A comprehensive digital marketing plan can help you increase brand awareness, boost revenues, and reach new audiences. Content marketing and SEO are two pillars of digital marketing strategies that can pay dividends if they are properly implemented.

When you optimize your website for search engines, you’ll be able to drive relevant and targeted traffic to your site from Google. This traffic consists of people who are likely to convert into customers if they have a good experience on your website. Proper SEO is considerably more effective at driving traffic than organic social media.

As for content marketing, it gives you the ability to build authority, loyalty, and trust with potential customers. It involves creating and publishing online content, which can include everything from videos and blogs to podcasts. The purpose of this content is to entertain or educate, which means that it shouldn’t directly promote your brand. SEO techniques should be applied to all the content you create for your website and brand.

Over the years, content marketing and SEO have undergone rapid evolution and numerous shifts, most of which occur to accommodate new technologies. To gain a better idea of how important content marketing and SEO are, you should understand the origins of these techniques and how they might evolve in the future.

Early Days: Keyword-Centric SEO

Since the dawn of the internet, website owners and businesses have attempted to improve their visibility on search engines. Better visibility has always resulted in more traffic. Before Google became the predominant search engine, there was an early focus on keywords. SEO goals were centered around ranking for specific keywords, which means that one or two keywords would often be overused in content.

The idea behind keyword-centric SEO was to make sure relevant pages were seen by users who were searching for the specific keyword. Once the right keywords were placed into articles and blogs, site owners would measure their effectiveness. If a keyword performed poorly, a new one would be selected to replace it. Search engine algorithms would reward websites that included a lot of relevant keywords. This technique became essential to the success of any online business.

Once website owners understood the importance of keywords, they began to engage in keyword-stuffing practices. Sites would place as many keywords as they could find on their pages in an attempt to rank for those phrases.

At first, this strategy worked, which meant that a lot of blogs and articles were poorly written. As long as search engine algorithms continued to focus primarily on keywords, businesses were content to use the keyword stuffing strategy. One popular keyword stuffing technique involved placing numerous popular keywords into meta descriptions and tags.

At that time, webmasters emphasized content volume over quality. By loading up a website with keyword-rich articles, their pages would rank higher in search results, which meant that a change in strategy wasn’t necessary.

Rise of Content Marketing

Eventually, the companies behind the most popular search engines realized that websites were stuffing their content with keywords, which meant that users weren’t receiving quality content. They responded by updating their search algorithms. Relevant keywords were no longer the main ranking factor in search engines, which resulted in websites taking audience-centric approaches to their content marketing efforts.

Once search algorithms were updated, websites began to be rewarded for creating valuable and well-written content that met user needs. High rankings were earned by writing lengthy educational blog posts and telling engaging stories. Businesses were also able to build user trust by delivering high-quality content.

With the introduction of infographics, videos, and blogs, content began to serve multiple purposes. Website owners could write articles and create videos to entertain, keep users engaged, and educate.

Integration with User Experience and SEO

In recent years, search engines like Google have made additional refinements to their algorithms. For example, user experience (UX) became a ranking factor with the Google algorithm in 2021. The purpose of this factor is to make sure website owners are providing site visitors with a good experience. If the algorithm finds that site visitors are having a poor experience on a page, the ranking will drop.

Mobile-friendliness and page speed have also become increasingly important. Both factors are part of the user experience. When someone visits a website that hasn’t been optimized from their smartphone, they’ll likely be tasked with zooming in and scrolling just to find what they’re looking for.

Most mobile users leave instantly when they enter a site that isn’t mobile-friendly. As an increasing percentage of people visited websites from smartphones, Google and other search engines began to rank mobile-friendliness. Accelerated mobile pages (AMP) technology was soon introduced to deliver rapid landing pages for mobile devices.

As for page speed, most users navigate away from websites that take longer than three seconds to load. If your website isn’t ranking as high as you believe it should, you may need to compress your images or improve navigational elements to boost load speeds and site performance.

