How Search Engine Marketing Relates to Content Marketing

Although some marketers are determined to keep the two practices separate, both search engine marketing and content marketing are most effective when integrated with each other. Nowadays, it’s important to focus on elements from both practices and understand where they overlap.

Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing mostly deals with optimizing your website content for search engines. The most important factor in this respect is targeting relevant keywords that your target audience will likely type into Google’s search bar.

Content marketing

Content marketing focuses on the process of content creation and its impact on your brand awareness. Businesses are now encouraged to create their own original content to establish credibility and engage their target audiences.

Where they overlap

Whether you’re practicing search engine marketing or content marketing, you’re going to need content to work with. Your website content merges the two practices together to some extent. According to a recent Forbes article, some marketers even consider the two practices synonymous:

“Not only does SEO overlap with user experience in a big way, but it also overlaps with content marketing in a big way. Some SEOs, as a matter of fact, fail to see any substantive difference between SEO and content marketing. In their minds, today’s SEO is content marketing.”

Although there’s a lot of overlap between search engine marketing and content marketing, it’s important to note their differences. Search engine marketing will always be more technical in nature, while you should focus more on content quality and follower engagement with respect to content marketing.

At the same time, businesses will benefit the most from integrating the two practices when possible. If you’re writing a long-form article, for example, then you might as well optimize it for search engines and target your keywords in it. Any businesses that creates its own content should also have a good site ranking on search engines.

To talk more about search engine marketing, or anything else, contact us today.