Search engine optimization and content marketing share an awful lot of territory.
It’s so extensive that people have written hundreds of articles about how content marketing is the new SEO. Or about how there is no SEO without content.
That’s all true, too. Which is why so many content marketers either already have SEO skills, or are scrambling to get some – fast.
But for me, SEO skills aren’t enough to do world-class content marketing.
Where you really get an edge is when you look at the newest SEO studies.
That’s where the bleeding edge of SEO blurs right into content marketing best practices. The similarities are so close, the two disciplines start to use the same words. And the same metrics.
To give you the insights you’ll need to do your own content marketing better, here are several of the latest search engine optimization studies – and the key takeaways each one has for content marketers.
- Content is the best SEO tactic.
Just in case you doubted how SEO and content marketing overlap, witness Ascend2’s latest survey on search engine optimization.
“Relevant content creation” came in as the most effective SEO tactic.
Asend2
Relevant content creation is the most effective search engine optimization tactic.
- Most of the traffic to websites is still coming from search.
Another stat for those of you who doubt the power of SEO (and think that social is enough to save you): 51% of all website traffic is still coming from organic search traffic. That’s according to BrightEdge’s study, “2017: Organic Search Is Still the Largest Channel.”
Bright Edge
Search still dwarfs social media in terms of overall traffic.
So search is still absolutely worthwhile – the traffic is still there. But as BrightEdge’s Senior VP of Marketing, Kevin Bobowski says, “Producing great content is irrelevant if consumers can’t find it.”
- Competition is fierce – but not in every industry.
If you’ve read much about content marketing, you’ve probably heard the term “content shock”. It was coined by Mark Schaefer to describe what is basically a tidal wave of competition for our audiences’ attention.
There’s simply more content “out there” than they have time to consume.
This is a core problem for content marketers because the whole reason content works is because of the audience’s attention. Content gets through their filters when advertising messages can’t. Diffuse that attention, and your results tank.
But while the competition is real… it’s not evenly distributed. In fact, if you’re in a “boring” industry, you might find the search engine competition to be pretty light.
So says Allen Gannett, CEO at TrackMaven:
”… while brands in the media and publishing, higher education, and sports and entertainment industries have the highest Domain Authorities on average, brands in the real estate, finance and insurance, and wellness industries suffer from poorly optimized websites.”
This weakness in the authority for some sectors is a huge opportunity for content marketers. Even if your brand is loosely related to these industries, you could gain a sizeable audience just by creating a well-optimized, authority content site.
- SEO isn’t being used as much as it could.
Search engine optimization: A key part of every digital marketing presence and modern business, right?
Maybe not.
Less than a third of small businesses – only 28% – do any search engine optimization. And only 57% of bloggers report using SEO as a tactic to drive traffic to their content.
It’s a shame so many businesses and websites aren’t even trying to do SEO. But it means there’s more of an opportunity for you.
- User intent is everything.
What does someone really want when they Google “pizza”? Is it to order a pizza, make a pizza, understand pizza history?
That’s the puzzle of user intent.
Get user intent wrong, and even good, well-optimized pages will fall flat. Get it right and you’ll be forgiven for a boatload of other sins.
Know where user intent for SEO and user intent for content marketing merge?
In user personas. Aka “buyer personas” or “customer profiles”. These different types of customers have different needs and priorities. So they need different content.
Article source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansutter/2017/11/25/6-things-new-seo-research-reveals-about-content-marketing/