Content Marketing vs SEO: How to Use SEO in Your Content Strategy

Table of Contents

Many companies invest significant time and effort into content marketing but overlook search engine optimization (SEO), which they view as a separate discipline. This may stem from the now outdated approach to SEO that involved creating a lot of “SEO content” that ticked all the boxes for algorithms, but didn’t necessarily resonate with readers. 

In the era of AI-driven search results, those old-school "writing for search engines" tactics are becoming obsolete for two reasons:

1. Search engines are getting increasingly skilled at identifying high-quality, relevant content (that’s what Google’s helpful content update was all about)

2. Audiences are more frustrated than ever by content that feels robotic (whether or not it has so-called “AI tells”) or patronizing, such as articles that begin with "What is XYZ?" and spend multiple paragraphs explaining concepts the reader likely understands better than the writer.

To succeed in SEO today, you have to create exceptional, audience-focused content. As a result, SEO has become an integral best practice within content marketing instead of a separate discipline.

If you already publish high-quality content on your blog but haven’t “done SEO,” adapting your process to improve your website’s search engine rankings is likely easier than you think. And making this shift can help you reach a much larger audience without spending an extra cent promoting your content on social media.

In this article, I’ll explain the difference between content marketing and SEO, focusing specifically on how to incorporate SEO techniques in your digital marketing strategy.

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Topic Selection & Prioritization

The goal of content marketing is to build trust and grow your brand awareness by providing education. To do this well, you need to talk to your sales team to figure out what your target audience wants to learn about. What are the things they struggle with? What problems are they trying to solve? 

Assuming your content marketing strategy is already focused on providing high-quality content that resonates with your audience, it’s not a big change to incorporate SEO. Why? Because more than half of all Google searches are informational (according to a study run between January 2023 and September 2024). It’s a good chance that your customers are researching the topics you’re already writing about, but to improve your visibility in search results, you may need to make a few tweaks to your process. 

I’m going to use a made-up company that makes custom conveyor belts for packaged food companies as an example throughout this article. Many companies in the manufacturing industry have relied heavily on trade shows, word-of-mouth, and distributor networks, instead of investing in SEO, so it’s a realistic example of a company that might be embracing SEO for the first time in 2025.

Let’s say our made-up conveyor belt manufacturer writes two educational blog articles per month.

Their planned content schedule for Q2 might look like this: 

APRIL

• Article 1: 3 ways to reduce waste in your packaging

• Article 2: sustainable packaging trends (earth day tie-in) 

MAY

• Article 1: how does packaging impact consumer behavior

• Article 2: food safety in manufacturing

JUNE

• Article 1: how to optimize your packaging line
  Article 2: choosing the right conveyor belt

Here’s what that content calendar might look like if the company used Trello for their content planner.

Incorporate SEO Into Your Informative Content

The goal of SEO is to get your website to rank in search engines when your target audience is looking for solutions like yours (NOT just to show up for any old search term). 

Thus, incorporating SEO into your informative content requires you to add keyword research into your topic selection process. You still want to educate your audience; SEO just adds the layer of finding keywords with high search volume and low competition that match the concerns of your target audience. Think of it as validating the hunch that your sales team had about what problems your customers are worrying about. One sales rep said a few people were looking for ways to reduce waste in packaging. When you do your keyword research, you notice that “sustainable packaging ideas” has 150 searches per month, so your sales team was right! 

Let’s look at that sample content calendar again, and see if there are any relevant keywords that align with those topics. 

Topic: ways to reduce waste in your packaging 

Potential keywords: 

• Recyclable food packaging (100 searches per month)

• Food packaging waste (100 searches per month)

• How to reduce packaging waste in manufacturing (20 searches per month)

Topic: sustainable packaging trends (earth day tie-in) 

Potential keywords: 

• Eco friendly packaging (2.2K searches per month)

• Sustainable food packaging (500 searches per month)

• Packaging trends (200 searches per month)

Topic: how does packaging impact consumer behavior?

