CMO Vs SEO: How To Balance SEO And B2B Marketing Goals
Despite the benefits of aligning strategies, marketers and SEOs don't always have the same goals when it comes to content promotion, which I've seen with clients and partners.
Often, SEO experts try to hit key performance indicators (KPIs) in time, but success depends on the results of the marketing team.
At the same time, the marketing department strives to deliver a long-term content strategy guided by the CEO's broad goals and the CMO's ongoing priorities to drive brand awareness and marketing strategies. Aspiring generation to name a few.
It's the macro view of these goals that often prevents SEO from reaching its full potential when it comes to delivering results or value.
While SEO strategies are often long-term, maximizing the potential of content marketing and delivering on-demand performance is fundamental to profitable growth.
In this article, I outline a four-step strategy to align both groups and ensure they achieve their goals, as well as four best practices for creating alignment between your SEO and marketing efforts.
A 4-step strategy for balancing SEO and B2B marketing goals
Eliminate ambiguity and establish clear protocols for your design to ensure marketing and SEO goals are met.
1. Create a brand and style guide with SEO in mind
For SEO and marketing strategies to be fully integrated, branding and style guides are important to consider SEO.
In other words, rather than an afterthought, SEO should be an integral part of the marketing process, especially for content marketing.
Dedicating a chapter to SEO in the brand and content style guidelines reinforces this relationship and defines tasks for SEO professionals to build brand awareness.
This turns the conventional "optimizing content for SEO" mindset into a more effective "SEO for marketing" approach, which is especially important for businesses that rely on copywriters and freelancers. Be in charge of your SEO efforts.
To maintain a friendly battle between CMO and SEO goals, it's important that the marketing strategy allows for keywords that rank well but don't break the grammar rules (or use the preferred language of the C-suite).
For example, "top of the funnel" is better for SEO as an adjective than the grammatically correct "top of the funnel."
Additional tips on what to include in brand and style guides:
- A list of recommended and prohibited SEO keywords , so managers, new hires and freelancers can easily review the guidelines to avoid ranking for irrelevant keywords.
- A list of brand terms that aren't optimized for SEO , so CMOs and marketing teams don't see "cut" brand terms impacting keywords to better rank their strategies and referrals.
- Top Content Titles: Define directory keywords to increase brand awareness and SEO rankings . Applying this to guidelines (not just a content calendar) makes content strategy tangible and gives SEO managers the perspective they need to plan their long-term strategy.
2. Optimize each piece of content for SEO and marketing purposes.
Ideally, all content should rank for SEO.
However, the purpose of each piece of content may vary depending on the topic covered, research objectives, and the role it plays in brand awareness and public opinion.
For example, thought leadership can pose a challenge to SEO implementation, especially if the author is presenting a creative and original idea to their audience that does not yet have a search objective.
In this case, instead of creating content through SEO, it is better to prioritize the "marketing goals" and optimize the rankings as much as possible. This ensures that the content is fit for purpose.
Consider content synchronization and access through paid channels to increase content exposure.
On the other hand, content that has a high impact on search intent, such as FAQs or guides, should focus on SEO first to create content that ranks better for high-ranking queries. .
While branding may take a backseat here, it's important that content remains consistent.
So, to achieve both results, pre-planning each piece of content helps define a marketing or SEO goal, KPIs for each property, and guides content production and promotion to effectively achieve those goals.
However, it's important to find alignment between CMO and SEO goals, establish common KPIs if possible, and create content that builds brand awareness while ranking for popular queries.
3. Research your audience to measure the impact of SEO on your marketing
Research your audience to determine if your content marketing goals are being achieved, as well as the impact of SEO on your marketing strategies.
By asking questions about the values your audience has with your brand and the most important keywords that come to mind (to assess your SEO priorities), you can determine whether your audience's general understanding of your brand is adequate. and marketing team objectives;
It is important to remember (especially at this point) that SEO should be seen as a tool to increase brand awareness and long-term interest.
Therefore, if survey results show SEO-based values or keywords, but do not meet marketing expectations, it is important to adjust SEO-based content to deliver desired brand messages.
If you want to test specific assets or themes, A/B test the "marketing-based" and "SEO-based" options to see which readers engage best and examine their brand perceptions.
