What’s the dif­fer­ence between SEO and content marketing?

Two key digital marketing terms that sometimes get confused with one another are Search Engine Op­tim­isa­tion (SEO) and content marketing. They both play crucial but different roles in digital marketing. This article will explore the dif­fer­ence between SEO and content marketing, focusing on the aims of each activity and how they are achieved, as well as providing examples of SEO and content marketing.

The rise in the im­port­ance of SEO in the last twenty years is a direct result of shifts in consumers’ pur­chas­ing habits brought about by the internet. The Google search engine receives around 2 trillion searches per year. Using search engines to find what we want is such an important part of modern life, that you’ll find ‘to Google’ in the Oxford English Dic­tion­ary as a verb. One of the most important dif­fer­ences between SEO and content marketing comes down to purpose.

SEO is all about getting as many of the right visitors from the unpaid results of search engines onto your website as possible. By right we mean those who will be the most likely to buy and use your products and services. The best way to achieve this is by getting top rankings for the phrases that these customers use on search engines. It’s the first few results on the first results page that get the vast majority of clicks, this is why SEO has become such an important part of modern marketing.

SEO’s single-minded focus on bringing customers to a site or business is why we refer to it as a marketing channel. The purpose of any marketing channel is to function as a medium of com­mu­nic­a­tion with customers. Other well known digitale marketing channels include:

• E-mail marketing
• Search Engine Ad­vert­ising
• Display Ad­vert­ising
• Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• TV Ad­vert­ising
• Website
• Native Ad­vert­ising

It is important to note that SEO is the channel, not search engines, for two reasons: First, search engines play a crucial role in marketing through other channels, es­pe­cially Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Second, search engines may be the place where customers find a site, but it is Search Engine Op­tim­isa­tion that makes a site found in the organic results. If your site isn’t optimised correctly, search engines like Google might not be able to find it and list it in their results.

SEO is often about op­tim­ising two areas: Firstly, op­tim­ising a site usually means enhancing its technical con­fig­ur­a­tion, such as reducing loading times and image sizes, or sub­mit­ting a site map. Basically, making sure it is as easy as possible for search engines to scan and find your site’s content. Second, we think of SEO in terms of op­tim­ising content. This is about making sure your content gets as high as possible rankings for the keywords your target audience uses. What the site owner wants to do with these clicks depends on the strategy mo­tiv­at­ing their SEO. For instance, someone using the strategy of direct marketing might use an SEO content strategy to target specific keyword phrases customers use to buy a product.

The top-ranking organic results for the term ‘buy flowers’ on the site (without ads written by them) all lead to e-commerce sites selling flowers because the owners of these sites have optimised their content to appear in the results for the queries people use to find and buy flowers online. But we use search engines for much more than just buying products, we also use them for research and learning. The results we want our site to appear in depends on the marketing strategy we are using. As you will see, when doing content marketing, the keywords we target can be very different from those used for e-commerce.

Where SEO is about getting clicks in the organic results, the strategy of content marketing focuses on building a re­la­tion­ship with customers, creating en­gage­ment with written content, videos, images, and social media posts. When compared with a direct marketing strategy, the goals of content marketing are often less im­me­di­ately achiev­able or obvious. They could be es­tab­lish­ing a brand or building a site’s authority in specific areas linked to its industry.

A great example of content marketing from the pre-internet age is the Guinness Book of records. It began as a promotion from the Guinness Beer company. The book was first imagined as a way of creating in­ter­est­ing content that would make great bar-room con­ver­sa­tion. The book has played a big role in making the company a major in­ter­na­tion­al brand by appealing to consumers’ interests and fueling con­ver­sa­tion, core elements of content marketing.

In the age of digital marketing, online content marketing is a pro­gres­sion from the old spon­sor­ship and tv-ad­vert­ising of the pre-internet age. Major brands who pre­vi­ously promoted them­selves with TV ads and spon­sor­ship, can buy the rights to show these events them­selves. They can then turn this event coverage into content that they can share on their channels. Red Bull is a great example of a major brand that utilises content marketing well in the internet age. They regularly create in­ter­est­ing mul­ti­me­dia content on engaging topics, from E-sports coverage to lectures and dis­cus­sions with musical legends including Iggy Pop, and con­tem­por­ary artists like ST. Vincent. Sharing this in­ter­est­ing content across their channels creates en­gage­ment and makes their brand seem fresh and cool, appealing to the core value of its key youth demo­graph­ic.