Potential keywords: 

• Consumer behavior trends (450 searches per month)

• Plastic packaging alternatives (60 searches per month)

Topic: Promoting food safety in manufacturing

Potential Keywords: 

• Food safety regulations (250 searches per month)

• Food safety in manufacturing (40 searches per month)

Topic: How to optimize your packaging line 

Potential keywords:

• Packaging operations (40 searches per month)

Topic: Choosing the right conveyor belt

Potential keywords: 

• Types of conveyor belts (100 searches per month)

• Slider bed vs roller bed conveyor (20 searches per month) 

I was able to find keywords that would work for all of these topics. But some of these keywords are getting a little too broad for my tastes (like consumer behavior trends, which could relate to anything that drives consumer behavior, not just packaging, and food safety regulations, which is probably more related to restaurants than manufacturing). Also, the search volumes vary widely, from more than 2,000 per month down to 20. 

There are many factors that go into SEO strategy, but in brief, we’re looking for keywords that match our customers’ pain points and also have a good combination of high volume (SV = search volume) and low competition (KD = keyword difficulty). Applying those considerations, I would narrow the list above down to the following keywords: 

• Topic 1: sustainable food packaging (500 SV, KD 11)

• Topic 2: types of conveyor belts (100 SV, KD 4)

• Topic 3: recyclable food packaging (100 SV, KD 12)

• Topic 4: plastic packaging alternatives (60 SV, KD 1)

• Topic 5: packaging operations (40 SV, KD 0)

• Topic 6: food safety in manufacturing (40 SV, KD 3)

Here’s that same content plan after discovering SEO keywords that align with the chosen topics.

Now that I have a list of keywords that align with topics I’m qualified to speak on and that I know my audience cares about, the next step is to create new content that has a good chance of ranking for those keywords.

Content Creation

With traditional content marketing, your content creation process might look like this:

1. Interview a Subject Matter Expert (SME) 

2. Prepare a content brief 

3. Write & edit the piece for clarity

4. Publish 

When writing SEO content, you need to add a few more steps to your process. (I’ll go into detail about each step in a moment, but for now, I want to highlight the two additional steps as compared to traditional content marketing):

1. Evaluate the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP)

2. Interview an SME

3. Prepare a content brief

4. Write & edit the piece for clarity

5. Optimize on-page SEO

6. Publish

Now let’s dig into those steps (consider this a primer on how to write SEO content).

Step 1: Evaluate the SERP

Start by analyzing the search engine results page (SERP) for your target keyword. The most important thing you need to do is to identify the search intent for that keyword and make sure it aligns with the content you’re planning to produce. Search intent isn’t just an SEO buzzword, it literally means “what info is the searcher trying to get?” and you have to understand that before you start writing.

Make sure the searchers are looking for education on the topics that are relevant to your company, and not looking for a luxury shoe brand that happens to share the same name or something. (If that sounds too specific to be made up…well… 🙊.)

After that, look at the top-ranking articles to identify the subtopics they cover, since you’ll probably need to also touch on these points in order to compete effectively. As you review the SERP, begin drafting interview questions aimed at exploring the topic in greater depth than the existing content. Look for opportunities to add value by providing clearer explanations or better examples, clarifying the relationships between concepts, or providing a more user-friendly experience with a better structure or an infographic. The goal is to identify gaps you can fill and ways to differentiate your content.

Step 2: Interview an SME

Interviewing a subject matter expert (SME) within your organization is the best way to gather original insights that will elevate your article. But make good use of that time: avoid asking surface-level questions you could answer with a quick Google search. Dig deeper by asking about challenges your audience faces, common misconceptions, and typical approaches to solving the problem that don’t work well. Questions like, “What do our customers struggle with most in this area?” or “What’s something most people get wrong about this?” will help you write with authority and at the same knowledge level as your target audience.

Step 3: Prepare a Content Brief

Before writing, create a detailed content brief to outline your strategy. Define how your article will improve on the current top-ranking content, whether by offering a unique perspective, filling in knowledge gaps, or presenting a contrarian take. Include a high-level outline of the key subtopics, your target word count, and a clear description of the piece’s angle.

