How SEO Strategists and Content Creators Should Work Together to Drive Results
How SEO Strategists and Content Creators Should Work Together to Drive Results
In today’s fast-moving content and marketing world, it’s important to collaborate. We can’t do everything on our own – as individual contributors so to speak – to truly be successful. Teamwork matters, but not just as a buzzword. We have to have the right teammates collaborate at the right times.
In “Content Performance Culture” – my Top 100 PR book, one of my pillars of content performance is to have the right people in the right roles. Two of those areas are the content creators and SEO strategists. They can’t live without each other in a content performance world, but how do they truly work best together? Let me share what I’ve seen work in the field.
But first, let’s get some basic definitions out of the way.
What do I mean by content creator?
Traditionally, writers would fall into this group. Then multimedia content creators who write but also dabble in other content, like quick videos. Today, I would say anyone who creates content that is intended to be published – usually on the web – falls into this category. That could be:
- Writers
- Podcasters, producers, etc.
- Video shooters, editors, directors, etc.
- Designers
It’s really anyone that produces content hands on. I’m a content creator right now, writing this. Keep in mind that podcasts and videos are also starting to get indexed. SEO strategies apply there as well.
What’s a SEO strategist?
SEO strategists are usually more technical in the art and science of determining the best SEO strategy for a content project. They know what terms to analyze based on the goal and find alternative words. They also often look at what competitors are ranking for when it comes to the same topical area.
One of my favorite SEO strategist stories: At the start of a project, the strategist determined that the top competitor was ranking extremely well for the top keyword. Should we go after that one? Let’s beat them! That’s an easy sentiment. But this strategist recommended that we go after the next keywords in line. It turned out that No. 2-5 still had a good volume of search traffic and were just as viable.
SEO strategists also keep on top of how rankings and algorithms evolve. That’s a full-time job in itself.
How content creators and SEO strategists can work together
When content creators and SEO strategists choose to work together, they can make their projects more successful. SEO strategies change constantly. What’s working changes. And then keep in mind that it can take months for content to drive traffic from organic searches.
At the beginning of new content creation
Content teams are facing an ever-increasing pressure to not just create content, but to create content that performs. With that in mind, content creators should really make use of all the tools and expertise at their fingertips and that includes working with SEO strategists.
I grew up in print journalism and I wrote daily stories. There was no keyword research done back then. We hadn’t even heard about it. You have a story, you figure out the best to write it – in your opinion. Then write it. An editor would edit. Done. Of course, content performance wasn’t a thing back then.
I’m the first to admit that the urge to just write what we think is a good story. We’ve done that for a while. It’s ingrained. But there are real advantages to connecting with our SEO strategist first.
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