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SEO fundamentals for content marketers

Content plays an integral role in today’s era of digital marketing. It is rightly termed as the king of any platform or channel used by companies for promoting their products and services. However, useful content alone isn’t enough. It is equally important that it reaches its intended audience. This is where Search Engine Optimization or SEO plays the perfect bridge between the organization and its target audience, ensuring that the latter receives the desired message. 

To facilitate this process seamlessly, it is vital to have a sound knowledge of SEO fundamentals. This blog highlights SEO basics for content marketers that can help them improve visibility for the brands they work for and drive organic traffic to their respective content. 

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SEO Basics for Content Marketers

As stated above, all content marketers are required to have a working knowledge of SEO to ensure that their content can be found, is relevant, and also helpful to their intended target audience. For this, a fair idea of the following SEO basic principles can be quite helpful:

  1. Backlinks: These refer to the links from other external websites to your website that are an indicator of the confidence that other sources have on the information provided by your site. Additionally, backlinks point to the authority and credibility that you enjoy in your area of work, which is noticed by search engines, in turn contributing to improved visibility and traffic to your portal. 
  1. Keyword research: Keywords are an inseparable part of any content. It is what your users are using every time they want to search for some information on the Internet. Good knowledge of these keywords that your users use for online search can be a beneficial exercise for content writers and marketers. 
  1. Metrics analytics: Knowing how to use tools like Google Analytics to track and analyze how your content is performing is very helpful in gauging your SEO efforts. It helps you understand what’s truly working and what isn’t, and to make appropriate revisions in your content to achieve the goals of your organization.
  1. On-page SEO: This is one of the very useful tools in content marketing SEO essentials and helps you optimize your individual web pages for higher rankings on search engines. It also helps drive increased traffic to these pages. On-page SEO includes components like title tags, headers, quality of the content, meta descriptions, and structure of the URL.
  1. User Experience (UX): The overall experience that your users get when interacting with your website is of immense importance in content marketing. This includes the website layout, navigation, and usability of features for the users. A great UX can help lower bounce rates and facilitate longer stay-times on the website and higher visits too.
  1. Quality of the content: This is a non-negotiable factor and one of the most important SEO tips for content marketers to follow. Never compromise on the quality of the content that you offer to your audience. It is not only highly satisfying to your readers but also encourages them to stay longer on the site or keep visiting for more such useful content, which inevitably boosts SEO rankings.
  1. Optimization for mobile experience: In the current era where everything is best appreciated mobile and portable, it is important to stay tuned to the trend and optimize your content for mobile usability as well. 
  1. Techical SEO: It is important that your website keeps up with the technical requirements of search engines. This includes working on crawlability, speed of the site, and secure connections, i.e., HTTPS. 

Content Marketing SEO Essentials

Content marketing and SEO work hand in hand and high-quality, relevant content is a key element of this working relationship. SEO efforts begin with a fair understanding of the exact keywords and phrases that your target audience is likely to use when searching for information on the Internet. Content marketers then use these keywords to create articles, blogs, videos, and other content forms to fill the information gap for their respective audiences. 

Additionally, content marketers are better able to optimize their content for SEO by incorporating keywords naturally into the content without impacting its overall readability. Furthermore, it is important to create engaging and shareable content online that has the potential to reach to a wider audience and create a viral impact.

You may like to learn more about The marketing trends in 2024 

SEO Tips for Content Marketers

In order to better achieve the aforementioned objective, content marketers are encouraged to follow a few vital SEO tips that can help them create content which addresses user intent and provides value to the audience:

  1. Optimize your page title and subheads: These are interestingly the very first and sometimes the only part of the webpage that your audience may actually look at. Moreover, their decision to continue scrolling through or read the remaining content on the page is also going to based on how well-defined your headings and subheadings appear to them. Work on optimizing both these elements well using H1, H2, and H3 tags. Make sure to include keywords in the headings and subheads to improve relevance for search engines. 
  1. Research your keywords: Along with the commonly used terms, also keen an eye out for long-tail keywords as they have lower competition and are more specific in terms of the search query. Make use of some useful tools in your keyword research, such as SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner, and Ahrefs. They can help search for keywords that are the most relevant to your content.
  1. Make sure to optimize images too: Not just the text but images too have a role to improve SEO rankings for a page. Make sure to use Alt Text to add text for describing the image. Also insert keywords in file names for images and ensure better loading speed at uncompromised picture quality. 
  1. Optimize meta descriptions: Keep them engaging and informative and make sure that they are able to exactly describe the content of your post in a few words. The length of the meta description does matter here so try and stick to up to 160 characters.
  1. Work on internal and external links both: Interlinking to other pages on your website is a very useful exercise for content marketers as it drives user engagement and increases their stay time on the site. 

