If you’ve been running a business for some time and you’re on the cusp of hiring help to manage the marketing mayhem, you might have wondered: “What is the difference between an SEO agency and a content marketing agency?”.

 This article is the pre-cursor to decide if it’s the right time to outsource some of your marketing efforts.

 

In an ever-changing landscape, you’ll constantly be making decisions for your business and reviewing your content marketing strategy, social media marketing and ways to make your brand and business stand out in an online market. Your business website is typically the hallmark of any business that wants to be taken seriously, whether you have a team or you’re a brand or business doing it alone. A website is a platform you get to personalise and tailor to the needs of your ideal audience, and once you have it – it’s yours to nurture in a way that doesn’t have the same kind of short-term expiry as social media platforms might.

 

But, there’s a catch. Having a website alone isn’t the key to long and flourishing success. That’s where an SEO and content marketing agency could start to look particularly attractive. From search engine optimisation to keyword research – let’s dive in to understand how an agency could help you double up your marketing efforts! Writing content optimised for search is still a massively overlooked organic tool that can help your business yield results for years. I’ll get into the how later, but first, let’s get into the difference between an SEO and a content marketing agency.

What is the difference between an SEO specialist and a content marketing specialist?

I look at it like this, a content marketing specialist is someone who in their years of service acquired marketing skills to offer up video production or editing, case studies, SEO content, digital assets and social media content. The range of specificity of their offer will be on a case-by-case basis – somewhat of a generalist with strengths or preferences about the content they create to help you market your business.

An SEO specialist could be somebody focusing on on-page or technical SEO, but the approach is always about supporting you to create organic content, optimised to help you show up in search results. This leads to traffic to your website if the SEO is done well enough that Google bots deem it worthy enough to show up in search results.

Your approach to using an SEO and a content marketing agency

When meeting clients or delivering workshops, our approach to content SEO and recommendations for how others can manage their SEO strategy, or add it as a complementary marketing tool is inevitably a point of interest. Here’s what we’d say: you are an expert in your field, and there will undoubtedly be something in your zone of genius that lights you up that other people simply don’t understand – cue your first bucket of expert value! When you can identify topics of interest for your audience you find the perfect writing balance between expertise and experience that you can share as blog posts on your website.

Every time Google crawls the internet for information that matches the search query of the user, it looks for content that meets four standards: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. You should aim for this on every page of your website and with every subsequent blog article, just like the process of applying for a job:

1. 1. you have to talk about your experience in your application form
   2. show off your expertise in an interview
   3. say yes to opportunities to show off your authoritativeness once you’ve got the job (that doesn’t mean bossy) – it simply means fostering a position of dependability in taking the lead
   4. build a trusted relationship with your boss and team members over time

 

Keyword Driven Content

Keyword-driven content is an organic marketing step that can help you generate traffic to your website using keywords that are relevant to the industry you’re in and that the end user of your service would find helpful. There are lots of keyword search tools such as AHREFS, MOZ and Keysearch but one of the easiest places to start is to head to your search history or type a query you’re used to hearing that people want to know before accessing and committing to buying something in your product field or service industry.

The aim with each piece of writing you publish on your website is that you have a primary, focused keyword and then synonyms and longer-phrased keywords (a search term of three words or more) within the body of the piece to make a solid topical piece of value that correlates with the search term someone has inputted into Google.

There are other guidelines, but for the sake of deciding whether to invest in outsourcing the creation of SEO content for your business – it’s important to understand that the research and structure of the piece to make it accessible and valuable to the reader, play a big part in laying the right groundwork for your articles to be successful.

Why SEO Content Writing is So Important

SEO content writing is so important because once written it can contribute to generating leads and new business. You have to think that for every answer you’re able to provide for someone as they search for an answer online, you become top of mind for them as a long-term solution to the barrier, problem or headache they’re trying to get rid of. The more valuable the piece, the more authority you gain. People can share, like or take action on the free advice and guidance you’re able to give them and in time, that can translate to a new customer. The importance of generating new leads or the outcomes you hope to achieve could be the basis for deciding if you’ll hire a marketing agency or not.

B2B content marketing is very popular because businesses are always looking for ways to cut down time and optimise and automate, streamline and secure sales in easier ways that require less or little manpower. The same could be said for small business owners who understand the importance of lowering their marketing bill, so choose to invest in a digital marketing agency and take our content services, so the agency can write them a series of optimised articles that become the cornerstone pieces for their brand and live on the website to support people in their customer journey.

Maximising the Value of Strategic Content 

Maximising the value of strategic content is a great opportunity to lessen the content creation burden by thinking about 4 key pieces of content that you can set aside time to write, creating the foundation of your strategic content library. Lots of business owners still feel pressure under the weight of the constant cycle of content creation, when what they should focus on is strategic content and long-form writing such as blog posts and emails. When you think about the amount of Instagram posts this article could be broken down into for example – we’d say there could easily be thirty days worth of posts if not more! All achieved by putting the work into content strategy with a long-term approach. 

SEO Link Building Authority for Your SEO Content Marketing

Trying to build backlink authority is a great active compliment to your content by linking within your piece to another article or website that mentions you and yours, as well as guest posting on other, industry-relevant websites. Guest posting allows you to link back to your website. The web that starts to be established places you in a specific field, becoming more and more refined with each mention of what you do in other places on the internet that are relevant and aligned with your business.

As with any other marketing investment, there can be benefits and negatives to hiring an SEO or content marketing agency and it really depends on your priorities and budget combined with what your motivations are for implementing the activity into your business. The results aren’t immediate, but if done well, the results can pay off for a lot longer than the impressions of a post – and that is always a win for us.

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