Despite how long search engine optimization has been around, and how it has evolved, a surprising range of misconceptions continues to circulate about SEO. We are frequently asked how to get instant results from things like keyword stuffing and other black-hat SEO techniques. In other words, can we “hack” SEO to get instant, better page ranking in a search engine result page (SERPs)? Can we just dip into SEO manipulation, the quick-fix “calculated” SEO done the way it was in the dawn of the internet?
Brief answer: not a chance. If it were that easy, you wouldn’t need SEO specialists like us.
What generates a deeper, genuine confusion these days is drawn from the world of content. That is, what is the relationship between content creation and SEO, and how important is the balance between the two in supporting each other? Some companies with some SEO experience recognize that it’s a more complex equation than it used to, but it still poses some questions.
How are SEO and content related?
A lot of confusion reigns around either/or/versus kinds of questions, such as: Should I focus more on SEO or content? But it isn’t one or the other. It’s not a conflict of dueling swords. Instead SEO and content complement each other as valuable tools, not unlike a knife and fork. Together they clear your plate and get you where you need to go with search engine visibility and better marketing results.
SEO and content have to work seamlessly together to underpin a long-term content and SEO strategy. Some of what earns you search engine visibility is quality content: content that reflects your expertise and builds your authority. How does this work?
The maturing SEO and content equation
A search engine’s goal is to deliver the most relevant content to satisfy a user search. While a big part of the burden for getting relevant results rests with the end-user and that they specify, the more fine-tuned search engines’ understanding of users and resulting algorithms.
As SEO has grown more sophisticated over the years, it has linked up, hand in hand, with content.
What do we mean by content? It could be a lot of things, such as video, images, or infographics; after all, if YouTube is the second-most popular search engine on the internet as is often reported, you need to think holistically about all the different forms of content you can create and optimize for search. But to keep this more basic, we will mostly be discussing written content: web copy, landing pages, blog posts, and similar pieces that create opportunities to establish your thought leadership, find a niche for your products, build awareness of your company, and forge relationships with prospects and customers. In written content, target keywords form the basis of your search engine optimization strategy, but they are signposts for quality content.
The automated evolution of SEO
Search engine optimization as a discipline has evolved, and thanks to machine learning, SEO algorithms are growing better at telling the difference between quality, informative content, and “filler”. Content designed specifically to game the keyword game won’t rank highly because it has been engineered for that purpose alone but doesn’t offer any value or domain/subject-matter authority that users can trust. SEO, thanks to content and to technology, has become much more about three pillars: expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
SEO has also become incrementally better at understanding, thanks to interactivity with content, user intent. It’s not just the keyword or terms users are searching for decoupled from a context. Context matters in determining why a user is searching for something: What are they actually doing, wanting, or expecting?
What does your SEO and content strategy look like?
SEO success is not only about content, but it’s fair to say that you won’t achieve good SEO results without good content. In addition to needing to think about technical SEO, there are finer content-related points that contribute to overall results. There are loads of considerations: your SEO strategies will differ depending on your industry; most sites will benefit from long-tail keyword research and deployment; think about more than just Google when you consider optimizing for search engines, and so on.
What we hope you take away from this is that you need both SEO and content to achieve marketing success and visibility, and we’d like to help you hit this balance.
Is your content and SEO performing? Get in touch to learn how to hit the performance sweet spot.
