What an evergreen topic to discuss!

While most of the people agree that content can never be underestimated or compromised, even at the expense of search engine optimization practices, some good folks consider it as the biggest lie ever told.

Well, everyone has their own observation, and by the end of their posts, you’d see an agreement to the statement, “Content is the King” whether optimized or not. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

The content marketing Guru believes “SEO is About Content Marketing “(period). According to Neil Patel, 

“It’s a cute analogy, but it’s simply not accurate. It’s not as if SEO and content marketing are two different people. To borrow the same metaphor, SEO and content marketing are actually two personalities of the same person.”

Both SEO and content marketing go hand in hand, although they’re slightly different in terms of implementation. While SEO is more technical and narrower, content marketing is more holistic and broader in meaning. Businesses can achieve the best results by applying both of them together.

The Two Perspectives

• SEO should be applied in a broader way, and to do so, its specific technical endeavors should be channeled into content marketing. 
• Content marketing can succeed if the SEO techniques are applied in its implementation. 

In short, Content is the primary element of Search Engine Optimization, and without it, SEO will have no purpose at all. A business that wants to rank well in SERPs needs to take into account search engine algorithm changes and implement them in their marketing campaigns.

While most of the changes have been favoring digital marketing tactics, you cannot separate the importance of SEO or the content for that fact as both of them still play a vital role in ranking. 

But if we see these two aspects – the SEO and the Content – in isolation, both go hand in hand complementing each other. 

SEO makes demands. Content marketing fulfills those demands

– Neil Patel

Here are a few simple ways to understand the relationship between SEO and Content. 

Why Content is Still the King in SEO

Content fulfills the requirements addressed by SEO

Think about all the keyword searches and the amount you spend on keywords. That’s SEO for you. What do you do after identifying those search terms?

You simply create the content around those search terms to rank well. It simply means you create the content to fulfill the requirements generated by SEO.

SEO demands Content

As said earlier; SEO is nothing without the content. Once you identified the demand through keyword searches, you go on to create articles, posts, videos, infographics, and the likes to fulfill those demands. 

In short, whether you’ve heard it a hundred times, and never want to hear it anymore, you cannot change the reality: Content Is the King. And there are solid reasons for it:

• Websites with long-form content (in excess of 2000 words) rank well on SERPs.
• The websites featuring rich content are likely to get more links.
• The social web gives preferences to content-rich web pages.
• Long-form copies offer better conversion compared to short-form copies.

And it goes on…

SEO Needs Keywords. Content Marketing Utilizes the Keywords

When we talk about keywords, it’s a primary feature of search engine optimization, isn’t it?

In fact, the world of SEO revolves around keywords. Ask any SEO expert and he would tell you:

• They research keywords
• Utilize them
• Track the ranking for specific keywords 

When it comes to applying the use of keywords and funneling all the research into its application, there’s only one thing to do – Content Marketing. 

As mentioned above, the long-form content has an ample amount of space to fit in primary and secondary keywords. This is probably why SEO efforts paid off and the content-rich pages ranked well on SERPs.

Moreover, if you do it without the content, chances are you’ll be charged for keyword stuffing. It simply means you need content to implement SEO. 

Note: don’t stuff your pages with too many keywords as Panda will nail you for it.

Content Offers Backlinks that SEO Demands

Another important pillar of SEO is backlinking. 

Wouldn’t you love to see DA 98 linking back to your website? How about getting a powerful .edu link to your blog post? Awesome, isn’t it?

And how will you plan to get those links from such high authority sites? Obviously, with the help of well-researched, thought-provoking, groundbreaking content. Without such stellar content, your SEO dream won’t come true. 

You may opt for a link building agency or two if you’re absolutely prepared for the backlash you’ll get if that agency had a bad reputation. However, the best way to get backlinks and build your link profile is to consistently create evergreen content – something that readers and visitors would love to link back to. 

In short, if you want a solid and sustainable reputation in SERPs, you’re going to need high-quality backlinks, and that can only be achieved through publishing killer content.  

Content Needs Great UX while SEO Demands Onsite Technical Optimization 

Here’s a point of contingency then. This particular point speaks for SEO, and this is probably why SEO is more than keywords, blog posts, and links. Apart from these basics, SEO also includes:

• Enhancing metadata
• Optimizing robot.txt, 
• Constructing strategic sitemap
• Utilizing proper tags

All of these are technical elements of SEO that are equally important for a website. But these aspects are tangentially related to the Content. 

Why is technical optimization put in place in the first place?

To improve user experience and learn his behavior as he searches for answers on the website.

All of these technical SEO elements are thoughtfully put in place to promote the content. 

• You need a good sitemap because visitors can find the relevant content more easily. 
• An optimized robot.txt is there to ensure smooth crawlability to search engines
• All the right tags should be in the right place in order to get the content the stellar indexing and accurate search results.

Once again, you’re backing up your content with SEO.

Finally

There are plenty of examples to prove that SEO practices are meant for content marketing. Where one gets the user to the page, the other presents with meaningful solutions to serve the purpose. Here, the key is to use both, the SEO and Content sparingly as both the elements are there to promote your products, services, and the business as a whole. 

Did we miss anything? If you have anything to say, do mention in the comments section below.