The reality is that the more each organization functions (including marketing functions) work together, the better they all can do. Let us look at key examples of how SEO can improve content marketing across all stages of the digital marketing campaign.

The power of collaboration should not be underestimated with online marketing. Why? Because quite often people get caught up in the vertical vs vertical battle. This happens when it comes to promoting abilities, services, and results. In real life, when all functions work together, the better an organization does.

There is a natural interdependence across all online marketing disciplines. The reason for this phenomenon is simple: the basic goal of all online marketing is improved visibility and awareness. The more a brand/business/organization is able to drive visibility and awareness to their marketing efforts and plans, the better all other online marketing activities perform.

According to Rand Fishkin, this is known as the marketing flywheel.

Let us have a good look at the following example:

If a certain business’s traffic source is from a well-established and well-set email list, there are other online marketing channels which specifically complement and help grow the email marketing efforts.

Social media is one such channel. It will help brands/businesses/companies alike to tap in new audiences, drive visibility and raise newsletter signups and subscriptions. They will be able to interface directly with the audience, track competitors and their progress as well as building presence on a new platform.

Search engine optimization (SEO) can help in higher search engine visibility and rankings will drive day by day, week by week traffic to bring in new and interested customers to the website continuously, and thereby increase the audience, the awareness, and thus newsletter signups.

Content marketing helps to produce and promote great content. This can help brands and businesses alike create their online authority, create additional value in the emails, boost signups, and help in retention.

People also do not often appreciate the ability of these vertical factors of marketing in complementing and feeding each kind of marketing other than digital. This can hence lead to a lot of wasted opportunities when both channels are engaged without full cooperation and collaboration.

Marketing professionals who have worked in tight-knit marketing departments understand the value of collaboration. They have time and time seen the complementary nature different marketing activities have. Other than that, experienced digital marketers use their SEO skills and background many times to improve their content marketing efforts.

How SEO and content marketing complement one another?

Let us now talk about two renown disciplines of online and digital marketing, namely: Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing. Experienced digital marketers are well versed in both of them and often start with SEO before entering content marketing.

By its very nature, SEO should play the role of an optimizer. For those who create content, they will definitely want someone having what it needs to be the optimizer needed. These are the people who think strategically, thoughtfully and analytically about how to make the most of the content at head especially for search but for the target audience as well.

Here are some examples of how Content marketing complements on SEO Marketing across all stages of a digital marketing campaign. For content marketers, SEO has so much to offer:

Content ideas going with strategic planning

SEOs have a variety of skills that should be brought to light before content is being made. Specifically, there are two primary tasks SEO professionals are most suited for which will help idea generation for content and its exploratory phase.

First, SEOs should know that they should be analyzing previous content performance, content performance of competitors and determining content gaps as well as opportunities. Since SEOs know how to check site performance, be able to determine well-performing content and pages. If they are new to the site or project, an audit should be second in nature to them.

They should be able to identify niche influencers, relevant websites and promotional opportunities. SEO professionals having a link-building background are good at investigating industries and niches. It will be second in nature for them to bring out influencers, relevant and authoritative websites, potential partners and linking opportunities.

What they are good at is that they have the skillset and experience to effectively and efficiently bring information of strategic value to the table.

Opportunities for content creation

With the internet evolving, content no longer means words written on a web page stuffed with so many keywords no one would read.

The content in content marketing often refers to words but also now refers to images, videos, JavaScript, HTML5, Flash and the like. Imagination, budget and technical support define limits on content. The more a business invests in seo content marketing, the more they need to have SEO professionals involved in content creation.