Some people are saying that content marketing is the new SEO. What’s the difference? Is it right for your business?
Content marketing is using things you’ve written to promote your business. These assets could be articles or blog posts. They could also be infographics or white papers. It might seem on your website or someone else’s. These aim to offer content that your potential customers might find helpful as they journey down the buying path that leads to the services your company provides.
The definition I use to describe SEO is “answering questions people are asking through the search engines.” When it comes to a business, SEO is connecting your potential customers with the answers your business has to the questions or problems people are taking to the search engines.
I think you can start to see how content marketing and SEO come together. An important part of answering a question is providing content. “Where can I buy a AX-21 Mark 2 Green Widget?” is a question a customer might ask. If your company sells that part number, you’ll need content on your website that states this, if you want to get that sale.
This is true when it comes to services, as well. When a potential customer asks Google, “Where can I find a logistics consultant near Atlanta?” the SEO campaign should make sure you have that on your website to show your company has that answer.
There’s more to SEO than just publishing the right content on a website. SEO is an advocate for the search engine- and makes sure it can crawl and read your website’s content. SEO also makes sure other, relevant websites are linking to your website to build authority- this is often done with content but you could do content marketing and forget about the importance of backlinks.
A successful content marketing campaign is able to do more than SEO. It’s able to build a brand. Content marketing is also able to generate interest in a new product or service (something SEO is very poor at doing). While SEO is about your website, content marketing extends beyond websites into social media and even e-books (or, heck, print books).
How would you make a distinction between content marketing and SEO? Can you think of any other advantages or disadvantages of each? Leave them in the comments, below.
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