Content Marketing As a Main Part of an SEO Strategy

In this guide you will become acquainted with the most important part of any SEO strategy:

Content marketing.

SEO and content marketing today are like two sides in a coin.

In the past, an error that often happened to a content marketer did not pay attention to SEO. Likewise with an SEO practitioner, not paying attention to content.

Both parties consider it useless.

As a result, the website development process does not run optimally.

The right content marketing strategy and assisted search engine optimization are the keys to success of your website and online business.

In fact, almost all forms of online marketing that rely on SEO will depend on content.

After reading this guide, you - as an SEO practitioner - will have a mindset like a content marketer ... and vice versa.


What is content marketing?
Content marketing is marketing efforts carried out by providing useful content for other people so that they know your business / business.

This marketing technique is very popular, we can see a very rapid development in this graph:


Although the term is only known in 2011-2012, but the practice has been done for a long time.

Examples of its application:

A fitness supplement product publishes content that contains exercise patterns and diet for muscle development. Thus people who are looking for information about the content will arrive at the website for the sale of supplement products.

From here you can see a little connection.

A content marketer needs SEO knowledge so that the content can get a good ranking in search engines ... because Google is the biggest traffic source.

Then what about the opposite?

Modern SEO is content marketing + SEO
Since ancient times, people who are enthusiastic about SEO are always trying to find loopholes how their website can get high rankings on Google.

Whether it's by playing with keywords, backlinks, or social signals.

(the last two terms are discussed in the next chapter)

But the key to SEO, for now and in the future, we can dismantle it by looking at what all the parties in it really want.

There are 3 parties in SEO: users, websites, and Google.

This is what we all want:


Users want to get the best information as soon as possible.

To satisfy users, Google will place the best information in the top position.

Thus, to get the top position you need to do is provide the best information.

That's why content plays the most important role.

Good content = quality information.

To be able to create the best content, then an SEO practitioner must learn content marketing.

So, we can conclude that in digital marketing the position of SEO and Content Marketing is interconnected.


So what to do?
By realizing the important role of content in SEO, then surely you will focus on creating content and publishing content.

Be careful ... this could be a big mistake.

Not all content is good for SEO. If made carelessly, it won't produce anything.

Humans don't want to read a lot of content that doesn't make sense, so does Google.

Therefore consider the following rules:

1. Always prioritize quality content
No one wants to read content that is of low quality, Google won't want to put content that is of low quality in the top position.

(Unless there is no other content at all)

So don't make content that is of low quality, the more content that is of low quality on your website, the lower the quality of your website as a whole.

What is quality content?

How to make it?

Here are some articles that can help you:

How to create excellent content
Write SEO-friendly articles
Make weighty content using the KTP method
2. The quantity of content is not very important
Quantity is almost always inversely proportional to quality. Unless you have many professional writers.

The more often you publish content, the more difficult it is to maintain quality.

Content is important ...

... but don't just create content because you want to have content.

Make sure what is discussed in your content is not the same as that of other websites, and make sure your content is of higher value.

3. Google ranks pages, not websites
They don't care if your website has 1000 pages or only 1, which gets the best position only the best content.

The number of pages has no effect.

In addition, if you have many pages that target certain keywords, it means that you will also compete with yourself ... but generally Google only displays 1 page of 1 website.

So, it's better to make 1 content of the highest quality possible than to make 2 different content with the exact same topic.

4. Quality content is not enough
Although content plays the biggest role, but Google is a robot.

Google can determine whether articles are relevant to what they want, but they cannot directly read articles to determine their quality.

Therefore they need external factors:

Reader satisfaction.

By being aware of this, what you should do after publishing content is to tell the existence of it to others.

How to promote content is explained further in this guide.

In the next guide, we will discuss more about this.

5. Use of keywords
Content marketers often forget keywords.

Though keywords play an important role in SEO.

The use of keywords in articles can turn a content into a blunt sword, a sharp sword, or a double-edged sword.

There are 4 main mistakes in using keywords for content:

Keyword stuffing - using the same keywords over and over on one page, hopes that Google considers this content relevant to keywords, even though it is fatal.
General keywords - aiming for keywords that are too general or broad without caring about the search intent.
Without keywords - if you have published a lot of content, you will feel that the content that targets a particular keyword will get a larger volume of visitors than those that don't target it at all.
Internal competition - 1 website generally only appears once on a search results page. If more than one of your content targets the same main keyword, then you will experience internal page competition. Therefore, diversify keywords for each page.


Exception: understand the search intent
Not for all Google search keywords, it will rank content such as articles, videos or photos.

There are exceptions.

For example: a user searches with the keyword "buy a laptop".

What are the results they expect?

Articles on how to buy a laptop
Video tips on buying a laptop
Online store that sells laptops
100% want the third result.

Google and other search engines are aware of this. Therefore for the keyword "buy a laptop" it is very impossible that you can get a good ranking with the article.

So understand the meaning of the keyword.

If searchers want content then Google will provide content. But if they want to buy a product, the product sales page will take precedence.

The next chapter will discuss off-page SEO, this topic further discusses marketing and its relationship with SEO.