Content marketing, should be taken into account in your SEO strategy to generate quality and sustainable traffic. How to write content that is optimized for search engines and for Internet users?

When we put all of our time and effort into creating fantastic and popular content, why not get some love from search engines and increase your organic traffic?

In many ways, the algorithm of search engines are similar to what your visitors like. They want relevance, structure and authority:

• The best answer to a search query.
• In current search results, great content has the best chance of ranking well.

Read on to find out how you can integrate content marketing into an SEO strategy to receive the most traffic, leads, and customers.

The importance of content marketing in your SEO strategy

What is content marketing, or content marketing? It is a marketing strategy that calls for the creation and publication of content in order to develop businesses. It is important to publish and share your content to gain greater visibility online and to acquire external backlinks. External links are still one of the biggest ranking factors for Google.

It is equally important to cover a topic in depth to increase its relevance. But be careful, not all content needs search engine optimization.

There are other reasons to write content (e.g. for social shares or to increase trust and conversion), but if you want to get the most out of your content marketing and improve ROI, SEO natural (SEO) should be in your sights.

Adapt content marketing to your SEO strategy

To create a complete content marketing and natural SEO strategy, I invite you to consider three factors:

• What you want to communicate: Your vision, your value proposition, topics and issues – the things that you stand for as a business and that you are passionate about.
• What people are looking for: Use keyword research as an opportunity to study your target audience, market demand, and your target audience’s interest in this information.
• What search engines favor: Reviewing page 1 to understand what search engines consider the most relevant answer – and replicate something competitive.

Search engines love structured websites

Let’s talk about your content ideas from an SEO perspective. The clarity and structure of websites are appreciated by search engines. Each of your content ideas, pages or blog posts should cover a subject, an intellectual entity.

Think of your content more as a Wikipedia entry (a knowledge base that covers a topic in depth) than a collection of long-tail keywords. Quality content should cover the topic so well that it satisfies the user’s search intent. Each content will be optimized for a keyword group made up of primary and secondary keywords.

We use keyword variations and synonyms so that search engines can easily understand the topic of our articles, as well as the context of the topic.

The keyword research process helps us determine the topics that are relevant to our ideal client.

• Synonyms, variations and related keywords to cover in a web page.
• Monthly research volume to understand the value of digital marketing.
• Click-through potential by estimating the click-through rate to account for ads, featured article snippets, etc.
• The difficulty of the keywords to prioritize based on the chances of success (and your goals).
• Making data-driven decisions increases your chances of success online.

When evaluating content ideas, you’ll always want to consider these metrics.

• Avoid keyword cannibalization
• For each unique and clearly distinct topic idea, you’ll want to create a specific page and cover the topic in depth.

Likewise, you need to make sure that each topic is only covered once. The questions are:

• Have we covered this topic before?
• Can we improve or rework existing content?

From an SEO perspective, you’ll always want to update existing content rather than creating a second, third, or fourth post on the same topic.

Evergreen content is a winner for SEO.

You are already competing with billions of websites to improve your positioning, why do you compete with yourself?

When several of your own pages are fighting for Page 1, it is referred to as keyword cannibalization and it really hurts your SEO effort.

Keyword cannibalization

In most cases, you’ll want to review your existing content and find the blog posts and pages that have already covered the topic. Take advantage of the article’s age, existing ranking, and links by turning a mid-performing article into something great.

Understanding the 1st page of Google

Usually, content creators and digital marketers guess the user’s intent behind a query and what kind of content they should write. But the best way to find out what users and Google want is to look at the first page.

You will find that there are at least 9 different types of search results that provide different types of content to the user.

• Research: Definitions, long guides, knowledge graphs or snippets of articles
• Answer: Usual zero-click searches like weather, currency conversion, time zones
• Transactional: Product and category pages, E-commerce results
• Local: Maps, local results
• Visual: Images, media elements thumbnails
• Videos.
• Information: Newspapers, tweets, top stories
• Brand: Home page with links, social networks of a company
• Mixed: When Google isn’t clear on search intent, it provides a bit of everything.

The short answer is this: you’ll want to create the type of content that is currently displayed on the first page for your topic and keywords.

By studying the first page, you will have the opportunity to understand:

• The sub-topics and concepts used by the best performing content
• The titles of the articles
• Keywords used
• Average length of results content on page 1

You can use tools to save time in your first page analysis, but at the end of the day a good content creator will always ditch the tools to take a real look and incorporate the lessons into their content briefing. And sometimes creating the best answer isn’t about creating an ultimate guide.

Keywords are still important

Finally, make sure that your content is suitable for natural referencing, or SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Each piece of content will be ranked based on many synonyms and variations, as search engines keep improving in understanding concepts and context.

But search engine algorithms are still robots. Make it easy for Google, Bing, and Yahoo to understand your article’s content.

Yes, you will always want to use your main keyword in:

• URL
• Title H1
• Meta title and description
• The first paragraph

Not only because it makes sense for search engines, but also because it makes sense for users to be consistent as they go from entering a search query to finding a result, to clicking. You will also need to optimize your images, especially if you are trying to position yourself for this type of research.

Making the Most of Content Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Your content marketing will be properly integrated into your SEO strategy if you consider the following:

• Select specific, clearly distinct and unique topics.
• Use keyword research to structure your website and prioritize your content.
• Update existing web pages if you want to cover a topic again.
• Review page 1 to understand the type of content to create.
• Optimize your content using relevant keywords and the semantic cocoon.
• This will give you content that will have a better chance of attracting quality and lasting traffic.