SEO and Content Writing, Whats The Difference?

It is fairly obvious that SEO and Content writing have quite a lot in common in the realm of digital marketing. There is overlap between the two areas but that doesn’t necessarily mean that your SEO expert should also be writing up your content, or vice versa.  Having the same person do both tasks can be good, but is it optimal for your business? Is it good enough?

There are technical vs. creative aspects to take into account when entering into this type of debate.  Everyone knows that SEO involves getting to the top of the search engine rankings. But the fact of the matter is that there is very little creativity that goes into this process. Much of it is structural and thereby technical in nature. Much of the work that goes into proper SEO is spent analyzing and fixing site architectural issues. Even sites built on WordPress can have layers and layers of issues that need to be resolved, but they don’t really have much to do with the actual content on the page.That is not to say that content is not

That is not to say that content is not important because it is. The relationship is somewhat circular in that content will have a hard time gaining traction on your website if the search engines are having trouble accessing and analyzing it correctly. By the same token, simply fixing site issues is generally not enough to rank well in search results. Everything has to work together, especially for sites with limited budgets to succeed.  In other words, you gotta have both!

Keyword research is very important and that should be the role of the SEO provider. The person writing the content should not have the job of going out and doing in-depth keyword research. The copywriter should, however, be able to integrate the keywords provided by the SEO into the content. One hand washes the other in this case: the SEO gives a list of carefully researched keywords to the copywriter, and then that person writes, rewrites, and tweaks the words into the content accordingly.

If you left this job to the SEO provider, you would most likely get content that was weighted down with heavy keyword usage. A good writer will know how to take that list of keywords and integrate and shape them into a well-written piece of content for the website. The SEO can still make sure that all pages have proper title and description and content, but they don’t need to be doing the actual writing.

The content writer does need to be fairly intimately familiar with SEO so that when writing the content, they can keep in mind how search engines work and what they are looking for. The writer can write for the ‘audience’ or visitor to the site, but they need to also keep in mind the preferences of search engines when creating content as well.  Without this, you are very likely going to have the SEO sending content back to be rewritten. Each person has a job, and each person should know a little bit about the other’s job in order to do theirs better.

Overall, you shouldn’t expect your SEO to be a writer and nor should you expect your writer to be an SEO expert. They each have their place. But they do overlap and it is necessary for each to have a grasp on the other while staying focused on their primary roles. In this manner, you will get good, optimized content that is still accessible to your readers.

Get in touch with us today to get more information on how you can improve your website’s content for increases in ranking and website traffic!