From a high-level perspective, leveraging organic search as a channel for acquiring customers seems straightforward. You need to produce quality content and secure valuable links — that’s essentially it!
However, the reality is more complex. What constitutes "good content"? And what are "good links"? These questions are significant enough to warrant their own detailed discussions. If you’re interested in exploring these topics further, I recommend reading resources such as "Beyond Keywords: What Really Matters In SEO Content" and "Evaluating Link Quality For SEO Campaigns."
Here, I’ll focus on the process. Specifically, I will discuss aligning your content and SEO strategies to work cohesively, driving sustainable results for your website.
Many SEO professionals highlight a lack of understanding of SEO initiatives as an obstacle to success. By reducing the burden of search success solely on the SEO team and involving more of the broader digital marketing team in SEO-influenced elements, you’ll achieve better outcomes.
To succeed with search, you need to integrate workflows and build a foundation for collaboration, continuing to foster teamwork before content development, during creation, and through publication.
Let’s explore some best practices to help align your teams and get content and SEO working harmoniously.
Integrating workflows
Establishing a foundation for collaboration is the first step in aligning content and SEO. If you have separate departments for content and SEO, it’s crucial to integrate their workflows.
Joint meetings can significantly enhance collaboration. Brief weekly or monthly updates between the two departments can be very effective.
Another way to encourage collaboration is by aligning KPIs for both departments. When each team shares the same success metrics, they will naturally be more inclined to cooperate. Sharing a common goal and making both teams equally accountable for organic search success will unify your content and SEO teams.
Ensure open lines of communication. Tools like Slack or Google Hangouts can facilitate real-time collaboration.
With these elements in place, your teams will be well-positioned to work together to align content and SEO for optimal results.
SEO research informs content creation
Coordination between content and SEO teams should occur well before any content is created.
Content teams should have creative freedom in topic ideation, as they are the experts and creatives. However, your SEO team can provide guidance. SEO research can make content marketing more strategic and positioned to capitalize on search opportunities.
To drive organic traffic, you need content — specifically, the right content. Your SEO team can guide your strategy to target the best opportunities.
SEO teams can guide content strategy through competitor and audience analysis from a search perspective.
Competitor analysis for content creation
SEO professionals can analyze competitor content to see which pages perform best and drive their visitors. They can identify competitor pages with the most organic traffic and top-linked pages, offering critical insights for the content team.
By identifying a competitor’s top posts, your SEO team gains insights into:
- Optimal content formats
- Unique SERP opportunities
- Ideal content length and structure
- Potential linking audiences
- Potential promotional opportunities
- Alternative and related keyword ideas
This information empowers your content team to create pages that earn visibility and can reclaim audience share from your competition.
Audience analysis for content creation
The audience analysis that SEO teams provide can greatly benefit content creators before content development.
Keyword research provides valuable insight that helps content teams prioritize topics and opportunities. It uncovers opportunities associated with top keywords and themes based on search volume, competition level, and searcher intent.
Understanding search intent is essential to developing a complete marketing funnel for your site. Your content should address each funnel stage and the associated intents. While commercial-intent searchers are closer to becoming customers, solely focusing on them risks missing a significant portion of your audience.
In many niches, commercial pages are among the most competitive in organic search, especially in e-commerce.
Providing a diverse range of valuable content on your site targeting different funnel stages is essential to SEO success. The best opportunities often combine:
- Low competition
- High search volume
Or a situation where current ranking pages are lacking, allowing you to create superior content.
Crafting these pages is integral to building a robust content marketing strategy. These strategies make an impact when combined with conversion rate optimization (CRO) best practices and a strong on-site user experience, such as effective internal linking and proper calls to action.
It’s always helpful for your content creation team to examine SERPs, assess what’s ranking, and determine why.
For instance, if you sell ergonomic keyboards, you’ll have commercial-intent searchers seeking your product pages. However, there’s also an audience searching for general health tips for the office. SEO-driven keyword research can highlight topics that attract larger audiences, such as:
- Chair exercises
- Desk exercises
- Desk workouts
- Exercise at work
These opportunities often have even more search potential with associated long-tail keywords.
SEO research can also guide content formatting once an opportunity is identified. If your SEO team identifies [deskercise] as a viable content opportunity, they should also note video content opportunities within these results. This insight enables your content team to create content in the preferred format, enhancing its ranking potential.
Competitor and audience research is vital for crafting strategic content for search, and aligning SEO and content can position your pages to compete effectively in search results.
Keeping SEO involved throughout content creation
The SEO team’s role doesn’t end after providing research data. SEO should remain involved throughout content creation for content optimization advice.
Consider developing a checklist the content and SEO teams can use together, addressing key optimization questions for each piece of content created. Your checklist might include:
Content-focused questions:
- What is the webpage or content goal?
- Which audience pain points are addressed?
- How does this content relate to business goals?
- Does it serve an SEO goal, such as ranking for target keywords or earning links?
- Who would read this content, and why?
- What should visitors do after reading it?
- How might this content perform on social media?
SEO-focused questions:
- Are images optimized?
- Are title tags and headers properly applied?
- Are meta descriptions well-crafted and reader-centric?
- Does the page meet speed requirements?
- What is the content’s bounce rate?
- Have conversion rate optimization factors been considered?
- Are there opportunities for internal and external linking?
- Would schema markup benefit this page?
For SEO-focused items, review content performance after publishing. Ensure the team is aware of the content calendar and set reminders to review posts after they’ve had time to perform.
Remember: Although these questions divide by focus, both teams should be accountable for all aspects to avoid “reactionary” SEO and siloing.
Simply sharing research with your content team isn’t enough. Ensure ongoing collaboration in the creation process to optimize pages for organic search success. After publication, SEO and content teams should discuss content performance regarding social awareness, keyword rankings, and link building.
When content and SEO align, you’ll see improved results and a more empowered team responsible for search success.
