How to Make Search Engines Your Content Marketing Partner

Follow these basic principles to craft SEO informed content that resonates and ranks

The neverending quest for online visibility eventually leads brands or creators into the realms of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). This journey is often fraught with misunderstandings and misapplication, and if you’re not careful, a few missteps can quickly shift search engines from being allies into adversaries for your content marketing.

The heart of the issue lies not in the optimisation itself but in its approach. Fortunately, some simple steps and some great tools will help you keep search engines on your side.

The Fundamental Misconception of SEO in Content Marketing

At its core, SEO is about making your content visible and accessible to those looking for it. Yet, many view SEO content strategy as a game of numbers, a checklist to be completed, rather than a tool to enhance the quality and relevance of their content.

This perspective is not only flawed but also contributes to the 'enshittification' of the internet. It overlooks search engines' primary mission: to connect users with the quality content that best answers their queries.

First Principles

Making Your Content Searchable

Before diving into SEO techniques, ensure your content is indexed in search engine databases. This foundational step varies across platforms but is critical for your content to be found. Each search engine has a different methodology, but you need to ensure your content is either uploaded or accessible to their database for them to find it.

For platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, or Facebook, uploading your video adds your video and its meta description to their database. But, for Google search, you need to use Google Search Console to ensure your website has been indexed by Google and added to their database for search.

Keyword Research

Keyword research helps you find which keywords to build your content strategy around.

The process starts with initial Seed keywords. Seed keywords are short-tail (usually one or two-word) keywords that your audience might use to find information about your topic area, product, service, or content. They are high-volume and, most often, highly competitive search terms, and they are the foundation of your keyword research.

You then use tools and/or processes to find associated search queries around those search terms that are relevant to your business. The idea is to find frequently searched queries that won’t be too difficult to rank for. These are known as ‘Topic Gaps’ and provide the best opportunity for your quality content to rank.

Take time and care with this process, as it provides valuable insight into the queries that your target audience is actually searching for on Google. These search terms will help inform your content strategy, your larger marketing strategy, and provide a constant source of inspiration for your content ideas.

Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs are popular and, but not cheap. If cost is an issue, HERE is an effective process using free tools.

Aligning Content with Search Intent

The first rule to SEO informed content creation is to create great content that delivers on the promise of the title.

The ultimate goal of search engines is to serve users the most relevant, valuable content. They use complex algorithms to rank content based on its alignment with search intent, considering factors like phrase similarity and quality content that delivers value on the subject matter.

Even if your content meets all of the search engine requirements, the algorithms will only serve your content in future searches if the content your reader has clicked through to meets expectations.

It is also helpful to view your content creation through the lens of Google’s E-E-A-T. The acronym stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

It is important to note that E-E-A-T is not a ranking factor of Google’s search algorithm but a component of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, which assist its employees, known as “Quality Raters”, in determining whether the search engine results are returning high-quality, relevant information and assessing the expertise of content creators.

Crafting Insight-Driven Content

The next step in making search engines your friend is understanding the search terms your audience uses and factoring this into your content brief. This involves creatively integrating the results of your keyword research with insights from your thematic research into high-quality, relevant content that is valuable to your audience.

The aim is to inform and enrich your audience rather than just to attract clicks.

Effective SEO is not just about inserting keywords but embedding them within valuable content that flexes your domain expertise. This means placing keywords in titles, headings, and throughout the body in a way that enhances readability and relevance, not just for search engines, but for real people.

Both Semrush and MarketMuse have content creation features that can help you with this.

Balancing Frequency with Quality

Keyword stuffing doesn't work. While the inclusion of relevant keywords is important, their overuse can be detrimental, leading to poor user experiences and penalties from search engines (making them your enemy).

High-quality, insight-driven content naturally incorporates relevant terms without sacrificing the integrity or readability of the piece.

MarketMuse’s Optimize tool will help you balance keyword optimisation with content quality.

The Importance of Content Performance

No matter how well-optimised your content is, search engines will only deem it relevant if it satisfies users.

Religiously monitor your Google Analytics or platform insights to see what resonates and what doesn’t. Content performance, measured through metrics like click-through rates and time spent on page, is crucial. It's a clear indicator to search engines that your content meets users' expectations.

Be prepared to be ruthless and willing to kill your darlings if they’re not working.

SEO should not be seen as a battleground against search engines but as a symbiosis with the search engine as connector to your audience.

By understanding and aligning with the goals of search engines—to connect users with the most valuable, relevant content—you transform them into allies.

Resonate to Rank

The key takeaway here is that you should aim to create content that is optimised for search engines, but it should also be fundamentally driven by the desire to provide actionable insights and value to your audience.

This approach ensures that when your audience searches, they find not just any content, they find yours.

Creating the quality, insight-driven content, however, is entirely over to you.