It’s the classic chicken and egg dilemma: do you start with an SEO plan and then create content to fit, or do you create great content and then add SEO?
Early on in my content marketing career, I learned a very important lesson.
Having already found success experimenting with my own blogs, I was keen for the company I worked for to launch one as part of its marketing mix. So I pitched the idea to my boss.
“Blogs provide valuable information and insights to educate and nurture prospective customers,” I said. The answer was no.
“Blogs can showcase the expertise of people within the business, providing valuable thought leadership and helping to position the brand as a trusted authority.” Still no.
Eventually, I decided to appeal to my boss’ then-current obsession. “Blogs are great for SEO. All those articles, full of keywords and internal links to product pages …”
The plan was approved. Or, should I say, a plan was approved – because what I was stuck with wasn’t what I had originally envisaged.
It was my own fault. I’d managed to get my content marketing strategy approved by pretending it was an SEO strategy. Naturally, this would skew expectations around which metrics mattered. And once the metrics are set, any aspect of the strategy that isn’t directly related to improving those metrics becomes irrelevant or inefficient.
“Tell me how you will measure me, and then I will tell you how I will behave.”
Eli Goldratt, business philosopher
Every week, I needed to tell my boss which keywords I intended to target – drawn from a long list provided by our latest SEO consultant. If my boss approved, I would write one or two articles.
When the monthly reporting came round, he was less concerned with how many visitors the blog attracted or how much engagement we generated in social media. The only metrics he cared about related to how much I’d managed to improve our search rankings for the identified terms. He was entirely unconcerned with the content itself.
It didn’t matter. I was still committed to producing the best content I could.
A year later, with plans afoot to redesign and relaunch the website, we undertook some detailed analysis of the existing site to determine what was and wasn’t working. The analytics revealed something rather surprising: More than 30% of web traffic entered the site via the blog, with a significant amount going on to visit other pages.
The blog wasn’t just helping the site’s SEO. It was building an audience, creating a constantly growing number of entry points for potential customers to discover the brand.
A race to the bottom
Of course, I had always intended the blog to include internal links and keywords, even if only as a natural extension of the topics I wrote about, relevant to our products and services. But these pillars of SEO are only one aspect of an effective content strategy.
Marketing is as much about education and subtle persuasion than it is about special offers and calls to action. I wanted the blog to be a vibrant hub of thought leadership, providing valuable advice and insights to anyone who might be interested, eventually nurturing some of them into customers.
However, I’ve encountered many marketers and strategies over the years that view any and all content as mere grist for the SEO mill. Briefs sent out to content writers amount to no more than a formulaic, SEO-friendly title and a bunch of keyword ratios to hit.
In these scenarios, what the content actually has to say appears to be completely irrelevant. The 800 or so words are simply a means to an end. Quality is optional. Insights are optional. Accuracy is optional. Crikey, sometimes grammar is optional.
This is content written for search engines, for algorithms, not people. Needless to say, it’s an extremely flawed approach.
There’s no incentive to invest time and effort in making content great. Instead, the incentive is to churn out as much content as possible. As a result, processes focus on producing more for less, championing efficiency above all else.
Writing is reduced to a basic commodity, with no room for the expertise, creativity, research and editorial rigour that are the hallmarks of good content.
This is why there are so many job ads out there for writers willing to knock out articles for a flat rate that wouldn’t even cover my coffee bill when writing.
But this is a false efficiency, predicated on a fallacy that increased rankings equals increased traffic, which automatically correlates to increased sales.
There’s a lot more to it than that.
Clicks are people too
SEO is all about boosting traffic to your site by attracting clicks from the search engines. The higher your rankings for relevant keywords and phrases, the more clicks you’re likely to get.
So far, so 101.
But your business doesn’t run on clicks; it runs on conversions.
If your website was a high street shop, SEO is what gets the customers in through the doors. But once they’re in the shop, a lot more needs to happen to stop them from spinning on their heels and walking straight out again.
Converting traffic into sales or subscribers (or whatever fuels your marketing plan and business model) relies on you recognising that each one of those clicks is a person with certain expectations on what they hope to find when they land on your site.
What happens when lots of those visitors land on one of these keyword-rich, insight-poor articles or landing pages only to discover the content just isn’t that good?
They don’t stick around, I can tell you that. They certainly don’t share the article with their networks, sign up for the newsletter or follow the links to your product pages. High clicks, high bounce rate, low retention, low engagement.
Instead of improving your search rankings, some of these outcomes can actually exacerbate your SEO problems, an extra cherry on top of weak content.
Great content enhanced with SEO
Of course I’m biassed. I’m a content writer. I’m bound to say content is more important. But the truth is content and SEO are still very much intertwined.
The purpose of your content is not to improve your SEO. The purpose of SEO is to help the right people discover your content.
“The purpose of your content is not to improve your SEO. The purpose of SEO is to help the right people discover your content.”
The best content in the world is worth naught if no one can find it. Similarly, boosting your search rankings to attract a lot more web traffic isn’t going to achieve very much if most of your visitors quickly click away in disappointment.
Sure, you’ve increased your brand awareness. But if your content didn’t make a great impression, is that really the kind of awareness you want?
Your goal should always be to publish highly effective web pages and great content that capture attention, provide value and prompt action in the reader – whether that’s following a link to read more, hitting the subscribe button or even purchasing your product.
Yes, it’s useful to have a list of target keywords to slot in when opportunities arise. Yes, your technical SEO still needs to be on point. But these are enhancements to your content, not the point of the content itself.
Start with writing or crafting the best content you can, designed to resonate with your ideal audience. Then look for opportunities within that content to insert your keywords, add a few relevant internal links, optimise the title and subheadings, improve the structure and otherwise give your great content the best chance of discovery within the search engines.
SEO is hugely important in today’s online marketplace. But the bedrock of great SEO is great content. Always.
