As a full service SEO agency, we’re used to running campaigns that encapsulate a range of marketing methods. Some of these, for example social media marketing and PPC, are pretty easy to distinguish for most people. Others however, like content marketing and SEO, tend to blend together in the minds of our clients as a kind of fuzzy grey area.
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In today’s post, we’re hoping to clear up some of that confusion! Read on to learn about the difference between content marketing and search engine optimisation, and what each marketing method means for your business.
What is SEO?
Though answering the question “what is SEO?” thoroughly would take a whole other post, we’ll start with a quick overview to help you understand the difference between SEO and content marketing.
While “content marketing” refers to one specific method of digital marketing, “SEO” is more of an umbrella term, covering a large number of different tactics used to help your site rank higher for targeted search terms. These tactics include:
- Optimising page elements like the title tag and meta description.
- Improving user experience and site speed.
- Building high-quality links.
- Analysing site visitor behaviour to drive down bounce rate and improve conversion.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing still aims to bring in new business, but on a much more granular level. This involves creating pages and resources on your site which your audience will find interesting, and using those pages as a jumping-off point which will hopefully progress them through your sales funnel. This can cover blog posts, infographics, how-tos, videos, and more.
While most acts of content marketing are generally done with the intention of improving a website’s SEO, it doesn’t cover the more technical aspects of SEO, like auditing canonicals or site speed.
So, What’s the Difference?
Now that we’ve gone over some definitions and the relationship between SEO and content marketing, it’s time to look at the key differences between the two, and how your approach to each method should differ.
Humans vs Robots
Content marketing is primarily a creative marketing method. You’re setting out to create content that will please a human audience. Posts, infographics, images, and videos should be engaging and informative, and tailored to the target audience you’re trying to reach.
SEO, on the other hand, is more about communicating with the crawlers and algorithms that determine how a search engine ranks pages for a certain query. For any given URL, there’s pages and pages of back-end data which will determine how a search engine’s crawlers interpret and value the site. The average visitor will never see these more technical elements, but they’ll have a huge influence on how crawlers interpret the page and decide to rank it for your target keywords.
Strategy
Any SEO agency will tell you that when building an SEO strategy, your primary consideration is going to be your keyword research; volume, competition, seasonality, etc. Though nothing in marketing is certain, these raw numbers can give you a pretty good idea of how an SEO campaign will progress.
A successful content marketing strategy is a little harder to pin down. Human visitors aren’t going to think like search engine crawlers, so feeding them posts, videos, and so on that they’ll respond to takes more thought, creativity, and trial and error. While you can try to follow or predict content trends and respond to engagement data from your past content, there’s no “right answer” in the same way there is with SEO.
Function
SEO and content marketing have their own roles to play in your marketing funnel.
SEO’s primary function is lead generation, making sure your site is getting in front of the people who are searching for your kind of business. By playing ball with search engine algorithms, you’ll be able to attract qualified traffic and let your target market know you exist.
Content marketing is more focused on keeping your visitors engaged once they get there, by showcasing your brand’s authority, showing that you can provide value to your customers, and hopefully moving your leads a step along the marketing funnel.
If you’d like to harness these marketing tactics and supercharge your online presence with the help of a full-service SEO agency, get in touch today for a free 1-hour marketing consultation!
