What people get wrong about thought leadership and SEO

SEO and thought leadership are the cornerstones of a robust content marketing strategy. Yet, there’s a pervasive myth that these two are like oil and water and never the twain shall be mixed – SEO content in one bucket, and thought leadership content in another.

It’s one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to content marketing strategy, because it can have real consequences for businesses, too, limiting the depth and reach of the content they’re creating.

The thing is, your meaty thought leadership pieces can also be SEO content, helping your business climb Google’s rankings and build authority as an expert in your space. Because SEO content and thought leadership content aren’t mutually exclusive – in fact, they can be one and the same.

The making of the myth

Why do so many people believe SEO content and thought leadership content can’t be one and the same? I think it’s because, over time, we’ve been trained to think of “SEO content” as the how to’s, listicles, and the like you’d find on Buzzfeed, when a better way to describe this type of content might be “quick wins”. It’s less time-intensive content to create and can be a good way to ramp up your content output quickly and grow your organic traffic.

When you think “thought leadership content”, on the other hand, is opinion pieces full of hot takes, deeply-researched long-form articles, and white papers. Now, you’re not wrong, there – thought leadership content should always add something new to the conversation. But businesses often forget thought leadership content can be just as – if not more – beneficial to their SEO strategy.

How to get the perfect blend of thought leadership and SEO

Start with keyword research

Like any piece of content, you should start by researching keywords for your piece. Now, I know that might sound antithetical to thought leadership, which by its very nature should explore unique ideas or research that people might not be looking for but that’s exactly you need to find out what they are looking for.

Not only could a bit of keyword research give you some inspiration and potentially inform the way you approach your piece, it’s also a good way to scoop up those people in your target audience who might not otherwise come across your content.

E-E-A-T, meet thought leadership

Google ranks content in myriad ways. E-E-A-T is one of them. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness – and it’s only going to become a more important ranking factor as the volume of AI-produced content skyrockets. Here’s what it means:

• “Experience” and “expertise” are all about the author’s personal experience and depth of knowledge on a specific subject.

• “Authoritativeness” is about the credibility of your website (and the author). This is built through endorsements, citations, and recognitions (e.g. links) from other experts and organisations. 

• “Trustworthiness”, focuses on the accuracy, transparency, and honesty of the content on your website – of which clear authorship is one factor.

I don’t know about you, but I think that just about describes thought leadership content in a nutshell.

Optimise your thought leadership content for SEO

Once you’ve written a beautiful, thought-provoking piece of content, make sure it’s optimised for your keywords. Combined with E-E-A-T, this will ensure your content reaches the maximum possible audience. Here’s a quick guide to optimising your content for SEO:

• Copy : Add keywords or key phrases throughout your copy. This is not about stuffing in as many as humanly possible – it’s more about naturally weaving in the right keywords in the right places. Done right, so your readers shouldn’t even know they’re there.

• Titles: Add your keyword(s) to your page titles and subtitles. Your title to be engaging enough to click on, but informative enough to let Google know what your content’s about.

• Meta descriptions: A meta description is a short summary of your content that appears under the page title in the Google search results.

• Image captions: This is one people often forget about: adding keywords to your image captions and description. 

• Blog tags: Do you use tags to organise your blog content? Tags are a great place to use keywords.

Rethinking the relationship between thought leadership in SEO