Step 4: Write and Edit the Piece for Clarity

To have a shot at ranking in the top 10 for your target keyword, you need to cover the topic thoroughly. That might mean creating longer, more detailed articles than you were doing before. For most topics, you’ll need at least 750 words, but for complex issues, you might need 1,500 or even as much as 3,000 words to provide enough depth. (But longer isn’t necessarily better, and length for length’s sake should never be your goal.)

Structure the piece to be easily skimmable, using lots of headers and bullet points. In the introduction, make a clear promise about what the reader will learn, and signal that the content is tailored to their knowledge level—it’s really important to not be overly basic. 

Step 5: Optimize On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is the part of SEO that most people think of when they think about “doing SEO,” so I’ll spend a little more time here to explain it. It refers to incorporating your target keyword into a variety of elements on the page to indicate that this page is devoted to that topic and that topic only. 

All of these practices are visible on the front-end of the website, if you know where to look, and you don’t need any programming skills to implement them.  Plugins like Yoast for Wordpress and default modules in Squarespace make it easy to edit all the elements that aren’t in the body copy (like the Title Tag and Meta Description). 

ON-PAGE SEO CHECKLIST

1. Title Tag: This is the title of the webpage. It shows up as the headline of your article in the search results, and it will also appear on the browser tab after you click on the link (you probably have to hover your cursor over it to see the full title if you have 26 tabs open at a time like I do.). You should try to include your target keyword near the beginning of the page title for maximum impact.

2. Meta Description: The Meta Description is the preview text that shows up in Google under the Title Tag. This preview should aim to entice searchers to read your piece, and for best results, should naturally incorporate the keyword.

3. Header Tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.): These are the headings used throughout the body copy to break up different subtopics and make the article more skimmable. You should use a single H1 for the headline of the piece, and then use H2, H3, and H4 to break out subsections throughout the copy. Use the target keyword in the main H1 header and aim to include some variations in subheaders (but only if it makes sense).

4. First 100 Words: Try to use the target keyword as early as possible in the introduction.

5. Semantic Keywords in Body Text: Semantic keywords are words and phrases closely related to your primary keyword in meaning or context. They help search engines distinguish between content that is wholly devoted to a single search term, and content that just happens to mention that search term but is really focused on something else. Tools like Clearscope or Surfer or Keyword Insights can help you know which related phrases you need to include. Of course, you have to use these terms naturally and accurately.

6. URL: Include the keyword in the page’s URL. Aim to keep your URLs as short as possible. If the keyword is “types of conveyor belts,” the url should be yourwebsite [dot] com [slash] types-of-conveyor-belts.

7. Image Alt Text: The alt text is the text that shows up if you hover over an image, and it’s also what a screen reader will read to someone who can’t see the image. If it makes sense to do so, you should add the target keyword into the description of the image. If the image is just a stock photo, this can be kind of awkward, but sometimes I’ll say something like “this image of a white woman talking to a black man in a well-lit office represents [insert keyword].”

8. Image File Names: This one is easy. Name image files with the keyword before uploading (e.g., "types-of-conveyor-belts.jpg"). Again, this is something you can see on the front end, if you right-click on the photo and download it to your desktop. 

9. Add Internal Links: Internal links show how each piece of content on your site is related to the rest of your content. They can help readers find quick answers, and they show Google that your website is an authority on the overall topic this search query belongs to. So you should aim to add at least three internal links into every article. Place the hyperlinks under words that are descriptive and relevant to the topic of the target article so readers know what to expect if they follow that link.

Step 6: Publish

Now you’re ready to publish! Review the piece every year or so to make sure it is still accurate. If it fails to rank in the top 10, look for ways to expand and improve it. 

A Note on Optimizing Existing Content

When you first start incorporating SEO best practices into your marketing strategy, you may have a lot of content on your website that isn’t optimized for anything. What do you do with that? Do you need to rewrite your whole website? 

