How To Align Your Content Marketing & Off Page SEO Strategy

These days there a number of different components that must be incorporated into a digital marketing strategy if it’s going to be a successful one. The key word there is incorporated. The many moving parts of a digital marketing strategy must be working together to achieve the same or correlating goals. Otherwise, your outcomes will be disjointed and may not have much of an impact on the intended metrics. As a result, it is important to ensure that every part of your strategy is aligned. Specifically, aligning your content marketing with your off page SEO, or search engine optimization, strategies will have a significant influence on the overall success of your digital marketing goals.

Content Marketing & Off Page SEO

Before you can understand how to align these two components of your strategy, you must first know the difference between the two. Content marketing is the creation of online media with the purpose of generating interest in your product or surface. This content does not need to explicitly promote your product, in fact, it shouldn’t, but will reach your audience and nudge them in the direction of your brand.

Off page SEO, more commonly known as link building, takes place off your site but has a link directing consumers back to you. The link must be placed on a more authoritative website than your own and consist of strategic anchor text in order to create the most value for your brand.

What is Domain Authority?

So you might be wondering how to figure out which website to work with when it comes to your off page SEO strategies. Well, the most important factor is going to be what is known as domain authority, or DA. This is a ranking score developed by marketing software company Moz which predicts how well a site will rank on a search engine result page (SERP). The scores assigned to websites range from 0 to 100 with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank on SERPs. For example, more authoritative sites like Forbes or other reputable news outlets have DAs in the 90s. DAs are calculated using multiple factors, but the important takeaway is that if a website which is more authoritative than your own links back to you, some of their credibility is passed on. If this happens enough, the DA of your site will increase over time.

What is Anchor Text? 

Simply put, this is the visible and clickable text which contains the hyperlink to your site. When it comes to anchor text, there are a few varieties to consider, such as:

• Exact-Match which includes a keyword that mirrors the page it is being linked to. For example, ‘domain authority’ linking to a page about domain authority.
• Partial-Match is similar. However, it includes a slight variation on the keywords on the linked page such as ‘domain authority calculations’ linking to a page about domain authority.
• Branded uses a brand name as the anchor text. Linking ‘Power Digital Marketing’ to our blog or home page would be a perfect example.

When it comes to ensuring that your anchor text is strategic, there a few best practices you might want to consider. You will want to keep the text succinct, relevant to the linked page, low on keyword density, and not too generic. However, you often will not have control over the anchor text that other sites use to link back to your content.

How is Off Page SEO Different from Traditional PR?

Normally when high authority sites link back to another brand or website, it falls into the realm of more traditional public relations practices which aim to increase brand exposure via partnerships with various publications. However, in the case of off page SEO, the emphasis of the link is placed on the value of the link itself as opposed to the brand awareness it may or may not generate. In other words, you are using the link strictly for SEO purposes.

How to Integrate Content Marketing with Off Page SEO 

Chances are content marketing is already an important piece of your overall digital strategy. If it’s not, start there before moving forward. Content marketing can be an invaluable way to build value for and therefore trust with your customers. Once you have an established content marketing strategy, you can start to integrate it with an off page SEO strategy. Doing so will help you get the most of your content pages and increase your domain authority which in turn helps to increase your overall SEO. All of these things will perpetuate your brand and website to higher rankings on SERPs which translates to more eyes on your page.

First, pick a key page you want to focus your link building efforts on. This is critical to the success of your off page SEO. Then you will want to build a content cluster around the selected page, creating links back to this page with anchor text that reflects the keywords you are trying to target for your selected key page. As Google, and other search engines, crawl and index these links your rankings for the key page will increase which in turn makes it easier for authoritative sites to find and also link back to.

While this sounds simple enough, it is actually a complex process which requires a lot of time and effort on your part. You have to be thoughtful about every piece of content you create. You cannot just throw something up to justify a link back to the primary page. Doing so may actually be detrimental to both your off page SEO strategy and content marketing efforts. If your audience determines that you do not put out high-quality content consistently, they will stop returning to your site as a resource which will drop your rankings.

Wrapping It Up

All this to say that your content and link building should be working together to amplify the presence of the same pages. Start with a well-planned content marketing strategy that will create value for your audience and build trust with your consumers. A thoughtful repertoire of content will make link building much easier and result in higher ranking pages. Once you have a number of content pages containing links back to your primary target page, it will be increasingly easier for more authoritative sites to find your content. If they can find it, and it is good, they will link back to it and help to build your off page SEO.

As with most digital marketing techniques and strategies, getting your content marketing and off page SEO practices to align can be difficult and time-consuming. But if you put in the effort, it can have a tremendous payoff for your marketing metrics. Similarly, poor alignment between these two strategies could result in a negative impact on your overall brand marketing. Luckily, Power Digital Marketing knows how hard this can be for marketing teams of all sizes, in all industries and we can help! We will align all of your marketing strategies into one cohesive plan that will increase your results and build your brand’s rapport with consumers resulting in exponential growth. The first step is to have a conversation and see if there is a mutual fit so let’s get started.