{"id":16816,"date":"2022-11-10T10:12:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T10:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginejournal.com\/cmo-vs-seo-b2b-marketing-goals\/469287\/"},"modified":"2022-11-10T10:12:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T10:12:00","slug":"cmo-vs-seo-how-to-balance-seo-and-b2b-marketing-goals-via-sejournal-alexanderkesler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/?p=16816","title":{"rendered":"CMO vs SEO: How To Balance SEO And B2B Marketing Goals via @sejournal, @alexanderkesler"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Despite the benefits of aligning strategies, marketing and SEO managers don\u2019t always have the same goals when it comes to promoting content, from what I have observed with clients and partners.<\/p>\n

Often, SEO professionals are striving to meet their key performance indicators (KPIs<\/a>) on time, yet depend on the output of the marketing team for success.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the marketing department strives to deliver a long-term content strategy guided by the broader goals of the CEO and subsequent priorities of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to advance brand awareness and demand generation strategies, to name but a few.<\/p>\n

It is often the macro view of these goals which can lead to SEO not being leveraged to its full potential due to the time taken to yield results or attribute value.<\/p>\n

While SEO strategies are often long-term, they are fundamental to maximizing the potential of content marketing and delivering the demand performance to boost exponential growth.<\/p>\n

In this article, I present a four-step strategy to align both teams and make sure their goals are met, as well as four best practices to establish harmony between your SEO and marketing efforts.<\/p>\n

4-Step Strategy To Balance SEO And B2B Marketing Goals<\/h2>\n

Avoid ambiguity and establish clear protocols for your creatives to make sure both marketing and SEO goals are met.<\/p>\n

1. Create A Brand And Style Guide With SEO In Mind<\/h3>\n

To ensure SEO and marketing strategies are completely aligned, it is important for brand and style guides<\/a> to consider SEO.<\/p>\n

In other words, rather than SEO being an afterthought, it should be a key component of the marketing process \u2013 particularly for content marketing.<\/p>\n

Dedicating a chapter to SEO in the brand and content style guides will solidify this relationship and set tasks for SEO pros to advance brand awareness.<\/p>\n

This shifts the common \u201cadjust content to rank for SEO\u201d mindset toward the more effective \u201coptimize SEO for marketing\u201d approach, which is especially important for businesses that rely on writers and freelancers to be in charge of their own SEO efforts.<\/p>\n

To maintain an amicable tug-of-war between CMO<\/a> and SEO goals, it is also important for the marketing strategy to allow keywords that rank well but may bend grammatical rules (or not use the C-Suite\u2019s preferred language).<\/p>\n

An example is \u201ctop of funnel\u201d as an adjective, which ranks better for SEO than the grammatically correct \u201ctop-of-funnel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional tips on what to include in the brand and style guides:<\/p>\n