DEV Community: Shayma Akter

Stop Choosing Between Content and SEO. You're Asking the Wrong Question

Shayma Akter — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 11:04:51 +0000

A business owner asked me this question last week. They do not have a lot of money. They do not have a lot of time. Somebody on the internet told them to pick one and focus on it.
I think the question is not very good. I understand why people ask it. So let us look at it properly instead of just saying "do both" and moving on.

Content Marketing and Search Engine Optimization Are Not Really Competing With Each Other

Content Marketing is what you create. You make blog posts, videos, guides, and other things that you put out there.
Search Engine Optimization is how easy it is for people to find the things you create. This includes keywords, site structure, backlinks, and the technical side of things.
Asking which one to focus on first is a bit like asking if you should cook or turn on the stove. One thing needs the other to actually mean anything. If you create content that nobody can find, it is like it does not exist. If you have a perfect technical setup with nothing worth reading, it is just a page that says nothing when someone clicks on it.

Where the Real Problem Is

The thing is, in real life, with limited time and a small budget, you have to pick where you will spend your time. So it is not really Content Marketing versus Search Engine Optimization. It is more specific than that.
Do you spend this week writing one piece of content, or do you fix the technical problems on the website you already have?
Do you research keywords for content that you have not created yet, or do you fix the broken links on the content that already exists?
That is the decision small businesses are actually making. They just do not word it that way most of the time.

If Your Website Is a Mess, Fix That First

If your website loads slowly, has broken links everywhere, or is missing basic structure, creating more content just adds more problems to something that is already broken.
I have seen businesses create twenty blog posts on a website with real technical problems, then wonder why nothing is working. The content was not the problem. People could not even properly trust the website in the first place.
Fix the problems first. Spend a month cleaning up the technical side of the website, then start adding content on top of something that actually works.

If Your Website Is Fine But Empty, Do This Instead

A lot of businesses have a clean, fast website with maybe five pages of thin, generic content. The technical setup is good. There is just nothing to actually rank.
In this case, Content Marketing is the problem. All the technical polish in the world cannot rank a page that does not exist.

The Order That Usually Works

First, do a technical check. It does not need to be perfect, just catch anything obviously broken.
Then create a bit of content. Four or five pieces, spread out instead of dumped all at once.
Then go back and do a deeper technical pass, once you can actually see which pages are getting any attention.
Then create more content, based on what is already starting to work instead of just guessing.
It is a loop. Not a one-time choice. Which is the part most "Content Marketing versus Search Engine Optimization" posts skip over completely.

What I Would Tell That Business Owner

I would tell them it is not either Content Marketing or Search Engine Optimization. It is honestly both, just not both at the same time, and not without looking at what is actually broken first.
If people cannot find or trust your website once they land on it, fix that first. If your website works fine but says nothing worth reading, write some content.
The businesses that actually grow are not the ones that picked a side. They are the ones that kept switching their focus as the real problem kept moving, instead of sticking to one thing and hoping it fixes everything on its own.

About Author:
Shayma Akter is a freelance content writer and LinkedIn ghostwriter for SaaS founders and marketing leaders. More at shaymaakter.com.

Why Your SaaS Blog Isn't Bringing In Customers, Even Though It's Ranking

Shayma Akter — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:39:22 +0000

A SaaS founder wondered and messaged me, asking why their SEO wasn't working.
They'd done everything. Blog posts twice a week. Keywords researched properly. Backlinks from a few decent sites. By every rule they'd read online, it should've been working.
It wasn't, because most of what they'd read was written for local businesses and e-commerce stores, not software companies. SaaS SEO runs on a different set of rules, and almost nobody explains that clearly.

The Buyer Isn't Searching the Way You Think

A restaurant's customer searches "best pizza near me" and picks one within minutes.
A SaaS buyer doesn't work that way at all. They're comparing five tools over three weeks, reading reviews, checking integrations, asking their team's opinion, maybe requesting a demo from two competitors before deciding on anything.
That means your content can't just rank. It has to hold someone's attention across multiple visits, at different stages of a much longer decision. A single blog post ranking for one keyword barely moves anything on its own.

Keywords Aren't the Real Problem, Intent Is

Most SaaS teams chase keyword volume without checking who's actually behind the search.
"Project management software" pulls in huge volume, and also every curious student and hobbyist alongside your actual buyers. "Project management software for remote agencies" pulls a fraction of the traffic, but nearly everyone landing on it is someone who might actually buy.
Volume looks good in a spreadsheet. Intent is what pays the bills.

Your Product Pages Need to Do More Work

E-commerce SEO is mostly about the blog. SaaS SEO leans heavily on pages people almost never think of as SEO pages at all.
Comparison pages ("Us vs Competitor"). Integration pages ("Works with Slack", "Works with HubSpot"). Use-case pages built for a specific role or industry. These convert better than almost any blog post, because someone landing there already knows roughly what they want. They're just confirming it's you.
Most SaaS sites have thin, generic versions of these pages, if they have them at all.

Technical SEO Actually Matters Here

A restaurant site with slightly messy code rarely loses much. A SaaS product with hundreds of similar feature or help-doc pages can accidentally create serious duplicate content problems, or let its most important pages get buried under ones that don't matter nearly as much.
Site structure, internal linking, and knowing which pages should even be indexed, all of it carries more weight for SaaS than most founders realize until something breaks.

Backlinks Work Differently Too

A local bakery might get links from local papers and directories. That path doesn't really exist for SaaS.
What works instead: genuinely useful tools (calculators, free templates, checklists), original research or data your industry doesn't already have, and guest content on publications your specific buyers actually read, not just anywhere with decent domain authority.
Fewer links, but far more targeted ones, tends to outperform a big pile of generic ones almost every time.

Where to Actually Start

Map out the real buyer journey first, not just keywords. What are people asking at the very beginning, the middle, and right before they finally decide.
Build out comparison and integration pages properly instead of treating them as an afterthought.
Fix the technical structure before publishing ten more blog posts on top of a shaky foundation.
Go after backlinks that reach people who'd actually consider buying, not just links for the sake of a number going up.
SaaS SEO isn't harder than any other kind. It's just built around a longer, more complicated decision, and most SEO advice out there was never written with that decision in mind.

About author:
Shayma Akter is a freelance content writer and LinkedIn ghostwriter helping SaaS founders and marketing leaders turn expertise into content that ranks and connects. More writing at shaymaakter.com.