Content Marketing Optimization Audits – Find Where SEO Can Boost Content Marketing Success
By Lee Odden
SEO and content marketing intersect in more ways than optimizing web pages with keywords.
Answering the question, “How does SEO and content marketing strategy interact?” starts with understanding customers, behaviors and preferences for information discovery, consumption and sharing. Knowing what customers care about and how those concerns and interests manifest as search keywords and social topics folds very well into the keyword research practiced by professional SEOs.
Keyword Glossaries and Editorial Plans can be valuable tools for marketers to aid in creating relevant content that is inherently optimized for customers and target audiences alike. Specific keyword optimization is appropriate as well, but the end content product becomes much easier to find, consume and share if an understanding of customer questions is translated into topics and keywords from the start. This is the core of how brands can become the best answer for what customers are looking for.
The role of a content plan is to outlines content types, topics and the keywords they’re optimized for. Content plans also show where and if the content will be re-published and re-purposed, plus which channels of distribution will be used to promote the content. Search engine optimization also applies to social media content that emphasizes popular and relevant social topics vs. search keywords.
Planning, creating, optimizing, promoting and engaging with content on topics that customers and target audiences care about is where SEO has evolved as Content Marketing Optimization. SEO expertise, which also includes knowledge of how search engines crawl and index websites, content management systems, the impact of how websites are coded and organized, provides a powerful ally to Content Marketers when goals and objectives are in alignment.
To understand where SEO can create performance optimization opportunities for content marketers, it’s important to evaluate the current situation and uncover the gaps that represent opportunities for improvement through a series of audits.
5 Fundamental SEO Research and Audit Reports
Keyword Research – Customers often speak a different language when it comes to using search engines to find answers or solutions. So, it’s important to identify what phrases represent the mix of reasons for using a search engine to find solutions like those offered by your company. Of course, people search for more reasons than to buy products and services, so keyword research can provide essential insight into the demand for topics that customers might have across the entire journey from awareness of a problem, to consideration of options to choosing specific solutions. A Keyword Research audit will asses your website, competitors, consumers, web analytics and keyword research tools to identify, organize and manage your target search keyword phrases. From the audit, you can then discover what keywords will best motivate customer actions from top of mind consideration to leads and sales.
Content Audit – Once target keyword phrases and topics have been identified, a comparison with current website content is made to determine optimization opportunities as well as to recommend new content creation. It’s pretty tough to be found …read more
Source:: Top Rank Blog
