While SEO and content marketing are not one and the same, they certainly overlap a lot, and it is getting more and more true every day. In the past, good content could have brought you some traffic, mostly through word of mouth. These days, Google actively encourages websites that give visitors value, and value is mostly represented by high-quality content that would interest people. Therefore, SEO and content marketing do not just exist side by side but support and supplement each other. So what can you do to improve your ranking with content marketing? Let us take a closer look.

1. Choose the right topics

Do not write about your brand, write about issues that are likely to interest your audience based on its demographics and behaviors. Nobody is going to look for an article about the new practice you introduced in your organization or the success of your company’s marketing campaign. What people are looking for is the content that helps them solve their problems.

1. Use guest posting

Backlinks are one of the primary currencies in modern SEO. The more links are leading back to your website, the more authority it has, the higher it is ranked by Google, the more visitors it gets, perpetuating the cycle. However, these days it is no longer possible to multiply generic low-quality posts across a hundred readerless blogs created for the sole purpose of hosting such posts – you may even be penalized for such practice. Today, quality is preferable to quantity every time – links will only do you any good if they lead from high-authority resources. You may either try looking for and reaching out to them on your own (you can use a good guide to this on luckyposting.com), or hire a guest blogging agency to do the heavy lifting for you.

1. Use the right keywords

No, we do not suggest that you stuff your content with keywords to the point of bursting, like in 2000s. There should not be too many, but what few you use should be the right ones, the ones that are relevant for your business and your clients. You can use many tools to help you locate your best keywords, with Google Adwords Keyword Planner being the most well-known and easily available. The idea is simple: type in keywords you know to be important for your business, and Google will show you related keywords that people are looking for. For counting keywords then follow: Word Count

1. Systemize the use of keywords

What you cannot do with quantity these days you have to compensate for with organization and scheduling. A good way to go about it is to define your set of goal keywords and schedule their use: e.g., create an editorial calendar and plan which keywords you are going to promote each week in your posts. This will both help you prepare content in advance and avoid overloading your blog with the same or similar keywords.

1. Optimize each post for keywords

Again, this does not mean that you should overload your posts with them. Instead, use them strategically in:

• Headline;
• Page title (as it appears in the Google listing);
• URL (easily done with WordPress);
• Meta description;
• Content (primarily subheadings).

You can see how well your post is optimized with the help of Yoast.

1. Optimize for mobile

Mobile accounts for more than a half of Internet traffic and about 67 percent of total digital minutes. Many people surf the Internet exclusively through their mobile devices. Optimizing for search these days is optimizing for mobile; if you do not do this, you effectively throw more than a half of your potential traffic out of the window. Loading speed is one of the most crucial concerns: 53 percent of mobile visitors report that they leave a website if it does not load within 3 seconds. This means that you have to carefully balance between keeping your content visually attractive and adding heavy elements to it.

When deciding how to promote your website, there is no need to choose between SEO or content marketing. Both are equally important and, if properly used, work hand in hand to increase its ranking, reach out to new audiences and promote your brand. Hopefully, with these tips you will be able to do just that.