You don’t need to rewrite the whole website, but there are definitely pages that you should consider updating and optimizing. If you have any blog posts that already rank for relevant keywords (or that already drive conversions to your content), look for opportunities to improve the on-page SEO for the keywords they already rank for. This might mean expanding the content, or adding better images, or writing a meta description. 

Similarly, if you have a bunch of product or service pages, you’ll want to maximize the potential of these pages to drive traffic and conversions by optimizing them for buying related keywords. 

The process for optimizing existing content is basically the same as for the blog content, but you’ll want to evaluate the keywords the page already ranks for during your keyword research process. Perhaps it ranks for valuable keywords that you don’t want to lose. Make sure to keep those keywords in the content somewhere. But if it ranks for a bunch of irrelevant keywords, ignore those and proceed with the same process I outlined for new content.

Content Distribution

Traditional content marketing requires a concerted effort to drive traffic to your blog — often by paying to boost that content on Facebook or LinkedIn or by including it in an email newsletter. It’s also important to pay attention to the timing of when you post your content on social media or when you send your newsletter. 

The beauty of SEO is that you don’t have to rely on paid distribution to get your content in front of potential customers. They find you when they’re looking for solutions! 

But your SEO efforts will only be successful if you can get your website content to appear in the Top 10 search results, and ideally the Top 3. And sometimes, that means giving your content a little boost with backlinks, which can be an important ranking factor. There are a variety of link-building strategies available, but this step is not always necessary, especially if you have a well-established website that has been around for a long time. 

Another cool thing about SEO content distribution? Timing (as in day of the week) doesn’t matter. It typically takes several weeks for Google’s crawlers to find your new piece, evaluate it, and start testing out what position it belongs at. So the sooner you can publish, the better, even if it’s the middle of the night on New Year’s Eve.

Technical SEO and Content Marketing

I would be remiss if I didn’t briefly discuss technical SEO, since that’s another area that you don’t have to worry about in traditional content marketing. 

Technical SEO refers to optimizing the backend elements of a website to ensure it is easily crawlable, indexable, and fast for search engines, as well as user-friendly for visitors. This includes aspects like site speed, mobile-friendliness, structured data, XML sitemaps, and fixing crawl errors.

Technical SEO is like building and maintaining a smooth, well-lit exit ramp off the information superhighway, making it easy for Google’s crawlers to find and access your site. It clears debris (like crawl errors), paints clear lines (structured data), and ensures the road is fast and safe (site speed and security).

But if there’s no SEO-optimized content waiting at the end of the ramp—no relevant, engaging information to make the stop worthwhile—Google’s crawlers will just keep driving, looking for a better destination.

Almost every site can use some work to improve the page loading speed. If you used a modern website builder like Squarespace or Wordpress to build your site, you probably won’t need to make many other technical SEO changes. If you built your website when dinosaurs roamed the earth, you might have some old junk you need to clean out, and you might need to reorganize some aspects of your architecture. 

An SEO audit will identify the technical SEO fixes that you need, and they’re usually pretty cheap. It’s a good idea to do one before you start producing SEO content, but you can address the recommendations concurrently with producing and publishing content.

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SEO is the Best Way to Boost Your Content Marketing Efforts

With search engines continuing to prioritize user experience and relevance, SEO and content marketing can now work together to help improve your online visibility, drive more organic traffic, and get more conversions from your content.

By integrating SEO best practices into your content marketing process, you ensure your hard work creating valuable content doesn't go unnoticed. Instead, your blog posts and articles can reach audiences that are actively searching for the solutions and insights you provide. It's not about gaming the system or stuffing keywords—it's about understanding your audience’s needs and crafting high-quality content that answers their questions better than anyone else.

So, take a step back, evaluate your current processes, and look for ways to align your content with SEO principles. Whether it’s researching better keywords, structuring your content to match search intent, or enhancing user experience, these changes can make a big difference. If you’re interested in hiring a content partner who will blend SEO and content marketing strategies for maximum impact, schedule a free consultation.