Content marketing and SEO are the two most popular topics in digital marketing. But which practice is more important? The answer is the one that marketers should begin with and make a priority.

The more you get into content marketing, the more confusing it gets. So here’s a rule of thumb that you can always turn to when in doubt: focus on creating quality content that offers value for readers. You’ll find that when you do this, everything else seems to fall into place.

An example of this is how content marketing enhances SEO. You wouldn’t have thought this a few years ago, but Google has changed its algorithm to reward companies that product good content. If you get confused by Google’s updates than just remember this: Google likes good content and will punish SEO tricks that try to cheat the system.

Still, content marketing and SEO are very closely related. A recent Search Engine Watch article discusses the link between content marketing and SEO:

“In addition to increasing search engine visibility, SEO content should be relevant and valuable to your target audience, and provide solutions to their problems. The cumulative effect of this is driving more traffic to your website, better user engagement, increased conversions, and ultimately more customers. These are all goals of content marketing as well, but SEO and content marketing are often discussed in silos.”

The goals of SEO now align with the goals of content marketing. That doesn’t mean that the two are the same, but they’re both working towards the same end.

So if you’re debating whether you should focus on SEO or content marketing, remember the rule of thumb we mentioned before. If you write blogs, release white papers, and conduct surveys, Google will give your website a good page rank. The content comes first and then everything else follows.

Much success,

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