Creating in­ter­est­ing content that isn’t directly related to selling products is also a crucial way of building on an online following. When consumers subscribe to the social media channels of a brand, they create a valuable direct channel between them and that brand. This channel only stays open whilst the consumer is in­ter­ested. This is a key reason why content marketing has become so important. Customers will not stay sub­scribed to a business channel that solely consists of product promotion for long. Content marketing keeps consumers in­ter­ested so that they are engaged and receptive to oc­ca­sion­al offers. Equally as important, content marketing builds a re­la­tion­ship with customers that can lead to long-lasting brand loyalty.

Many small busi­nesses use content marketing as a way of being found by customers. These busi­nesses don’t have the budget or the following to do content marketing like the big brands. Instead, small busi­nesses tend to do content marketing in a way that cap­it­al­ises on the in­ter­net's power as a tool for discovery and research.

Consumers don’t just use the internet to find what they want to buy, they also use it to help them solve problems and find in­ter­est­ing new topics and content. Many content marketing strategies are built around this important fact. They create helpful and in­ter­est­ing content that links back to their brand but is not directly sales-oriented. Then, they place this content on channels that consumers will stumble across, such as search engines, social media, and youtube. Customers who come across a brand that shares in­ter­est­ing and useful content will get a good first im­pres­sion of it.

If in­ter­est­ing content is well-targeted, getting a good amount of traffic is almost in­ev­it­able as those who enjoy the content will be very likely to check out a business’s products and services.

Many content marketing strategies also utilise people’s love of sharing content they enjoy with their friends. A great example of this in practice is Blendtec's Will It Blend? Part of what makes the videos so suc­cess­ful is their ability to appeal directly to consumers with anarchic fun whilst sim­ul­tan­eously dis­play­ing the im­press­ive hardiness of the company’s blenders. Millions of people have seen these videos and many have shared them with friends. When content marketing is done right, it can get your audience to drastic­ally extend your reach for you. This series of quirky videos has single-handedly built up the company’s brand and brought them many sales, as a sig­ni­fic­ant pro­por­tion of the people who enjoy these videos become customers.

SEO often goes hand in hand with content marketing. We find a lot of videos on Youtube using the search bar and it is the keywords in the videos that make them dis­cov­er­able on Youtube. By using SEO keywords strategies, marketers maximise the reach of these videos. It also makes these videos dis­cov­er­able on search engines. In fact, Youtube is owned by Google and functions like a search engine for videos. The keyword tools that digital marketers use to find the best value keywords for SEO can also be used to find great topics for content marketing. Search engines are an important research and discovery tool for modern consumers. We all use them as tools to solve our problems.

Marketers can do keyword research on search engines to find questions and problems that customers might have linked to their products and then create content to solve these problems. This content could take the form of in­form­at­ive or in­struc­tion­al blog articles that are optimised with SEO or keyword-optimised videos that lead potential customers back to the content owner’s site. A great example of this in action is T.M Lewin’s in­form­at­ive Youtube tutorial on ‘how to iron a shirt’. This video takes into con­sid­er­a­tion that an average of 3600 people in the UK and 8100 people in the US Google ‘how to iron a shirt?’ (based on rank­ing­Coach’s keyword research tool). T.M. Lewin has created a simple but well-produced tutorial video answering this question. The video has millions of views from people looking to improve their ironing technique. Some of these viewers will become ac­quain­ted with the brand and buy some of these products which are crucially linked in the video’s de­scrip­tion.

SEO and content marketing are sometimes confused because content marketing can utilise tools and tech­niques of SEO, es­pe­cially when creating in­form­at­ive problem-solving content that targets customers through search engines. Both terms are very important for modern digital marketers to know and un­der­stand. SEO is primarily about max­im­ising the number of clicks a site gets from the search engine results by op­tim­ising a website and its content. Whereas content marketing is a marketing strategy that often uses multi-channel to appeal to consumers’ needs, interests, and curiosity. It is a vital tool for building a brand and an online following. However, it’s important to bear in mind that to maximise your chances of suc­ceed­ing online, content marketing and SEO should be used to com­ple­ment each other.