Content Marketing vs. SEO Copywriting

Content Marketing: A narrative form of marketing that focuses on the consumer’s needs while telling a story. Content marketing gently persuades prospects and helps buyers and the public. While content marketing isn’t new, its power has been exponentially improved with today’s social media platforms and other devices. –Heidi Cohen

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Copywriting: The knack of being able to create original text (possibly) after referring to existing material in such a manner that it propels your website’s ranking amongst the op 1^st rank contenders on a Search Engine. –Write Writing

There is a delicate balance between content marketing and SEO copywriting. Whereas content marketing focuses on an experience, SEO copywriting puts that experience in front of the people you want to see it. Both content marketing and SEO copywriting can stand alone, but need the other to perform at optimum efficiency.

Although all good SEO copywriting should also convey a story and/or communicate a message, SEO copywriting itself is writing copy following SEO best practices. This means that your main objective is to create copy that’s configured to propel your website to the top of searches, regardless of whether or not that content educates, contains a story, or builds a brand culture.

Content marketing builds emotion around a brand. It is ideal if you are selling an experience, as well as a product. For example, NAO shoes from Brazil puts the “Legend of Adilson” on their store windows and includes the story on their website. The story, cleverly marketed as a “legend,” shows us how content marketing can create a culture around a brand. The Legend of Adilson, taken from NAOs website, is shown below.

The Legend says that, somewhere in the depths of the Minas Gerais (arid region of Brazil) tired of walking barefoot and of hearing his poor mother answer NAO at each of his requests to buy him a simple pair of shoes, little Adilson got into the habit of making his own footwear with colourful materials he found in the slums of Belo Horizonte. Over the years, his shoes bevame more and more beautiful. Today, a rumor goes around that Adilson is a happy man, as head of a small firm that produces thousands of multicoured shoes every year for the enjoyment of all. When asked whether he had given a name to his shoes, Adilson would recall his mother’s words and invariably answer NAO, with an enigmatic smile on his face… Thus was born the name NAO, or at least that’s what the legend says…

Overall, writing a good blog post without knowledge of SEO still produces a better product than an uninspired article written for SEO. However, you need to pay attention to SEO in order for your story reach your target audience.