Author: Satya Prakash

A combined content marketing and SEO strategy are the perfect ingredients for the most impactful digital marketing results. They work together like magic by driving more organic traffic and establishing authority, trust, and loyalty. Let alone content marketing take over without SEO; you will never receive considerable effectiveness. Similarly, considering only SEO without understanding its connection with content will unfortunately make no sense!

But, when you implement content marketing for SEO, you will generate agreeable outcomes, enabling you to beat the digital combination. SEO will drive you relevant organic traffic, while content marketing helps to build customer loyalty by demonstrating thought leadership.

According to HubSpot, companies publishing blogs receive 55% more traffic and have 97% more backlinks . It means that SEO content writing is a potential digital marketing tool to attract audiences since it nurtures their interests and engagement, gradually building trust.

Research by DemandGenReport concluded that 55% of buyers now rely more on content research before making purchase decisions Thus, undeniably content marketing can attract new traffic and retain existing audience while boosting your website’s visibility score.

Nonetheless, content marketing is a focused approach. It is the creation and distribution of relevant, valuable, consistent, and high-quality content for SEO. We will discuss in this blog how content marketing and SEO proffer an excellent symbiotic relationship through various strategies. So, let’s explore it in depth.   

Content Marketing Strategies for SEO

Before dwelling on the strategies, let’s have a quick look at the basics of SEO and content marketing.

What is SEO?

SEO or search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website to make it search-engine friendly for crawling and indexing. These are the two integral processes involved in search result ranking. Through SEO, you can improve the visibility of your website to reach your target audience.

What is Content Marketing?

The process of creation, publication, and distribution of content over various online platforms is known as content marketing. It includes blogs, articles, emails, newsletters, eBooks, videos, podcasts, and case studies. The fundamental goal of content marketing is to communicate relevant and useful information to your audience. It helps to nurture audience interests and engagement to attract new leads and retain the old ones.

When we speak of content marketing for SEO, it indicates the strategic implementation of content to meet the SEO goals- website rankings, visibility, organic traffic, audience engagement, and conversions. So, how to promote content for SEO? What’s included in the checklist? Let’s find out.

• Keyword Research- The journey of SEO content writing begins with keyword research. Keywords are the words or phrases that are popularly used in search queries by the searchers. The higher the search volume, the more competitive the keyword. Identifying these keywords and using them strategically in your content makes it more valuable, informative, and relevant.

Keyword research is one of the significant content marketing strategies for website ranking. It provides you with valuable insights into the queries that your target audience is actually looking for. Targeting such keywords helps your content rank higher in search engines while driving more traffic and increasing visibility. Focus on what the audience wants to discover instead of what you want to tell. It will improve inbound traffic.

• Content Planning- To create impactful content marketing for SEO, you must define a plan. Your task of content marketing does not end at creating content; you have to schedule when to publish what content so that there is consistency. To stay connected with audiences and keep them engaged, consistency is crucial. Also, there are two significant factors you must consider while creating your content- understanding your target audience and recognizing search intent.

When you understand the needs and preferences of your target audience, you can deliver more relevant and specific content, which will automatically boost engagement. Based on search intent, there are four types of content- informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional. When you implement these practices, you can create engaging content for SEO.  

• Content Types- The top three types of content are videos, blogs, and images. So, when you focus on creating content that attracts more traffic, you have increased chances of ranking high on the SERPs. However, every content type has a distinct pattern. In other words, your blogs and videos cannot have a similar structure. You have to employ a precise approach for the most impactful results.

We have listed the best practices for SEO content creation for different types of content. Check them out:

Videos:

• Choose the right hosting platform
• Create an engaging video thumbnail
• Use video transcripts
• Insert keywords in the title and description
• Embed your video
• Do not embed the same video on multiple pages
• Make your video the highlight of your page
• Your page content must be relevant to the video

Blogs:

• Choose a topic based on search intent
• Write an eye-catching title
• Optimize title tag and meta description
• Strategically place keywords
• Include captivating CTA
• Mention author

Images:

• Choose the appropriate format
• Select compression rate
• Optimize file names and image title
• Include captions
• Use Alt text
• Add image structured data
• The content must complement the images
• Insert site maps

• Link Building- Content marketing and link building go hand-in-hand. There are basically two types of link building strategies- internal linking and backlinks. Internal linking is the process of hyperlinking to other pages on your website. It encourages audience engagement while keeping them on your site. On the other hand, backlinks are external links that connect your page to other websites. The primary goal of backlinks is to drive traffic from other sources and establish your website’s credibility and authoritativeness. Businesses incorporating link building have a 45% higher success rate than those that don’t .

