Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in content marketing is a process to improve the visibility of a website or webpage in a search engine’s unpaid results, often referred to as “natural”, “organic”, or “earned” results. It is a strategic way to create and curate content to make it more attractive to search engines, thus helping to improve the website’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs), boost the site’s visibility, draw more traffic, and ultimately convert visitors into customers (Moz, 2020).
It is a fundamental aspect of digital marketing as most consumers use search engines to find the goods, services, or information they need. According to ImForza, around 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine, while Kissmetrics claims that about 70% of links clicked on by users are actually organic.
SEO encompasses several elements, among them keywords, performance, usability, and mobile optimization. In the context of content marketing, keywords manifest in the form of queries that users type into search engines (Oxford College of Marketing, 2021). Once the right keywords are identified, they should be incorporated fluidly into the website’s content. This helps Google and other search engines understand what the site is about, and how relevant it is to a user’s search inquiry. SEO isn’t just about keywords though, the actual quality, utility, and relevance of the content to the search query is vitally important, as search engine machines have become significantly more sophisticated in recognizing high-quality, unique, and relevant content.
Other important aspects of SEO include ‘On-Page’ and ‘Off-Page’ SEO. ‘On-Page SEO’ is concerned with optimizing individual pages for targeted keywords, involving keyword presence, frequency, and location. ‘Off-Page SEO’ involves acquiring backlinks (links from other websites to your own website). When you have content that’s shared and linked from a variety of other reputable domains, search engines view this favourably, which can help to increase your site’s ranking (Lyfe Marketing, 2021).
Additionally, to make your website easy for both users and search engine robots to understand, SEO needs to be applied to the site’s meta tags, title tags, meta descriptions, as well as image tags. Furthermore, SEO does not just begin and end with your website’s content: it’s imperative to have an easy-to-navigate website with usable interface, as Google and other search engines favour sites that provide a good user experience.
To sum up, SEO is an essential tool in content marketing for creating and shaping the most effective content, making it more appealing to search engines, enhancing the visibility of a website, and ultimately attracting more organic visitors.
Sources:
1. Moz. (2020). The Beginner’s Guide to SEO. https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
2. Oxford College of Marketing. (2021). What Is SEO and Why Is It Important? https://blog.oxfordcollegeofmarketing.com/2019/09/09/what-is-seo-and-why-is-it-important/
3. Lyfe Marketing. (2021). What Is Off-Page SEO and Why Your Website Needs It. https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/off-page-seo/
4. Imforza. (2020). 8 SEO Stats That Are Hard to Ignore. https://www.imforza.com/blog/8-seo-stats-that-are-hard-to-ignore/
5. Kissmetrics. (n.d). The Importance of Organic Search Rankings. https://neilpatel.com/blog/organic-search/
