[WEBINAR RECAP] The Marriage of SEO and Content: Tips for Keeping the Relationship Strong

Living in Pinterestland can make it easy to forget that the end goal of many relationships is not a wedding, but a marriage. We get so distracted by mason jars and 16-piece wood-cut invitations that we sometimes forget that there’s actually a long-term commitment behind the one-day aesthetic.

So it goes with content and SEO. Often, content marketers spend so much time stuffing keywords and backlinking that they sacrifice the quality of the content itself. Maybe you can get your article to show up, but at that point, does it have much value left?

We teamed up with Merove Heifetz, director of SEO and digital strategy at Acceleration Partners, who is one of our clients, to chat about the wedded bliss between SEO and content marketing.

Like an accountant and a fair-trade yoga mat maker, SEO and content may seem ill-matched. On one hand, SEO is narrow and technical, and free-spirited content loves all things creative. Can they make it work? Absolutely.

That’s because SEO and content share one deep bond: audience. They both care about relevant, high-quality messaging that delivers value to readers. Like Ross and Rachel, Michelle and Barack, and Kanye and himself, the two are meant to be. Still, many content marketers have yet to truly marry these two.

Thanks to Merove’s deep understanding of all things search and our content expertise, we were able to discuss the best practices you need to bring these ideas together and get your content ranking.

You can watch the recording of our webinar wedding video here:

The Marriage of SEO and Content: Tips for Keeping the Relationship Strong from Influence & Co.

And to follow along with the recording, you can flip through the slides below:

Some highlights from the keyword-studded love story between SEO and content:

1. I mentioned how content and SEO come from different worlds — one is technical, and the other is creative. But by incorporating data into your content strategy, you can bring these two together. We use tools like Moz and Google to perform keyword research, but you can also use SEMrush and BrightEdge to bridge the gap between SEO’s technical savvy and content’s creativity.
   
   
2. SEO and content also share a bond over their audience. Understand your audience and their pain points, and address them with your on-page copy, meta titles, meta descriptions, image alt tags, and more.
   
   And don’t forget your audience when you link or distribute that content, either. We focus on a strategy that involves linking articles that we contribute to online publications back to relevant content on our site. This helps us generate traffic and boost conversions, and it also serves as a high-quality link back to our site. (This isn’t the only reason we do this, but it is a benefit!)
   
   
3. Create content for real humans, not search engines. Don’t use black-hat tactics like paying for links or keyword stuffing. People have gotten smarter, and so have search engines — and they both know malarkey when they see it. Create, link, and distribute content accordingly.

Just like in marriage, the hope is that two individuals will bring out the best in each other. The better content marketers understand SEO, the more likely they are to get their high-quality content in front of their target audience.

For more insight into how to keep the content marketing love alive, download our free whitepaper below: