How SEO Strategy Is a Key Part of Digital Marketing
SEO is often treated as a mysterious add-on to digital marketing. The evidence suggests it should be one of the pillars holding the whole strategy together.
Ask most nutrition business owners what "digital marketing" means and you'll get a list: Instagram, email newsletters, maybe some paid ads if the budget stretches.
SEO rarely makes the list, and when it does, it's usually mentioned as a separate, slightly mysterious add-on rather than the thing holding the rest of it together.
That's backwards. SEO isn't a bolt-on to your digital marketing. It's one of the core channels sitting inside it, alongside content, social media and emails (1), and honestly, it's often the one doing the most quiet work.
SEO is where the other channels end up living
Think about what actually happens to a piece of content once you've made it.
A carousel gets seen by your existing followers for a day, maybe two, then it's gone.
A newsletter reaches whoever opened it, once.
But a genuinely useful, well-optimised blog post can keep bringing in the right people for years, because it's sitting in Google answering a question someone is actively searching for.
That's the real distinction. Social and email are about reaching people who already know you exist. SEO is about being findable by people who don't — yet.
The evidence for SEO isn't just marketing folklore
A 2024 meta-analysis pulling together studies on SEO's marketing effectiveness found a consistent, statistically significant positive relationship between SEO implementation and marketing performance (2). That's not a huge surprise on its own. What's more useful is the scale of it.
A 2024 systematic review of 102 studies on SEO within small and medium business marketing found that well-executed SEO delivered up to a 30% increase in website traffic, and that keyword optimisation specifically improved click-through rates by 20–40% (3). When SEO was properly integrated into wider digital marketing and e-business strategy — not run in isolation — the same review found operational efficiency gains of up to 15% and revenue growth of up to 25% (3).
That last point matters more than the headline numbers. The benefit wasn't from SEO as a standalone tactic. It came from SEO working with the rest of the strategy.
Why SEO on its own doesn't get you there
This is where I think a lot of small nutrition businesses go wrong — not by ignoring SEO, but by treating it as a checklist. Add some keywords, write a meta description, done.
Proper SEO strategy sits inside a wider digital marketing plan: it needs content that's genuinely useful, a clear sense of who you're writing for, and consistency across your other channels so the traffic SEO brings in actually converts into a client or customer (1). Miss that wider context and you can rank for the right keyword and still lose the visitor, because the page doesn't actually deliver what they came for.
For health-related content specifically, there's an extra layer. Google's own guidance on E-E-A-T — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness — is explicit that trust matters most for topics that could meaningfully affect someone's health or finances (4).
A nutrition blog isn't competing on keywords alone. It's being evaluated on whether it actually demonstrates real expertise, which is exactly why generic, AI-churned content underperforms genuinely evidence-based writing from a qualified professional.
This is the gap I work in
This is precisely why I don't just write blogs — I build them into a strategy. Researching what your ideal client is actually searching for, structuring content that fits into your wider marketing (so it can be repurposed for your newsletter or LinkedIn, not just left on a blog page), and making sure it holds up as evidence-based, trustworthy content rather than generic filler.
You can see examples of this in my writing portfolio, and the range of ways I can support your content strategy in my products and resources for nutrition professionals.
So, where does SEO actually sit?
Not off to the side. Not as an optional extra once the "real" marketing is done.
SEO strategy, including SEO blogs, is part of digital marketing for nutrition businesses.
SEO is one of the pillars your digital marketing stands on — and when it's genuinely integrated with the rest of your strategy, the evidence shows it doesn't just bring visitors. It brings the right ones, consistently, without you having to keep showing up and shouting for attention.
If your website could be working harder for your business and you're not sure where SEO fits into everything else you're doing, get in touch with The Writing Dietitian to talk it through.
References
- Chaffey D, Ellis-Chadwick F. Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. 9th edn. Harlow: Pearson; 2025.
- Usmany P, Rachmawati R. The effectiveness of search engine optimization (SEO) in marketing: a meta-analysis study. COSTING: Journal of Economic, Business and Accounting. 2024;7(5):807–811. doi:10.31539/costing.v7i5.11446
- Sechele G, Rabedzwa G, Nongayo S, Thango B. Systematic Review on SEO and Digital Marketing Strategies for Enhancing Retail SMEs' Performance. Preprints.org. 2024. Available from: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202410.1715
- Google Search Central. Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content [Internet]. Google for Developers. Available from: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
Written by
Hannah Pritchard
Written by Hannah Pritchard, a registered dietitian and researcher.