Both internal links and external links are essential elements of SEO content writing. They contribute to your website’s architecture and promote its visibility across various platforms. Link building strategy improves readability and navigation, which are pivotal for boosting audience engagement while reducing bounce rate. Additionally, you have better chances of lead generation and conversions. 

Content Promotion to Build Authority

Now you know how to write content that ranks in Google. But what to do next? After creating high-quality content, you need to promote it through various channels to go that extra mile! Content promotion enables distribution and amplification of content to enhance visibility and audience reach. It helps you to achieve your marketing goals, like creating brand awareness, driving more traffic, increasing lead generation, or encouraging sales.

You can opt for multiple approaches to promote your content. We have discussed the most influential content marketing trends for 2024 and beyond that help in effective promotion. This section will be really interesting!

• Social Sharing- An estimated 4.9 billion people use social million, and it is constantly on the rise. Around 77% of businesses use social media to reach target consumers . Do the numbers sound intriguing? Well, one of the most effective ways to promote your content is via social media channels. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube are the prominent social platforms offering a variety of content promotion. Whether you consider news feeds, posts, or paid campaigns, these platforms can expose your brand to a vast audience, improving awareness and reputation.

Considering content marketing strategies for startups, social sharing can be your ultimate weapon to capture the attention of your target audiences. Undoubtedly, repeated visibility on such platforms generates brand recognition, which is ultimately responsible for building trust and authority.

• Influencer Marketing- How many times have you seen an Instagram reel where an influencer is promoting a brand or service? Many times, we guess! Today, half of the millennials trust influencer’s product recommendations. What is influencer marketing? Influencers are individuals with a long list of followers on social platforms. They are not celebrities but people with impactful digital presence. Collaborating with such influencers to promote your brand, product(s), or service(s) can help in targeted content distribution.

It is one of the prominent content marketing examples for SEO that is currently taking the Internet by storm! You can ask an influencer for quotes in your blogs or directly promote your brand through a short video or product description. Influencers charge a fee, but it is much less compared to the ROI.

• Email Marketing- Hyper-personalization is what the recent SEO content writing focuses on. It means sharing content based on individual preferences to enhance user experience and stay connected with existing clients. Email marketing is one such strategy that allows you to create and send emails with ultimate personalized content. 87% of businesses have reported success through email marketing. Therefore, email marketing is crucial for business growth. You can establish better client interaction and keep them informed about new product launches, festive discounts, etc. It is indeed a great way to keep your target audiences motivated.

For the best email marketing results, implement these practices:

• Subscriber segmentation
• Create optimized lead magnets
• Employ automation
• Create a welcome series
• Personalize your emails
• Focus on mobile-friendliness
• Choose the ideal time
• Include the email reply address
• Use email analytics

• Guest Blogging- Finally, let’s talk about blog posts for SEO. Guest blogging is an ethical and sustainable way to improve your SEO performance. You can build high-quality backlinks, driving potential leads from other reputed sources. Writing a blog for another relevant website allows you to link that site to your website. Hence, you receive rich organic traffic possessing a higher potential for conversions.

As a powerful content marketing tactic, guest blogging has come a long way. The blogs and articles include your byline, and often it is highlighted by the website’s editor. Isn’t it amazing when your blog is published in other places? So, how do you implement guest blogging?

• Define and set your goals
• Choose topics that will help you accomplish your business goals
• Determine reputed guest blogging sites.
• Pitch your ideas
• Write your blog post
• Track the results 

Track Content Performance

So, content creation, planning, and promotion are done. Now, it is time to track content performance for SEO. It is unarguably the most significant step in the overall process. You will always want to compare your results since the time you implemented your content marketing strategy.

Tracking performance is also beneficial to make adjustments for improvement. It provides you with an insight into what is working and what is not. There are metrics to monitor content performance, which are quantitative and qualitative data points. These metrics help you evaluate the effectiveness of content marketing for SEO. So, what are these metrics?