With the rise of quality over quantity, you’ll benefit from focusing on relevance and context when creating content. Google algorithms strive to punish low-quality content farms and reward websites that deliver high-quality articles. For example, a used-car dealership should provide its main audience with well-written articles about:

• Spring cleaning for the car
• Seasonal car maintenance tips
• How to check tire quality
• Community events
• Buying vs. leasing a car
• Latest automotive news
• Planning a road trip
• Preparing your vehicle for the winter
• How to get your vehicle ready for a trade-in

When search engines see that you’re creating relevant content, they’ll likely provide higher rankings to your site pages.

SEO Beyond Keywords

Once SEO moved beyond keywords, it expanded to include many different forms of optimization, including everything from semantic search to personalization.

Semantic Search and AI

Semantic search is a type of technology that’s designed to interpret the true meaning of phrases and words. While it was first introduced by Google in 2010, it has become increasingly important over the years for assessing keyword relevance.

Once this technology was introduced to the Google search algorithm, Google was able to return content that matched the meaning of the specific query. Beforehand, the search engine would only provide content that matched the exact words in the query. This change meant that websites could no longer rely solely on keywords to obtain high rankings.

Semantic search improves the quality of search results by accurately interpreting natural language. Today, semantic search is bolstered with artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. For example, entity-based search recognizes organizations, places, and people instead of keywords. AI algorithms use deep learning to effectively analyze language in a manner that’s close to how humans understand it.

Personalization and Localization

Search engines also personalize results based on user data. Artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms use factors like demographics, device info, online behaviors, geographic location, and browsing history to customize a user’s search experience.

Localization is important as well. You want the people who live in areas that you do business in to know about your brand and the value it provides. For example, your Google My Business page should be updated to ensure customers receive accurate information about your company when they search for it.

Current Trends and Future Directions

The current content marketing and SEO trends give us a good idea of how these techniques will evolve in the future.

Voice Search and AI Assistance

Voice search is a somewhat modern technology that involves more conversational queries. These queries often need to be answered based on user intent. For example, let’s say that someone wants to go to a restaurant and uses voice search to look for local eateries. They might ask where the restaurant is located. Some of the more common queries that are made with voice search include the following:

• Checking a specific fact
• Searching for reviews
• Obtaining a service or product recommendation
• Finding contact details or operating hours

You should focus on optimizing your content to align with the search intents that your main audience might have. If your company is a retail brand, optimize for queries about product recommendations. Optimizing for AI assistants like Siri and Alexa requires the usage of long-tail keywords that are relevant to your target audience.

Video and Visual Content

The rise of video content has been swift. In 2021, around 70% of marketers stated that video is the main form of media that they use in their content strategies. Videos can be more engaging to younger customers. It’s easier to watch a video than it is to read an email newsletter or blog post. With the immense popularity of platforms like YouTube, businesses that don’t take advantage of video content marketing run the risk of being left behind by the competition.

You can optimize your content by creating videos about subjects that your customers are searching for. SEO can be placed into video descriptions and titles as well. Create visually pleasing thumbnails that instantly capture the user’s attention. For lengthier videos, add relevant time stamps when you switch topics.

These same tactics apply to visual search as well. Users can enter an image into a search engine to look for a related product or service. Make sure the images you use for your products and website are optimized with captions and the right formats.

Content Marketing and SEO in 2024

In 2024, content marketing and SEO should be integrated with your email marketing, PPC, and social media efforts. For example, the emails you send to your customers should incorporate the same keywords that are found on your website.

The quality of your content should remain consistent regardless of whether you’re writing a blog article or sending a short social media post. As you attempt to grow your brand, it’s highly recommended that you develop a holistic digital marketing strategy that takes into account all channels that your target audience uses.

Conclusion

The evolution of content marketing and SEO has occurred to accommodate search algorithm updates and ever-changing customer needs. While SEO began with a focus on keywords, well-written and valuable content is now essential if you want to improve your search rankings with Google and Bing. In the near future, voice search, video content, and artificial intelligence will likely become even more significant with search algorithms. Because of how quickly the industry shifts, it’s important that you stay adaptive in digital marketing.