Importance of SEO and content is known to all but the tug of war continues of which comes first. The two are different sides on a single coin. Your content cannot be great if it is not SEO optimized and no SEO implementation is possible without a well-framed content marketing plan. It’s a bit dicey to vote for who’s first.
Here are the reasons why content marketing needs to be first in place, followed by why SEO should be ranked 1st. Hope these pointers will help you to vote for the winner.
Ranking on google – Content marketing shows its results much faster than SEO. But it is possible only when you know what content your audience is searching for on the Internet. The keywords and phrases will flow automatically in place. The good content will rank on its own. Google is intelligent enough to judge content quality based on the bounce rate.
Content for long term results – SEO alone won’t last for long. For the success of any business, there is a lot more required than the keywords. Here, content plays the hero role by understanding the buyer’s journey, pain points, marketing materials that work in addressing the concerns. With robotic content focusing the keywords, you will only have short term traffic and lesser chances of conversion.
Customer is God – It is not Google but customers for whom you are writing content. Even if you are not on the top, with compelling content, you can score much higher clicks and conversion. The game is about relevance. People turn up to sites with informative content, even if they have to bounce the first three to five links.
Free from Algos – With SEO, the major issue is to move with the algorithms, and cherry on the cake is that they keep changing (sarcastically). A single update in the algorithm can anytime make your website drop down from top rank. But with the right content in place, you will never drop down from your customers’ preference list.
Create keyword – Even if you don’t have keywords or a topic has low search volume, you can experiment with your content. If you have the confidence in your content and feel that your audience needs that particular information, you don’t need to worry about the keywords. Your relevant will rank high and make even the less know keyword top the trend.
Why is it SEO?
Traffic rules – if it is about traffic, your website content needs a proper SEO strategy in place. SEO helps your business reach the audience and bring them on the website. With the best keywords placed in your content, people get to know you and the quality content you have written.
Topic is what attracts – A person starts reading a content only after he feels connected with the topic. Keywords play the magic of connecting readers with what they have been searching the Internet for. SEO has all the data to determine what sort of content can give results eliminating the guesswork. Tools like Ahref, SEMRush, etc. help you in this process a big way. You can identify keywords basis the demography, customer behavior and more.
What’s up with the competitors – With right SEO strategies, you can check where your competitors are doing backlinks, what does their analytic tell and more. Even tags and meta descriptions can help you beat your customers. Even for content topic search, competitive research can help you target similar keywords in a better way.
SEO decides the flow – Good SEO helps in finalizing the topics, keywords, headers, images, tags and more. Even not the best content can give remarkable results with right SEO in place. It can fetch good traffic and leads on the post/website and ease customer journey with the brand.
To wrap up –
The debate seems to be never ending and it’s tough to take a call on who is first. Where SEO is all about current trend, content marketing is more focused on customer needs that not necessarily be time bound. Irrespective of which strategy you start with, it is necessary to meet both the requirements.
