Content marketing has seen significant growth as brands produce creative content strategies that drive traffic, leads and conversions as they grow their brand in different countries, through different channels, and around the world.
One of the key pillars of building a content marketing strategy for the future is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is crucial to a content marketing strategy as it helps people find your content in search engines, increasing your visibility.
Here we look at why SEO matters, how to combine it with your content strategy, and our top five tips for building a strong SEO strategy in 2023. What is SEO and why is it important? SEO is the process of optimizing a website to improve its ranking on Google and increase the quantity and quality of traffic from search engines. This process is multifaceted – it involves multiple elements like technical audits, link building, keyword research, content optimization, and more.
The goal of SEO is to improve the visibility of your site; therefore, it is more important for brands looking to increase the amount of traffic to their website or for those looking to position themselves as authoritative and trusted sources in their field or industry. Why you should combine your content and SEO strategies
While SEO itself is an important distribution channel, it also plays a crucial role in improving the visibility of content on other channels. Here’s how some key elements of SEO can be incorporated into your overall content strategy:
Keyword Research
Before creating content, you need to recognize how a user will find your content. Keyword research is key to understanding what terms your target audience is searching for and how often they are searching for them.
The combination of your content and SEO strategies can give you a list of keywords that you know your target audience is using to find similar content. You can then include your search keywords as a hashtag on social media, in video content descriptions, or in the copy of your blog posts in long format.
Research Intent
In addition to understanding what keywords are being used, incorporating SEO into your content strategy also allows you to determine the intent behind the keywords. By understanding the user’s search intent, you can position your content to be the most relevant.
For example, for informative content like blog posts, finding the most relevant keywords with the right search intent can give you an edge over less optimized content, as Google’s goal is to present the most relevant result to the user. for the query. Creating content in an optimized format and structure is another reason why you should incorporate SEO into your content strategy.
SEO not only gives you an idea of which content format is capable of producing the best results, such as guide, review, video, etc., it also gives you a structural guide to help you provide the best content experience and the best possibilities. to show your content.
5 key tips for building a successful SEO content strategy in 2023
With 90% of marketers leveraging a content marketing plan, brands are finally starting to prioritize content marketing and spend more on content creation across a variety of channels and platforms. With more competition, brands will need to optimize their content to get the highest possible exposure. This is why SEO optimization is essential.
Here are five tips brands should keep in mind as they create their SEO content strategy and aim to bring more attention to their brand.
Create video content
There are a number of reasons why video rules content marketing and how it has become one of the most effective forms of content for engaging your audience. Short format video is extremely effective on social media platforms and is one of the main ways people consume content. This is why short format video has the best ROI over all other media formats and why social media platforms are focusing and investing heavily in between. Consumers use video platforms as a source of education and entertainment and as search engines. As a result, brands not only need to create video content that resonates with their target audience when they watch it, but they also need to prioritize SEO optimization to ensure their content is easily found among a sea of other videos.
Optimize for voice search
The introduction of Siri and other voice assistants has forced brands to adopt innovative strategies to exploit new opportunities. With 27% of the world’s online population using voice search on mobile devices and more than 4 billion voice assistants used on devices around the world, brands that refuse to optimize their content for voice search are leaving a great opportunity on the table.
There are several key aspects to voice search optimization, but one of the most important SEO elements when optimizing for voice search are the featured snippets; a search result displayed at the top of the search results page, specifically chosen by Google as the best answer to the user’s query. Optimizing featured snippets is good SEO practice in general, but the added importance of featured snippets for voice search means brands that don’t optimize their content this way miss the opportunity to render their own more relevant content. homes and elsewhere. the movement.
Reuse your content for different channels
Reuse of content involves recycling of content and transforming it for use on different channels. For example, converting a long video to short videos or snippets for social media channels. It’s a creative way for brands to create new content and helps reach different audiences who prefer different formats to consume media.
Other ideas for repurposing content include turning a blog post or article into a video or social media thread, transcribing podcasts into blog posts, turning presentations into infographics, etc. As there is a plethora of options, brands need to make sure they style their content for the channel they’re looking to use.
Some best practices for content reuse include:
- Prioritize popular and perennial content. Plan to release reused content with trends, news and events.Use images to give your content the best chance of being shared. 4. Optimize your site and improve user experience (UX)
- Building a successful SEO content strategy is built on the fundamentals of SEO, which is why optimizing your site is important. Some of the most important SEO optimizations brands should consider include:
Metadata Optimization:
- Update of canons to avoid duplicate content
- Optimization of page speed and loading times
- Creating page layouts optimized for mobile devices
- Structured data implementation
Two key SEO principles emerge from these optimizations to ensure a good user experience on your site and make the content as accessible as possible on mobile devices.
Mobile devices accounted for nearly 60% of global traffic in the first half of 2022 and are expected to be more popular than desktops in the near future. With social media and entertainment increasingly mobile-centric, people are now using media on their mobile devices more than ever. Therefore, as the use of mobile devices continues to grow, providing a seamless mobile experience will be key in 2023.
Stay up to date with Google algorithm updates
Google is constantly updating its algorithms to provide the best results for a search query. Most of these updates are minor, but major updates can have a significant impact on your content and SEO strategies.
Google’s “Helpful Content Update,” released in September 2022, is a prime example. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) content has gained popularity as it has enabled brands and writers to streamline the content development process. Google’s response to this has been the “Helpful Content Update” designed to devalue automated content and prioritize human-centered content. We don’t know what algorithm updates Google has planned in the future, but be sure to stay up to date as it may help you understand why your content isn’t performing as expected.
Key Takeaway
SEO is a key component of a successful content strategy, especially key elements such as keyword research, page speed, and mobile optimization. Both SEO and content need to work together to increase the visibility of your brand and content across various channels and platforms.
Video content is extremely popular and is one of the most effective forms of content for engaging your audience. Voice search is more important than ever due to the growing media consumption on mobile devices. It’s a great way to make your brand visible at home and on the go. Reuse of content helps reach different audiences who may consume media in different formats, although the content will need to be optimized by channel and platform.
Optimizing your site and improving user experience is critical for Google to evaluate and prioritize your content. It is equally important to meet Google’s core principles of ensuring a good user experience on your site and making your content mobile-friendly.
Keeping up with Google algorithm updates will help you to understand the changes in the way your content is evaluated and ranked by Google, and how you can avoid any potential setbacks to the performance of your content.
A Real Estate and Financial Accounting graduate from Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business, with a proven track record of success in all aspects of business management, including accounting, operations, sales, marketing, recruiting, training, budgeting, and project management.
