{"id":460,"date":"2020-12-07T16:49:57","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T21:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/?p=460"},"modified":"2023-09-22T13:38:30","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T17:38:30","slug":"content-marketing-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beomniscient.com\/blog\/content-marketing-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO-Driven Content Marketing: Why All Content Marketing Should Be SEO Content"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Content marketing and SEO usually end up in the same basket of conversation but are served as distinct (yet compatible) dishes at mealtime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Content marketing is a broad umbrella that includes many things, such as thought leadership, customer education content, and blogging for SEO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes SEO and content marketing are pitted against each other. \u201cWrite for humans, not for search engines,\u201d one might advise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article — a deliberately staunch take — will explain why this dichotomy is silly, and why SEO should play a factor in *all* of your blogging efforts whether searchability is the primary goal or not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Content Marketing SEO: What is SEO-Driven Content?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First off, let\u2019s get our definitions in place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SEO-driven content (otherwise known as SEO content marketing or content marketing SEO) is a type of content with the primary purpose of ranking for search queries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essentially, you can look at a blog post as a \u201cproduct,\u201d and SEO is an acquisition strategy for that product that leverages search engines as a distribution channel. Viral content or social media content marketing may leverage social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Pinterest to \u201cacquire users\u201d to read your content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Content written without intent tends to be ineffective.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our product analogy, it\u2019s like saying \u201cbuild it, and they\u2019ll come,\u201d<\/a> which is concretely untrue in the vast majority of cases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a tree falls in the forest, but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Likewise, if you write the most beautiful and impressive blog post in the world, and no one can read it or find it, does it make an impact? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Unfortunately, infographics compiled by Supple<\/a> show that just 0.78% of Google searchers click the second-page results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to stop here for a second, and say that I\u2019m a content quality purist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As proof, I\u2019ll point you to these two<\/a> articles<\/a> I\u2019ve written lambasting \u201ccheap content\u201d and the noise unleashed on the internet. On my personal site, I spend many months and hundreds of hours crafting some of my blog posts. At CXL, I aimed to produce the \u201cbest article in the world\u201d on a given topic (you can argue whether or not I had achieved that goal, but the goal was in place). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I say this only to tell you I\u2019m not here to say all content marketing should be robotically driven by keyword research and Clearscope. You\u2019ve gotta write shit that people want to read. Hopefully it\u2019s useful and entertaining, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any case, quality means nothing if no one reads the article. Therefore, the idealist has to meet the pragmatist, who says \u201chey, let\u2019s bring this tree out of the damn forest and into the town square so people can get a look at it.\u201d Or cut a beautiful trail leading to the tree. Or something like that.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In SEO content marketing, you typically align topics with a keyword and optimize the written word to rank for that keyword. If I wanted to rank for \u201ccontent marketing SEO,\u201d I may drop that keyword several times in the article itself, add it in the title tag directly, and make my URL slug something like \/content-marketing-seo\/. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is so people can hear the proverbial tree when it falls. I\u2019m hoping, explicitly, that people find my article via search engines and that I answer their query when they search \u201ccontent marketing SEO\u201d or any of its variants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Writing for Humans vs Algorithms, and Why This is a False Dichotomy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWrite for humans, not for robots,\u201d is one of those things you hear over and over again. Like \u201ccontent quality vs quantity,\u201d or \u201cincremental vs innovating a\/b testing,\u201d this is an obstinate debate that never ceases to rage on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And worse, the virtuous answer (what people say) is different than the effective answer (what people do). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stated vs revealed preferences<\/a> again rears its head to say that most people in the real world are \u201cwriting for robots.\u201d I say that having seen the kitchen side of many businesses. Most of \u2018em are plugging keywords and praying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the rub, though: humans are the ones using search engines. If you\u2019re writing for search engines, you\u2019re also writing for humans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, on a long enough time horizon, your incentives and Google\u2019s are theoretically similar: to provide the best possible answer to a searcher\u2019s question. Let me avoid the argument right now as to whether or not Google actually honestly does that (they have clearly done some questionable things with regards to content). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But all in all, if you write the best possible answer for searchers, you\u2019re likely to rank better (at least in theory). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How I Write SEO-Driven Content for Humans<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s how I do it: <\/p>\n\n\n\n