Along with internal linking, make sure to provide links to external, authoritative sources as well that ensure credibility and provide added value to the readers. The tip here is to make sure that all external links open in a new tab on the browser to ensure that the user stays on your site while enjoying additional information elsewhere on a separate tab.

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  1. Keep the title attractive: Your page title is the first and also the most important element of the entire content. Aim for engaging titles that are also keyword-rich, appear helpful, and encourage user clicks.
  1. Work on improving UX: This is one of the most important content marketing and SEO strategies to follow. Make sure that your content is well-read and received on all platforms for the user. This includes making the content easily accessible on all devices and screen sizes.
  1. Enhance content quality: If your content marketing efforts are not yielding the desired results, it’s time to work on improving the quality of your content. Sometimes long-form content works better with search engines. Aim for 1000+ blog posts. You can supplement them with short, informative videos in the content too. Most importantly, make sure to offer unique insights on a topic for better reach and response. 

SEO Strategies and best practices for content marketers

Integrating SEO into content marketing efforts requires applying effective strategies, such as the ones listed below: 

  • Create an editorial calendar based on keyword research. Identify the top-searched keywords and then proceed with creating an entire calendar of optimized content  the month based on those keywords. 
  • Promote your content on various platforms. This includes social media and email marketing campaigns. Share articles, blog posts, reels, videos, and infographics on your social media channels. Make use of email marketing campaigns such as newsletters highlighting the latest updates, blog posts, and other attractive features for your audience to look out for.
  • Make use of analytics tools to track SEO performance on your content. This can help make appropriate adjustments and changes accordingly. 
  • Update and repurpose your content regularly. This is one of the best practices for content marketers to follow for SEO success. It keeps you at the top of the game while adding value for your readers. 
  • Make sure to optimize all elements of the website. This includes optimization of images, improving the speed of the website, and making it mobile-friendly for the users.
  • Make sure to monitor and analyze SEO metrics regularly to gauge the impact of your content marketing efforts and to ensure that they are moving in the right direction.

Also, read the Power of Negative Hooks in Marketing

Take your career forward with Online Manipal

Content marketing is one of the most useful and rewarding careers in today’s digital age. When everything around us is upgrading to online, it helps to stay with the times and chart out a career path that holds immense promise for future growth and is also extremely satisfying. 

SEO being an integral part of your content marketing efforts cannot be held in isolation. A fair understanding of the key SEO fundamentals can go a long way in turning your efforts in content marketing to fruition. 

Manipal University Jaipur provides an exclusive opportunity to students aspiring for a rewarding career in content marketing to enroll in the university’s online MBA with a marketing elective. The course is designed to help students take their careers forward in this domain and carve newer milestones for themselves. 

Conclusion

SEO and content marketing are closely related. One is incomplete and perhaps dysfunctional without the other. This is why all professionals in the field are required to have a fair working knowledge of the best SEO practices for marketers that can help the latter find growth in their respective areas of work.

To better upskill yourself in this arena, consider pursuing an MBA in Marketing from the Manipal University of Jaipur. Offered in online mode on the Online Manipal platform, the course is a perfect start for students with a keen interest in sales distribution, consumer behavior, e-marketing, and the like – all of which are helpful metrics for effective content marketing. 

Disclaimer

Information related to companies and external organizations is based on secondary research or the opinion of individual authors and must not be interpreted as the official information shared by the concerned organization.


Additionally, information like fee, eligibility, scholarships, finance options etc. on offerings and programs listed on Online Manipal may change as per the discretion of respective universities so please refer to the respective program page for latest information. Any information provided in blogs is not binding and cannot be taken as final.

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