Marketers see their SEO and content writing as independent strategies, but the two channels must work as a couple.

Content marketing is going a way that might be exciting for creative teams. Google has implied that in the future, quality web content, design and user experience will be the traits found in top-ranking domains, perhaps even more so than sites following all the SEO rules. This could make for rocky relationships between content writers or strategists and SEOs, but a recent survey from conductor finds brands want these two tactics to come together as a happy couple.

Conductor asked 50 search marketers which department should have domain over digital content and found the majority (43 percent) believe it should be overseen by a dedicated content creation team. Another 41 percent said it should fall under the marketing umbrella and just 14 percent think SEOs should be responsible for online collateral.

While all parties involved think it’s best for content writers to do the heavy lifting (i.e. apply their editorial prowess), SEOs don’t want to take their hands out of the pot. Nearly 80 percent of SEOs think they should be working “more” or “much more” closely with writers and marketing team members to ensure all branded contain is optimized for maximum search visibility.

80 percent of SEOs think they should be working “more” or “much more” closely with writers and marketing team members.

Marketers understand that digital advertising is still maturing and that fundamentals are just as important as emerging best practices. Brafton recently reported that companies continue to see strong correlations between basic SEO tactics like keyword inclusion in headlines, body text and subheadings and top positions in SERPs. At the same time, they acknowledge that practices must become varied and sophisticated to keep up with changes.

Rather than relying on a handful of proven practices, marketers are diversifying their strategies to bring new efforts into the fold, such as user experience, Authorship metrics, structured data in SERPs and social signals.

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.