Is it Thought Leadership or SEO Content? Can it be Both?
Erika Heald
B2B Content Marketing Consultant | Fractional Head of Content Marketing | Gluten-free Blogger | Author | Speaker
The #ContentChat Bulletin: June 10, 2024
I recently stumbled into an online conversation where a freelance writer asked for advice. She'd been hired to create a thought leadership article for a company and was dismayed when her first draft came back with much of her carefully constructed SEO-optimized copy replaced with the bylined author's own way of expressing themselves.
I'm going to stop right here so you can go back and re-read the above paragraph.
This situation naturally sparked a bunch of questions on my end:
Here's the deal: an SEO-optimized blog post is trying to be the best answer on the Internet for a person with a specific question. Thought leadership is intended to be thought-provoking content from a person with a unique point of view who uses their experience to inform their perspective.
If you didn't interview the bylined author or use some source material they created, it's not thought leadership.
Yes, you can (and should!) use SEO best practices when you write thought leadership content.
BUT your SEO-optimized content is unlikely to be thought leadership content. Unless you're Andy Crestodina , and your content is literally about SEO best practices.
Ahem.
I was surprised to see that my perspective wasn't in the majority on this.
Instead, I saw as much advice along the lines of "reject all the edits" and "explain that you're the SEO expert writer and you know best" as I did opinions about clarifying if the company wanted thought leadership or SEO copy.
I love working with people to create polished thought leadership content that builds their personal brand and drives business results. Creating that content is an entirely different process from researching and writing SEO posts for company websites.
What do you think? Have you run into this conflict before? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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Until next time, stay safe and be well!
Cheers,
Erika
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For SEO/thought leadership, I think it all comes down to goals. A SEO-friendly article isn't going to completely be in someone's distinct voice. People don't talk the way Google thinks they should. Thought leadership content needs to have a level of authenticity that a general blog post or company page doesn't need. So I think trying to do both, in this case, would cause the article to fail in both regards. Also, thanks for the shout out! Canva is a controversial topic in many design circles.
MBA. Growth Strategy. Helping B2B manufacturing, FinTech, and SaaS companies up to $50m in revenue grow using digital marketing, direct mail, and business strategy.
5 个月Erika Heald, I love these definitions! An SEO-optimized blog post is trying to be the best answer on the Internet for a person with a specific question. Thought leadership is intended to be thought-provoking content from a person with a unique point of view who uses their experience to inform their perspective. The question that popped into my mind was: "Where is this article going to be published?" If it's on the company blog, SEO optimization is useful, but maybe not important if the company has ways beyond Google to drive traffic to the article. If it's here on LinkedIn, then SEO optimization isn't much of a concern. Regardless, it might take years of creating SEO-optimized content, combined with earned media articles and speaking engagements, to be a recognized thought leader.