This gives your writers plenty to create future content.
4. Create a content calendar and hold regular meetings between marketing and SEO managers
Once you've assessed how your audience perceives your brand, it's time to create a content calendar to address the unintended brand associations your visitors make while meeting your SEO goals.
Plan your content calendar for each quarter, set marketing and SEO goals for each topic/property.
For SEO content, such as search-only content, define keywords beforehand to avoid unintentional off-brand signals after the content is launched.
For content marketing, SEO is not a primary traffic option, so determine engagement goals and content objectives (such as awareness or lead generation) as well as branding goals and promotional methods.
Conduct regular meetings between marketing and SEO managers to discuss campaign metrics and insights into progress.
Social listening tools can measure content impact and guide writers in making adjustments before promoting the next resource.
It's easy to adjust live content individually by measuring audience awareness during campaigns and change themes/assets to meet goals if overall KPIs suffer.
4 best practices to maintain a middle ground between CMO and SEO needs
Use these four best practices to balance marketing and SEO:
1. The do's and don'ts of in-house copywriter marketing and SEO
Maintaining brand voice and content goals is important for writers, freelancers, and others.
With this in mind, it's also important to create a downloadable guide for authors that includes the do's and don'ts of SEO as well as additional learning resources.
Typically, new copywriters don't know the details of your brand and style guidelines. Therefore, providing clarity on how to properly build brand awareness (such as boilerplate language, product description, suggested adjectives and approved/approved keywords) will guide them. Meet both marketing and SEO goals.
2. Use social listening
As mentioned earlier, using social listening tools can help you determine how your audience feels about your brand and measure the effectiveness of your overall message.
This combined with survey feedback will help you make necessary adjustments.
That's why social listening tools can be the most valuable tool in your arsenal for balancing CMO and SEO needs, so use them often to gather insights and guide future content creation.
Another approach is to search platforms and social media channels for your brand and products, gaining insight into how your audience interprets your solutions to determine if the conversation aligns with your message and priorities.
3. Create a detailed content strategy
To achieve your overall content marketing and SEO goals, create a strategy based on your content calendar so that the content you create is key to the desired results.
Marketing or SEO based content should include how the pieces interact and complement each other.
For example, start by describing the Creative Thought Leadership component and combine it with additional videos, short blog posts, and podcast episodes.
As you analyze the performance of this content, you can expand the content to match the ICP buyer journey and search intent.
This can take the form of an SEO-focused main section that serves as a hub that links to all additional content that matches search intent and places keywords to drive traffic.
This strategy, combined with a consistent publishing pace in your editorial calendar, ensures that campaigns deliver the marketing and SEO results you expect.
While content about marketing and SEO is a goal in itself, it's important to link and target the content to a long-term strategy.
The most successful content pieces are those that combine both priorities, balancing SEO keyword rankings and creative leadership in your industry.
If done successfully, it will create long-term demand for your business.
4. Develop a common strategy and objectives for paid media and social media
Bridging the gap between CMO and SEO using both paid media and social media optimization goals/strategies.
By considering marketing and SEO goals as promotional methods, it is possible to decide when to use paid media and social media to promote different content in a campaign that supports marketing initiatives. It supports both SEO and marketing.
The more advanced your content strategy and timeline, the more connected your content will be, allowing you to create omnichannel campaigns that meet all KPIs.
It's gone
Meeting the needs of both CMOs and SEO managers requires an agile approach that balances ranking on search results pages and promotes positive brand awareness.
This article outlines best practices and a four-step strategy for achieving this balance, but there are additional elements you can include in your content calendar to better achieve your CMO and SEO goals.
Creating a content strategy for the top-of-funnel (TOFU) stage, where search intent is less important, is a great example of how to build brand awareness while staying at the top of the list.
You can then use this foundation to guide prospects through the buyer's journey and use innovative and engaging content optimized for more specific keywords that support your marketing efforts.
By treating content marketing and SEO as two sides of the same coin, you can better align content creation to feed into each other, create an overall positive brand experience for your audience, and leverage the full potential of your marketing efforts to drive demand. you can
More wealth.
Featured image: dzxy/Shutterstock
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