Content marketing is a marketing approach in which a company creates and distributes useful content to attract and keep a clearly defined audience. The content answers the audience’s questions instead of pitching a product, with the goal of leading to an action later, such as a sign-up or a purchase.
How does content marketing relate to SEO?
Much of what content marketers publish is meant to be found through search. Guides, comparisons and how-tos target queries people type early in their customer journey. SEO makes sure those pages can be crawled and indexed and that they match search intent.
Google’s documentation says its ranking systems aim to prioritize helpful, reliable content created for people. Among the warning signs it lists are producing lots of content on many topics in the hope that some of it ranks and relying heavily on automation. Mass-produced pages made mainly to manipulate rankings fall under Google’s spam policy on scaled content abuse.
Content marketing vs. content strategy
A content strategy sets which content gets made, for whom, why and at what scale. Content marketing is the execution: planning in an editorial calendar, production, distribution through the website, email and social channels, and measurement. Many teams use the two terms loosely.
Example
A heating manufacturer publishes a guide on whether heat pumps work in older homes, a cost calculator and a checklist for the installer visit. The pages rank for informational queries, link to product pages and collect newsletter sign-ups.
FAQ
What formats count as content marketing? Blog posts and guides, research reports, white papers, videos, podcasts, newsletters and social posts. The format should fit the question the audience has.
Is content marketing the same as SEO? No. SEO is about being found in search engines. Content marketing covers content across all channels. The two overlap wherever content is meant to be found through search.
How old is the term? According to Wikipedia, the term was first used in 1996 at a roundtable of the American Society for Newspaper Editors. The practice of publishing useful content to promote a business is much older.
Sources
- What Is Content Marketing? – Content Marketing Institute (secondary source, definition)contentmarketinginstitute.com
- Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- Spam policies for Google web search (scaled content abuse) – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- Content marketing – Wikipedia (secondary source, history)en.wikipedia.org
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