Internet is definitely the biggest thing that’s influencing today’s generation and probably many of the generations yet to come. People search everything on the internet starting from hair pins to real estate. As a marketer, you need to make use of the internet which most of the other marketers already have.

When a person searches for something on a search engine like Google, the search engine will display a list of results which are links to different links. These results are displayed in an order of relevance that the search engine decides using different algorithms. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is when you identify the key words that are used the most when it comes to a particular field and use those key words for your benefit. You do this with the help of effective content marketing.

SEO is not rocket science, it’s just that you insert certain key words that are most probably going to be searched by your target audience. This will make the search engine show the website which you want them to see among the top few results. Obviously, not many people would scroll down to check every result, they would select whatever is there on the top. Let’s say it’s something like the story of Game of Thrones where everyone is competing with each other for the iron throne which in this case is the top position in search engine results.

Once you identify these keywords you need to stuff them into your web content in a sensible manner. Your content should revolve around the topic and should lead to your website. It can be posted on the particular website which you want the target audience to see or can be posted in a separate blog that will lead the audience to the website through hyperlinks.

Now, you know what SEO is and what content marketing is. People often use these terms interchangeably because of their similarities. However, they differ in few aspects as well and cannot be used interchangeably. Let’s compare the differences and similarities between SEO and content marketing to understand the bond between the two.

Differences between SEO and Content Marketing

Technicality: SEO is much more technical when compared to content marketing which makes it a bit different from content marketing. Because of lower technicality the scope of content marketing is higher than that of SEO which is another difference.

Function: The main goal of SEO is make use of the search engines and it concentrates of the keywords or phrases that drive traffic into different websites. In other words, SEO focuses on satisfying the needs of the search engine whereas in content marketing, the content is focused on the public. The people who are reading the content should find it engaging and interesting.

What is this bond between SEO and Content Marketing?

Even if there are a few differences and SEO cannot be used instead of content marketing, it would be wrong to say that they are completely different. SEO and content marketing are very closely related. In fact, effective content marketing is one of the most important SEO tactics.

The process of online marketing requires both SEO and content marketing to work hand in hand. SEO finds out the required key words and sets the demand which has to be fulfilled by the content that’s put up on the website or the blog. If the content is not good enough, people would just skip that particular website and go to the next so that they get a website that’s more readable. This means that both SEO as well as content marketing have to work good in order to fix the position at the top in search engine results.

The key words are nothing but words which doesn’t have an individual existence without meaningful content. If you simply try to stuff your website or blog with key words in a meaningless way, you will have to face penalties from Google Panda. This is why you need to make sure that the content in which the key words are added makes sense and are relevant to the topic.

SEO also involves usage of quality links and one of the best ways to introduce links to your website is through content marketing. You often see links to different websites within a particular website which is interesting. People who like to read about the topic will click on the link and keep on reading more and more, thereby visiting the links to your websites.

To conclude, SEO and content marketing and two different concepts that cannot be used interchangeably but they are complementary. These two concepts go hand in hand and content marketing is like an SEO tool that helps it function effectively.