How to Combine Your Content Marketing and SEO Strategy

One problem that is often seen with companies is that their SEO and content marketing strategies don’t work as seamlessly with each another as they should. In many cases, they are actually in conflict with one another. This is something that needs to change.

Content Marketing and SEO Work Best When Together

In reality, there are two things that are always right when it comes to competitive niches:

• SEO is never enough on its own.
• Creating content of high quality is not going to get the job done alone.

If you were to pull up Google and perform a search for the keyword “content marketing,” what are some of the websites that you see on the first page of the search results?

• Content Marketing Institute
• Wikipedia
• Forbes
• Copyblogger
• Moz

What exactly do these websites have in common? They are all authoritative sites that have built a significant amount of trust among website owners and online users. Because of this, they find themselves in the top positions of the SERPs and have attracted a tremendous amount of links.

It is going to be extremely difficult to outrank them regardless of how incredible your content may be. This is why when you are publishing new content that you need to ensure that the content is trending and that the content answers what your audience is searching for. At the same time, though, you need to make sure the types of posts that you are creating and posting have the highest probability of acquiring links and that you are locating the right keywords.

If you are uncertain how to locate the right keywords to get a leg up on your competition and how to determine the number of inbound links that your content needs in order to get on the first page of the SERPs, keep reading and you will find out.

Step #1: Assess Your Existing Situation in Google

First, you need to determine which types of keywords are currently bringing in traffic and driving conversions. These types of queries can be located in your Google Analytics account, assuming that it is connected with your Google Search Console account.

However, you may run into one slight issue. Even after your Analytics is connected with your search Console, it will not show you the keywords that are converting. Google will only show you this type of data as it relates to your landing pages. Luckily, there are tools that will provide you this missing information. These tools include SEMrush, SERPstat, SpyFu and Ahrefs. These tools will allow you to see for which search phrases a certain URL shows up in Google as well as how far from the first Google position your website is for a certain keyword.

Step #2: Locate Related Keywords

Your next step is to locate keywords that are related to those that you located in the first step.

So, if you have keywords that are related to a certain topic that are converting, then you want to make sure that you are creating more content with keywords that are related to that same topic. Why you ask? This is because these keywords will mirror your target audience’s search behavior. These keywords are the search phrases that will have the largest potential of bringing in paying customers.

How do you find these keywords? Well, there are several different ways. You can start with Google’s Autocomplete feature. You can do this manually or using a tool, such as AnswerThePublic.com.

The latter can come in handy when you are trying to come up with a title for your content. It is a good tool when you are trying to determine what it is that people are searching the web for. It is a large database of various searches that can predict what you will ask based on previously searched data. The more variations that you enter, the more types of content ideas that you will receive.

Another tool that you can use is Keywordtool.io. This difference with this tool is that it will actually provide you with the search volume for the keywords that you enter. As a result, it can save you a significant amount of research time.

Yet another tool is SEMrush Keyword Magic. This particular tool works by offering you the most integral information regarding a certain keyword by factoring in some of the following metrics:

• Keyword difficult
• CPC and volume
• SERP features
• Competition level
• Exact and broad matches of the keyword

This tool works to quickly and efficiently compile the data that is needed and provides you with a valuable analysis of single and groups of keywords. It significantly reduces your individual research time.

Step #3: Check SERPs for the Level of Competition

Now that you have developed a list of keywords that are associated with your site’s most lucrative search queries, you need to select the keywords that are going to rank high in Google. Keep in mind that these keywords are going to topics for upcoming articles.

You can use the SEMrush Keyword Difficult tool to determine how hard it is going to be to promote the keyword/article based on how visible the domain is in organic search results. The one issue with this particular tool is that it does not take into consideration how many referring domains for your website/page URL that you are attempting to look up. Therefore, you will need to utilize Excel. However, this can be a pain- and hassle-free process with the following guidance.

To begin, collect a list of pages and domains that are currently ranking in Google for your list of keywords. If you use a tool, such as SEMrush, SpyFu or Ahrefs Site Explorer, this process can be sped up significantly since you can export lists. The results will provide you with each keyword’s ranking difficult, an explanation of the number of keywords in the URL and title, the number of clicks on a monthly basis, as well as search results. The red and green arrows inform you of whether or not the page’s ranking has either gone up or down.

Once these domains and URLs have been collected, the number of referring domains need to be checked for each one. Again, this process can be done through the use of tools, such as Majestic Bulk Backlink Checker or Ahrefs, which will allow multiple links to be analyzed at any given time.

Last, but not least, you need to ensure that you have a solid understand of which keywords have more or less competition based on the situation in the search engine result pages as well as the number of searchers.

Moving forward, you will be aware of the number of referring domains that your content pieces need in order to receive a higher ranking in Google. You will also be able to identify the number of referring domains by simply looking at the number of links that have previously been acquired by other highly-ranked pages in Google.

In addition, you will be able to estimate how many visitors that you can successfully attract each month and calculate conversions that can potentially be earned since you will have researched additional keywords that are related to your most lucrative search terms.

Conclusion

It isn’t easy to outrank websites that have built trust and credibility with their customers. Of course, you don’t necessarily have to do that. You simply need to use what you’ve got. Evaluate the keywords that you are currently using to determine which ones are most profitable in terms of traffic and sales and then find keywords that are related to them.

Analyze your site’s URL performance to determine the number of referring domains that are necessary for each page to remain visible in the SERPs, then elaborate on each of the topics that your audience is most interested in.

Make sure that you are taking advantage of as many marketing tools as you can, as this will minimize the manual labor that you are putting in so that you can focus on something else, and don’t ever turn your back to your competition. Stay smart and sharp by taking small, gradual steps and focusing on keywords that will get you on that first page of Google SERPs.