content that is worth linking to. This is the most effective method of securing this particular component of SEO.

Create enduring content

Yes, make sure that you have killer content that is compelling and relevant. It’s true that Google is a fan of fresh content and news pieces that are timely will inevitably rank better in searches. But you should be mindful of the bigger picture. What you want is to create content that is timeless to ensure long-term traffic. Articles that give some form of value are among the most enduring. This is because the audience can take something away from the content – i.e. they’ve learnt something new. If you can make your content not only engaging, but informative and valuable then that will mean more backlinks, more traffic and ultimately better SEO.

Internal linking

This is a very simple way of boosting your SEO. It’s simply using your own content, to link to more of your own content.