Social Media

SEO-Driven Content vs. Content-Driven SEO

  22 Aug 2022

If you've spent any time in the world of search engine optimization, you've probably heard this best practice: create content for humans first, then optimize it for search engines.

This advice makes excellent philosophical sense. Of course, you want to create SEO-friendly content that, above all, resonates with your target readers.

In reality, though, it's all too easy to lose sight of this goal, especially when keywords are seen as the basis of good SEO and content marketing. Optimizing posts and pages becomes all about including as many keywords as possible in order to boost your search rank

When you stress about keywords in this way, your material begins to seem robotic – and Google, as a robot, can tell.

Google recognizes when you stuff a website with keywords or numbers in an attempt to influence search rankings, and it will not elevate material that meets that description. If you want both people and machines to be interested in your site, you need to rethink your SEO strategy, which means switching from SEO-driven content to content-driven SEO.

How to use SEO effectively

The key thing to remember about content-driven SEO is that it is not distinct from SEO in general. It's more of a mental adjustment. There are several ways to boost your site's SEO, and content-driven SEO is all about creating thorough, accurate, and descriptive material that provides real value.

At Digistart, we do keyword research and use the results to assist in shaping the content we develop in order to attract more visitors to our website. This information helps us understand not just what individuals search for but also how they look for it.

Keyword research

However, before you begin creating content, you must first understand the landscape. Analyze your present keyword rankings for that goal. This study will show you how well your company ranks organically and will provide you with a strong starting point for your SEO content marketing strategy

Examine the keywords your competitors rank for to see how you compare. Many of these keywords will be meaningless, but a few will lead to fresh content opportunities.

Focus on informational keywords

Next, select new keywords for which you and your competitors do not currently rank. Instead of focusing on transactional queries, which show that someone is ready to buy, it is better for content-driven SEO to look for more informational keywords.

For instance, what terms do people search for to learn more about a pain point in your industry?

Brainstorm content ideas

Begin by brainstorming content ideas from there. Don't be hesitant to take advantage of search results.

For example, before writing content about a given topic, do some Googling to see what comes up at the top of the results page. Examine the articles to see what they cover, and then use a tool like Semrush to see what keywords they rank for.

Make it more engaging

After that, consider how you can improve on what has already been written. Are rivals handling themes in ways that are misleading, wrong, or boring? If this is the case, you can use good content-driven SEO to fill in the readers' knowledge gaps or make them more interested.

The pillar-page strategy

When it comes to creating content, we like to use pillar pages. First, we create a long-form piece of keyword-optimized content (i.e., a pillar page) that goes into depth on a larger topic. On that pillar page, we link to shorter, more focused SEO blog posts that go into more depth on a number of subtopics.

We've seen that employing this method not only helps readers answer broad questions but also allows them to delve further into relevant parts of the issue. Using inquiries as subtopics on the pillar page can make it easier for our site visitors to navigate the content.

Furthermore, Google is more likely to incorporate Q&A-style portions into its "people also ask" section. Finally, because the material is linked through a linking ecology, the search engine crawler finds it easier to prioritize and rank postings.

P.S.: Are you running a small business or starting your brand? You might need a more specialized and professional social media marketing agency like digistart.

Digistart is the best SMM service company in Bangalore that provides digital marketing services, social media marketing services, content marketing, lead generation services and ORM services in Bangalore.

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