SEO and Content Marketing for B2B SaaS
What is content marketing? Content marketing focuses on creating and sharing online content with your audience that is about more than just your product or service. A content strategy example could include blogs, podcasts, educational videos, memes, or more. The goal isn’t just to advertise to your audience, it’s to connect with them.
It’s important that every business have a strong content marketing strategy. Content marketing is essential to the inbound lead generation cycle of attracting, engaging, and delighting your prospects and current customers. That is true of any kind of content your business puts out, whether it’s a white paper on the cutting-edge technology of your new product or a meme about Mondays. However, that’s not to say that businesses should create content just to create it. Content marketing serves a variety of purposes – one of which is to perform search engine optimization, also known as SEO. SEO content optimization is easiest with written content such as blog posts, white pages, downloadable content, and landing pages.
When creating a content marketing strategy, there are a few things that every organization should consider for SEO content marketing. Firstly, why do you want to use content marketing? Define your mission and goals for your content strategy. Make sure they are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based). Creating SMART goals helps to report success and keep teams focused on the task at hand, rather than trying to throw strategies at the wall and see what sticks. The same is true when developing a content SEO strategy. Determining best practices and strategies for SEO can be a different ballpark from a regular content marketing strategy, so in order to keep everyone on the same page, SMART goals should be defined before the first piece of content is ever written.
The benefits of content marketing are vast. When utilizing SEO and content marketing together, organizations can see a significant increase in organic traffic, which contributes to more lead generation overall. That means more eyeballs on your website, more people filling out forms, and the chance for increased sales. There are a lot of different content strategies that you can utilize alongside SEO. Content marketing that is specific and personalized to your audience generates brand recognition, deeper trust and engagement, and increased customer loyalty.
By creating different kinds of content for consumers that are at different stages in the buyer’s journey, you can usher customers all the way from the awareness stage to the decision stage with content marketing alone. However, there’s one important thing to consider when it comes to content marketing. How does a consumer find the content? SEO can help your customer and you by guiding them to solutions for their problems. Hopefully, those solutions are yours! People rarely venture past the first page of a search engine. That’s why building a great SEO strategy is so important in making your solutions visible to your ideal customer.
Building a content marketing strategy can be intimidating, but it’s important to know that you don’t have to be on every digital platform to have a successful content marketing strategy. Publish your content where your audience already is, whether on LinkedIn, Facebook, or other social media sites. Be sure to utilize your own channels too, such as your website through a blog or an e-newsletter.
So to get specific, what is SEO in digital marketing? SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of improving the visibility of your website, content, and products. SEO content optimization is achieved through methods like keyword research and establishing great web infrastructure, content production, and backlinks (or endorsements).
There are two main types of SEO content. The first is quality SEO content. This content is meant to be more human, more about the brand story and your consumers. It may not and will likely not have any SEO keywords in it at all. This type of content is not to show up in search engines but to inspire your audience and engage in a conversation with them. SEO content examples of quality content could be thought leadership pieces, educational or instructional video content, or expert opinion pieces.
The second type of SEO content is performance content, which is all about optimization. This is the type of content that helps boost search engine rankings through its keyword usage and frequency. It’s important to have a healthy mixture of both performance and quality content in an SEO content strategy. Templates for content strategies can be found online and can be great tools for those new to content marketing & SEO strategies.