Content’s Important Role in SEO: There’s no SEO without content

There’s no SEO without content

Bold statement, perhaps. Nonetheless, it’s a true one.

A successful content strategy must include a balance of SEO and content. After all, creating relevant, valuable, and engaging content is pointless if your SEO is sub-par (because no-one will find your content).

On the flip side, great SEO practices and low-quality content won’t generate high search engine ranks either.

Let’s look at how SEO and content must work together as a partnership to drive organic traffic properly.

What is content in SEO?

Content in SEO is made up of the visual and textual parts of a website.

Search engines like Google have an ultimate task. To send users to the websites most likely to provide the information they’re seeking.

This is why informative content that addresses website visitors’ questions and concerns is key to SEO.

Visual content can include elements like video, infographics, and images. This type of content engages users and encourages them to remain on websites for longer. Reduced bounce rates indicate to search engines that they’ve sent users to the right place for relevant and informative content. Which is a big tick in the authority box.

What is content optimisation in SEO?

The way this links to SEO is through optimisation – think descriptive file names, alt text, and captions to tell Google what the visuals contain. Content must be optimised not only for search engine visibility but also for relevance.

When you get both right, you increase your website visitors, boost organic traffic, and improve your user experiences. 

The goals of SEO

The point of search engine optimisation is to make websites more visible on search engine results pages (SERPs).

SEO is not all about the keywords, contrary to popular belief. Yes, they are important, but search algorithms consider many other rank-worthy elements. Some of the crucial ones are user experience, page load speed, website structure, and mobile-friendliness.

But most importantly, it’s about the quality of the on-page content.

Because user satisfaction and relevance are vital ranking factors, top-quality content is the driving force behind effective SEO campaigns.

Why content is important in SEO

Content fuels SEO

Content sends the signals search engines need to understand, and therefore, accurately rank website content.

For instance, when you create content that lines up with your website users’ intent, you prove your website as a valuable resource. Back this up with backlinks, and search engines will recognise that if other authoritative sites are linking to yours, you are deserving of high rankings.

Content will help you get that precious top spot on the likes of Google and Bing

Let’s touch briefly on Featured Snippets (I’ve capitalised them so you know they’re important). These are informative content boxes that appear at the top of search results, and on average, receive 35.1% of the total click share.

Featured snippets are the resource that Google deems as the most valuable and relevant relating to a certain topic.

Here’s what a featured snippet looks like:

Image Source

Also known as position zero, these special boxes are basically like winning the golden ticket to the chocolate factory.

According to Ahrefs, if you land one, you can potentially gain 31% more traffic compared to just having the first position without the featured snippet.

Now that’s a target worth aiming for. What content can help you get there

Types of SEO content

There are many types of SEO content that can make up a content marketing strategy.

The typical content formats include:

• Blogs help you to establish your authority in your industry

• Short form content is usually under 1500 words – landing pages, product descriptions, email sequences, short blog posts

• Long form content is often above 1500 words – downloads, whitepapers, and guides are common types

• Thought leadership content is shareable, written by industry experts, and include unique insights

• Social channels using targeted keywords as hashtags are an important part of content marketing

• Pillar and evergreen is content that stands the test of time and will continue to provide value for many years to come

• Data-led content is backed by data, such as an industry report

There’s no SEO without content

Of course, not everyone knows how to write SEO content.

But hopefully with the help of this article, you’ll have a much clearer understanding of both SEO and content and how they work together in unison. When you get the balance right, it can make a significant difference to your website rankings and traffic.

To outsource your SEO and content, you’ll probably need to hire a freelance SEO expert.

At TJ Creative, we provide a full service SEO strategy. This means we provide strategy, keyword research, reporting, technical optimisation and SEO content creation.

Get in touch for a chat about how we can help.