SEO strategies for content marketers

While SEO tips are published daily on a variety of blogs and websites, you will not find valuable recommendations for content marketers in the same amount.

I’ve been in SEO for a long time and know well that most of the recommendations are focused on web pages, html code, internal links and what these things mean for search engines and social networks that are becoming more and more popular. Most SEOs will read this and say: " Of course, but what else is needed? ".

If you work in a company or agency that receives standard reports and audits, then you know that in order to correctly interpret them and apply to your niche, you need good advice.

Interpreting this data, you may need designers, programmers, copywriters or other specialists. Most of the recommendations that provide SEO companies are purely technical in nature or focused on the use of keywords and links.

Here are some basic questions that should be asked when developing an SEO approach to content marketing:

• What are your goals?

Try to be special. Sales, brand awareness, target audience reach, customer support, new staff recruitment, branding ... Content marketing can affect a much wider aspect than sales.

• Do you have the ability to edit already existing content?

Different companies have different attitudes to editing existing content, especially when the process of publishing materials is time consuming. If the ability to edit is there, then you need to know how and to what extent edit content for SEO purposes.

• Do you have access to the editors of templates and site code?

Most content marketers are not programmers and, therefore, to get access to the templates, you should get into the IT team. Those sites that run on a CMS use templates to generate pages. Those changes that will be made to the template, can affect hundreds or thousands of pages. Having the right to make such changes you can significantly affect the visibility, as well as the complete invisibility of the site in search engines.

• Can you do SEO training for copywriters?

Conducting SEO courses for those who are engaged in creating content in the company will, to a large extent, be able to facilitate and increase the scale of SEO changes. Conduct such courses, which will collect all the necessary information on optimizing the company's CMS site and creating / publishing content in it.

• Process visualization

Can you implement a display method for how content optimization affects the site? This can be a good motivation for copywriters: they will know how their content optimization work has already influenced the site.

• Do you have access to create and publish new content?

If your niche is competitive, it hopes for existing content is not worth it, since it will not be able to "quench your thirst" search engines. Companies increase content creation and this is part of an online strategy. SEO approach to content optimization requires access and the ability to create new content. However, do not abuse keywords, because in the first place should always be customers, not search engines. SEO folks often think very differently. I hope that you are not a representative of the company, confident that the content that she needed has already been published.

• Can you set a KPI (key performance indicator)?

In the end, marketing and tactics such as SEO are aimed at increasing the number of sales. CPI is also applicable to content marketing and optimization, which will help to identify ineffective and start promoting new, optimized content. The following will also help you in identifying the effectiveness of content: the number of links that attracted content, the number of mentions on social networks, presale activity, conversions and other components .

Below are three typical approaches:

• Optimizing existing - auditing existing content, focusing on updating it and optimizing it.
• SEO optimization of the most valuable and new content - optimization of the most valuable and profitable articles, as well as optimization of new content, the publication of which was planned as part of content marketing.
• Global Optimization - have you heard of the expression "be social"? It’s the same thing, it just sounds like “be optimized”. Create new content and develop a plan for publishing it according to the keywords. Conduct SEO training for all employees involved in the content creation process, as well as SEO optimization of the template and the entire content publishing process.

As it has already become clear to you, developing and implementing strategies for content marketing is a difficult and lengthy task, but once you have created such a strategy, you can use it later as an instruction.