• Organic search traffic
• Number of views
• Keyword rankings
• Impressions
• Backlinks
• Brand mentions
• Traffic sources
• Conversion rate
• Return on investment
• Growth of followers or subscribers
• Average engagement rate
• Average engagement time
• Social media engagements
• Click-through rate

These are the principal metrics used to measure visibility, track your audience source, evaluate conversions and sales, and analyze engagement.

Bonus Tip: Measure the ROI of content marketing for SEO by subtracting content marketing revenue from content marketing expenditure divided by spend. For example, if you have spent $1000 and earned $1,500, your ROI is ($1500-$1000) /$1000) x 100= 50%

Thus, your content marketing ROI is 50%.

Calculating ROI is essential to determine where you must put your investment and secure buy-ins from stakeholders. 

Wrapping Up!

To achieve the best results from SEO content writing, you must have a straightforward approach and a clear insight into your marketing goals, target audiences, and distribution channels. Creating high-quality content and sharing it is hard work. It requires a team of spontaneous writers and SEO experts. Content marketing alone cannot do wonders until you combine it with SEO. Content without SEO will be far less visible, with less engagement, fewer reads, and insignificant conversions.

Similarly, SEO with thin content will be uninspiring and attract less traffic. Blending the two becomes your secret weapon to a successful business. While SEO attracts traffic, content encourages lead generation. When you combine both of them, you will have audiences coming back for more!

So, are you ready to plan your content marketing for SEO?

Digital marketing is a vast realm and its prospects are growing over time. For anybody unaware of performance marketing, let us tell you that it is a form of digital marketing where advertisers pay the marketing agency only when some actions happen. It can be click, lead, or sale.

Precisely, you pay your service provider after you meet your business objectives! It is an incredible digital marketing strategy for small businesses, focusing on audience reach at a low budget. Since performance marketing is driven by results, you can expect low investment with higher ROI.

Do you know what the various types of performance marketing strategies for small businesses are? SEO, PPC advertising, content marketing, email marketing, social media advertising, display advertising, influencer marketing, and affiliate marketing- you name it and it’s there! 

The fascinating part is you do not pay for ads like the traditional method. You pay based on how well your campaign is performing by evaluating the number of clicks, shares, impressions, and sales.

However, your journey of experiencing an extraordinary performance marketing result begins by choosing your service provider. An expert performance marketing company can raise your sales sky-high, promoting growth and expansion.

So, today, our topic of discussion centres on settling on the right agency so that you save your precious time, money, and effort. For a promising impact on your small business, follow the guidelines closely and stay mindful! 

Things to Consider Before Hiring Your Performance Marketing Company

Surely, there are numerous performance marketing companies, especially when most businesses these days are leveraging its potential benefits and have experienced tremendous success.

86% of marketers have increased brand awareness through one or more digital marketing channels. And 75% of marketers have improved their company’s trust and credibility using the same.

As we know, figures do not lie! The success of digital marketing lies clearly in front of us! Now that you cannot help yourself but consider harnessing its power to grow your small business, we have some significant tips for you. As your journey of performance marketing (digital marketing) begins by hiring an expert, check out the following points before making a move.

• Understand Your Goal- Identify what you seek from your performance marketing agency because then only you can accomplish the desired results. As a business owner, you may wish to expand your client base, increase online traffic, or generate sales through performance marketing. Whatever your objective, keep it well-defined to ensure you are not disappointed with the performance results.  
• Fix Your Budget- Allocating an amount for your performance marketing strategy is essential to ensure you experience long-term growth. Split your budget between various marketing channels depending on your business goals. It will help you retain your brand’s existence.
• Explore Your Options- Lastly, when you have defined your goal and set your budget, it is time to choose the right digital marketing agency because that makes all the difference! If you want to secure the benefits of performance marketing for small businesses, you must make the best bid! How do you do that? We will come to it in the following section of our discussion.

Tips for Choosing Your Performance Marketing Agency

The global digital advertising and marketing market is predicted to reach $786.2 billion by 2026:

With such a boom in the industry, numerous digital marketing companies are sprouting up every day! It is indeed difficult to select the right one for your business when everyone claims to accomplish the target goals in minimum time!

Worry not! We are here to help you through the process. So, let’s begin!

