A Content Marketer’s Guide to SEO

Depending on your role and team structure, there is bound to be some overlap in your content responsibilities and SEO team responsibilities. Here’s an example of the division between content and SEO work:

Even if you aren’t responsible for SEO tasks, some of your content tasks may have a large impact on SEO. Your work is especially impactful when making tweaks to a large volume of pages.

To increase organic conversions, it’s essential that content teams pay attention to SEO and see how their work impacts performance. Content specialists need to understand the following key concepts to maximize their SEO impact:

Keyword analytics
Page crawling and indexing
404 errors and 301 redirects
Onsite SEO and writing for search engines

#1 Understand keyword analytics (beyond finding search volume)

The basics of keyword research include thinking of terms and plugging them into a search volume tool (like Google Keyword Planner). Here are some ways SEO analysts take keyword analysis a step further - and you can, too!

They use Search Console (or an SEO tool like Moz or Ahrefs) to determine which pages are associated with keywords. This can help you:

Find web pages that rank on page 2. These are usually low hanging fruit to optimize and push to page 1 for targeted terms.
Make sure you’re targeting just 1-3 terms per page, and not changing which term a page ranks for by accident.
Evaluate which keywords drive traffic to high-converting pages. These are your most valuable terms.

They pay attention to keywords throughout the marketing funnel. A high-funnel keyword is in a buyer’s awareness stage, a mid-funnel keyword is in a buyer’s research (or consideration) phase, and a low-funnel keyword is in a buyer’s conversion phase. For a full breakdown of keywords throughout the funnel and how they affect you as a content marketer, read my keyword funnel blog.
They group keywords into relevant clusters when analyzing performance. You could look at a list of your top 50 terms, but that doesn’t tell you much. To better understand keyword performance, SEOs group them into themes by product, persona, or funnel phase. Now, the keyword analysis paints a full picture and gives action items.

#2 Understand page crawling and indexing

Google (or any search engine) crawls your website to determine if pages are qualified to rank. It crawls technical aspects, content, and inbound/outbound links to understand your website.

Here are some more specific examples of what Google inspects in a crawl:

Indexability - Are your pages set to be indexed by Google (i.e. Google has them in their rolodex of pages to serve)? Certain page settings can block Google from indexing them. While it might be useful to prevent indexing of a private login page, sometimes people accidentally add no-index rules to crucial pages.
Robots.txt - The robots.txt (found by typing sitename.com/robots.txt) will tell crawlers whether or not they can read certain pages. Oftentimes, a no-index page will be blocked in the robots.txt and vice versa.
Sitemap - Your sitemap tells Google where to find all pages on a website. A sitemap plugin can automatically update your sitemap each time you add a new page.
Schema markup - Schema markup provides Google with context around elements in a page. For instance, you could add schema markup to author names in blog posts. Then, Google will read the schema markup to understand this name is an author. You can do the same for addresses, reviews, videos, prices, and much more.
Meta tags, headings, and other HTML - Like schema markup, a meta tag gives Google (and readers) context for individual pages.

All of these items help Google crawl and categorize your site more easily and accurately - which increases your odds of ranking for targeted keywords.

#3 Understand 404 errors and 301 redirects

Did you know that moving and deleting pages (without an understanding of 301 redirects) can be detrimental to your website? As someone who works on web pages, you must understand a few things about 301 redirects.

What they are: A 301 redirect points people who land on a deleted page (which returns a 404 error) to the page of your choice. For instance, let’s say I update content-land.com/blog to be content-land/seo-blog. If people still land on the deleted /blog version, a redirect will transfer them to the correct /seo-blog page.
When you need redirects: Redirects are needed when a page is deleted, a website is restructured with updated URLs, a single page moves, or a website transfers to a new domain. If anything moves, you need to map the new path for users and crawlers.
How to find them: A 404 error signifies the need for a redirect. You can find a list of 404 errors using any website crawler (Moz, Screamingfrog, etc.) or in Google Search Console:

How to implement redirects: A redirect spreadsheet (or redirect map) lists the old URLs and the new destination. You can hand these spreadsheets off to technical SEOs or developers for implementation.
How to avoid redirect chains: A redirect chain is when people are redirected to multiple pages in a row. Chains will slow the user experience and can result in penalties. In a spreadsheet, you’ll see a chain by identifying where a URL exists in both column A and column B.

Incorrect redirect method - chain redirect:

Correct redirect method - break the chain by pointing all pages to the end destination:

NOTE - a common blog mistake:

When fixing up and republishing old content, some blog managers will revert the post to a draft while they make edits. Unfortunately, that means that all the existing traffic to that blog will land on a 404 page until you publish again.

The solution is not to redirect this 404 page. The solution is to prevent the 404 - make edits in a separate document, and only add them back into the post when you’re ready to make the publish date current.

#4 Understand onsite SEO and how to write for search engines

You likely know the SEO basics of writing content:

Keyword-optimized meta tags, URL, and headings
Original images with descriptive alt tags
Valuable and factually correct information

Once you’ve mastered these basics, here are two steps that will help you go above and beyond.

First of all - start submitting new content to Google as soon as you publish. Instead of waiting for Google to crawl new content, you can use Search Console to request the crawl of an individual page.

If your content is “rankable,” this step will significantly speed up the ranking process:

Secondly, learn how to write for search engines by analyzing the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). That means you need to look at the pages that are already ranking for your target keyword. How long are they? How can you provide a unique addition to what’s already there?

Google wants to rank new perspectives on page 1 to provide a variety of information. Therefore, a fresh perspective increases your odds of ranking.

If you’d like to take a deeper dive - the Grow & Convert content course will teach you how to analyze the SERPs at an advanced level.

You can also use an AI tool to guide your writing. Clearscope.io and Content Harmony, for example, tell you which topics to cover and which keywords to include in your web page. These recommendations are based on analyzing pages that rank and their content.

Why do content specialists need to know these concepts?

Whether or not you have tasks associated with these SEO items, a deep understanding gives you a foundation of good decision making. Plus, you’ll be able to: