Content marketing is not the same as SEO.
"Bah, obviously", you may say, and yet I estimate that a small number of tech marketers have a truly in-depth understanding of the difference between the two things.
I also estimate that a large chunk of content marketing failures in the devtools space in the past 5 years can be attributed to the misunderstanding of SEO and content marketing at an organisational level.
By the end of this article, hopefully you will understand the distinction, and will be able to talk about it constructively with others.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimisation is the process of making changes to a website in order to increase its visibility in a search engine for a particular topic.
The goals of SEO are:
- get traffic through organic search - in the tech space that's mostly Google, Bing, and YouTube
- rank high for key terms - being on page one of Google, or in positions one through three, is what's generally associated with high traffic and an increase in reputation
The process of getting to those goals is twofold: on-page optimisation (content optimisation, technical optimisation) and off-page (creating and building links, increasing authority).
Other activities involve keyword research, and then rank tracking as a way to measure the impact.
What exactly is content marketing?
Content marketing is the process of creating behaviour change in the marketplace through content.
The main goal of content marketing is just that - change, which for our industry often means changing people’s minds about a topic, resulting in said people adopting our technology or product. Other goals may include: getting attention, building trust with buyers, increasing buyer engagement, increasing user retention.
The process is as follows:
- ideation based on industry trends, in-house knowledge, data, customer conversations
- actual content creation, in written, audio, video, image format
- distribution of what you created through various channels such as organic search, social, email
- conversion and engagement tracking on what you created
Where content marketing and SEO connect
SEO and content marketing overlap in three scenarios:
Scenario 1 - SEO is one of the content distribution methods
Once you've created a piece of content, you're going to deliver it to your audience. You can send it via pigeon mail but that’s kinda unlikely - more likely you will send a newsletter to everybody who's a customer, you will post it on LinkedIn and/or Twitter. And similarly you can get people to read your content through SEO by writing an article that fits a search term with demand, your readers will then search for the topic, come to your article, and engage with your content that way.
Scenario 2 - Content marketing effects show up in search
If you're doing content marketing right, you are increasing the authority of your brand in the market, and that generally is associated with higher search visibility, regardless of other factors.
Scenario 3 - Distribution increases the likelihood of content marketing success
Things like having a strong point of view and messaging that fits the market increase the likelihood of content marketing success, but good distribution through SEO (or otherwise), is also associated with higher content marketing success.
Now onto the differences…
Difference 1: SEO is a channel, content marketing is a discipline
SEO is a channel, and it’s usually measured by traffic. If you’re a progressive marketer, maybe conversion too. 😀The goal of an SEO program therefore could be "increase organic traffic by 50% by end of year" or similar.
For many startups, especially in the devtools space, and in particular those doing new things such as creating new categories, the traditional approach of SEO chasing traffic is quite useless, because there is no search volume for the things they're doing. It's a new category! People by default don't know about it, and therefore they will not search for it.
On the other hand, content marketing is a discipline that covers the entire set of activities required to change someone’s mind on a topic. That includes distribution, and SEO is one of the distribution options, but distribution is not limited to SEO, therefore the demand limitation for companies creating new categories doesn’t apply.
If you try to measure content marketing using SEO traffic as the measuring stick, you will fail because driving SEO traffic isn’t content marketing’s goal. SEO as a channel can be measured by traffic, but change in the marketplace usually cannot.
Difference 2: Mechanical vs. creative
SEO is a mechanical activity, while content marketing is a creative activity.
The mechanics of SEO are generally well understood, well defined, and quite transferable between domains. If somebody is doing SEO for devtools, they can probably do SEO for enterprise infrastructure, or even a standard B2B SaaS. Domain experience makes things easier in some cases, but SEO is basically a set of predefined activities that don’t change very much. There is a finite list of activities that work, and things outside of that don’t usually work.
Content marketing includes some mechanical components, especially around distribution, but the core is creative. There is no fixed structure for a piece of content you're creating. It's up to you what that structure is, and many different structures can work.
Over the past 10 or so years, SEOs have mechanised the content creation activities. SEO-focused content is heavily templated, generated from the same automated research that the SEO tools are producing. That has turned a creative content marketing discipline into a mechanical activity - and it's one of the causes of the search results being what we have today. When you're searching and wondering "why is this here?"… that is the result of the mechanization of content marketing by the SEO industry.
Difference 3: Capturing demand vs. creating it
SEO is normally used to capture demand: people are searching for a topic, and you're using SEO to rank highly for that topic and get people to come to you rather than anybody else to learn more. Existing demand of some sort is a requirement for this to work. You can try to be clever and pivot from an existing search into a new category you're creating, but that will have challenges: you probably won't rank as high, or it will take longer to rank for something that isn't exactly what people are searching for.
Content marketing can be used to both capture and create demand because you're not restricted to pockets of existing search demand. Of course you are still restricted by the demand in the marketplace, and if you’re content-marketing something that doesn’t have demand - not going to work! But generally with content marketing you are not limited to the 5% of people looking for a solution, you can work directly with the whole audience and their problems, including those problem-unaware (which is always the largest segment).
Difference 4: Transactions vs. trust
SEO is mostly there to help facilitate a transaction once the intent is already there. When the person is searching, they have already understood their problem and they're looking for a solution. SEO connects the person to the solution and gets them to click.
With content marketing, you're mostly focused on building trust way before the transaction takes place. If you reach the person before they even start searching, you have a chance to frame the problem in a way that is beneficial to you, shape their thinking, and build trust in the process, so that when the time comes for them to actually act on solving that problem, they come to you over anyone else.
So what should you do with this
Here’s how you can incorporate these differences into your work.
- When you’re working on content, be clear whether it’s SEO or content marketing. SEO content will be more mechanical, content marketing will be more creative. If you're trying to do SEO, do SEO and worry a bit less about creative formats. If you're trying to do content marketing, do content marketing and worry a bit less about SEO distribution.
- Don't use the reverse measurements. Don't measure SEO by marketplace change, and don't measure content marketing by traffic. Try to measure one by the measuring stick of the other and you're going to fail.
- If you're operating in a dynamic market, such as devtools, you probably need content marketing more than SEO. In dynamic markets, opportunities appear and disappear quickly, and most devtool companies don’t have the infrastructure to capture them fast at a level that would justify the effort. Investing in content marketing is a way to reduce the pressure of the SEO environment of a dynamic market and build direct access to customers.
- Put an SEO in charge of content marketing and they will struggle. Put a content marketer in charge of SEO and they will struggle too. SEO needs a mechanic, content marketing needs a creative. Very, very few people are good at both content marketing and SEO, especially in technical domains, as these are wildly different mindsets. Either have a team of 2 running these together, or pick one of the two until you can afford having a team.
Now you understand the difference between content marketing and SEO at a deeper level than almost anyone in the tech marketing world. Congratulations! Now use that to your advantage.
Want to get more clarity on how to improve your technical content marketing? Send me a message.