• Dig into the Case Studies- Assessing the previous work portfolio must be your primary step in choosing your performance marketing contractor. Visit their official website and check out the testimonials thoroughly. There must be some documented case studies helping you to learn about their scope of work, the type of projects they have worked on, the success rate, and other insights. You can compare whether they will match your business goal criteria or be capable enough to manoeuvre your project.
• Reputation- You possibly cannot land on any company you find on the Internet! Get a clear picture of their offline and online reputation. You can check the reviews and ranking in search results, gather direct feedback from their clients, or rely on recommendations. Comprehend their trustworthiness and collaboration by investing some time in the groundwork.
• Customer Service- A good customer service indicates credibility, responsiveness, and loyalty. Avoid companies with poor customer reviews to stay away from trouble. Post-sales service is often understated, which plays a significant role in determining the company’s reliability, courtesy, and compliance. It is the most crucial tool to retain existing consumers and create a loyal client base.
• Service Costs- To stay away from unpleasant surprises, clarify the cost of performance marketing for small businesses. Get a proper price quotation and review the deliverables thoroughly for a better understanding of the terms and conditions. On top of that, it encourages a transparent partnership.

Additionally, we have some bonus tips:

• Keep Your Options Open- Always approach more than one digital marketing company. Do not settle for the first one you come across! All the companies are equipped with different levels of experience and expertise. So, analyze them all and determine which one fits best for your small business. Also, you get a scope to explore your budget as you will receive diverse price quotations from multiple agencies.
• Interrogate as Much as You Want- Do not hesitate to ask questions to your digital marketing service provider. Ask whatever comes to your mind and clarify doubts till there is time! It aids in narrowing down your options while providing better insights about a company’s authenticity. Doesn’t that make an impressive start?

What to Look For in Your Performance Marketing Partner?

A great performance marketing partner is the one move you need to accomplish your business goals! For a small business, the principal objective of hiring a performance marketing agency is to maximize lead generation, increase sales, and boost brand awareness.

So, you must consider the fact seriously and do not simply go about it randomly! Your decision is all it takes to curb the future of your business! But you don’t worry. We have got it all sorted for you!

Here are the chief qualities you must look for in your performance marketing partner:

• Your marketing partner must have experience in your industry- Hire an agency that has prior experience in your industry. They will possess knowledge about your project complexities, enabling better planning and strategic approaches in campaign creation and promotion. It even boosts confidence in you about the expected results.
• Learn about the tools they use for performance marketing- Before hiring anyone, you must know how to measure performance marketing results. When digging into the subject matter, you possibly cannot ignore learning about its functioning! Right? So, ask them about the tools they use for measuring your marketing performance. If they offer any proprietary technology, learn about their effectiveness.
• Number of employees- You must be wondering why the size of the marketing partner matters. It does, to some extent! A small agency with fewer employees may propose direct communication with you, which is likely a favourable spot. However, they may lack the technological support compared to a company with hundreds of employees. But, in a big company, you may not experience the friendliness and warmth in the partnership. Tough choice, huh?
• No irrational promises- If you think your performance marketing company is promising results that are too good to be true, it is a red flag. No matter how much they try to persuade you, never fall into the trap. Whenever you feel doubtful, ask for proof. There is no miracle that you receive results overnight!

Bottom Line

Performance marketing is an ever-changing game! The rules and trends are always on the move! Thus, the player must be dynamic and alert to track the changes in the competitive landscape. No matter what industry you belong to, hire your performance marketing partner only when they qualify for all the checklists!

If you need more assistance, Black Marlin Technologies is here to guide you. We pioneer in providing cutting-edge performance marketing solutions to businesses of all sizes and across multiple industries.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q. What is performance marketing?

Ans. Performance marketing is a digital marketing strategy where payments are made based on the results. In other words, when certain business objectives like click, lead, or sale are accomplished, the marketer pays for it. 

Q. What are the benefits of performance marketing?

Ans. Performance marketing is ideal for a small business as the budget is limited, and the company intends to grow through brand awareness, lead generation, and sales. 

Q. Should I invest in performance marketing?

Ans. Of course, you should invest in performance marketing if your primary objective is to encourage brand awareness and increase web traffic. Since the results are easily measurable, you are at a lower risk of losing money! 

Q. Do I need to hire a professional for performance marketing?

Ans. Yes. A professional performance marketing company possess extensive knowledge and expertise in the industry. They are aware of the challenges and the tools and tactics required to overcome them. If you are not an expert in this field, you should trust the professionals.