Content Marketing vs SEO

Trevin Shirey

4 Feb 2016

If your company wants to start using online marketing to attract more customers, you have many different options to choose from. And although each strategy has its own unique benefits, two of the most popular are content marketing and SEO.

Both strategies involve adding and updating content on your site, and both can result in higher search engine rankings. So what’s the difference, and how can you choose between them?

On this page, we’ll discuss content marketing vs. SEO, and whether or not your business should be using them.

What’s the difference between content marketing and SEO?

Before we can discuss which option is better, it’s important to fully understand what content marketing and SEO involve.

Content marketing refers to writing and designing a variety of different content like blog posts, article pages, infographics, and videos that are relevant to your target audience. When you publish pages that are helpful and interesting, you can attract potential customers to your site and show them that your business is a valuable resource.

SEO, on the other hand, refers to the process of optimizing a site for specific keywords and phrases that your customers use on search engines like Google. When you add these keywords to your title tags, headers, and body copy, you can help your individual pages rank well when users search for them.

SEO also involves earning links from other sites, which shows search engines that your site is reputable and worth sending their visitors to.

To put it simply, SEO is what helps your site become visible in search engines, and content marketing is what makes visitors want to stay once they’ve arrived.

Content marketing vs SEO

Although content marketing and SEO are technically two different strategies, it’s tough to pit them against one another since in most cases, they’re used as a combination.

As we mentioned above, content is what makes visitors stay on your site once SEO brings them there. But at the same time, content marketing can actually boost your SEO.

When you create content like informative how-tos, helpful guides, and fun infographics, you can reach out to other sites like news sites, industry blogs, and local publications. If what you’ve published would be relevant to their readers, they may choose to link to it, which will boost your site’s authority and ability to rank well.

This means that when it comes down to it, the best strategy isn’t to choose between content marketing and SEO – it’s to find a way that you can use both to grow your company’s site.

Want to start using content marketing and SEO?

If your company is looking to achieve higher visibility in search engine rankings and attract new customers, content marketing and SEO are exactly what you need. And if you’d like some assistance exploring your options and choosing the right strategies for your business, we’d be happy to help.