3 Easy Ways to Link Your SEO Strategy to Your Content Strategy

Krista Neher

Jul 14 2015

I was recently on a content marketing panel with other industry experts, and one of the other panelists said that SEO shouldn’t even be considered in a content marketing strategy.

ARGH!!?!?!?!?!

Why do we need to make everything black and white?

It seems like the question is approached as either you ignore SEO or you create crappy content in order to optimize for search.
Clearly, there can’t possibly be a middle ground where creative smart marketers have figured out how to do both. <sarcasm>
If you are a content marketer or a social media marketer and you don’t know your SEO strategy and keywords, you are missing a huge opportunity.

Pretending that considering SEO in content marketing somehow necessarily results in crappy content is a narrow way of thinking.

ALL OF YOUR MARKETING SHOULD WORK TOGETHER!!!!!!

Your social media strategy shouldn’t just consider SEO, but it should also consider brand equity, brand character, marketing and business objectives, your traditional advertising campaigns and strategies, and everything else.

Back to content and SEO.

Smart content marketers don’t think in black and white.
They think in grey.

How can I create great content that also incorporates our SEO strategy?

How can I create great content that matches our brand character?

How can I create great content that builds our equity?

Content can be awesome and also meet other marketing objectives.

While there are a number of deeper strategies that can link your SEO and Content, here are 3 easy ways to incorporate your SEO strategy into your content plan:

• After you have created awesome content, give it a quick look over for keyword opportunities. This often simply involves swapping words or phrases without impacting the quality or tone of the content. For example, if I’m mentioning social media education, I may change it to social media training to link to my keyword strategy.
• Prior to creating content, do a brainstorm with your keywords handy. The best content strategies clearly link back to SEO. When determining your content, keep a list of your keywords front and center and try to ideate around them. Again, you shouldn’t sacrifice quality content, but you shouldn’t ignore your keyword strategy either.
• Search for your keywords on content sites for inspiration. If you are having difficulty creating really good content around your keywords, try to get inspired. Look on Pinterest for content that is shared related to your keywords or search blogs, Instagram, Slideshare, Youtube, etc. The idea is to find content that is great and incorporates your keywords as a source of inspiration.

For a deeper dive, explore our online courses on SEO in the all access pass free trial.

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