SEO vs Content Marketing: What’s The Real Difference?

About This Episode

Agencies keep renaming their SEO teams as content marketing teams. One CEO with twenty years in the field says that is backwards, because SEO is a tactic inside content marketing, not another word for it.

In this episode of SEO On-Air, host Koa Kauwe sits down with Ahava Leibtag, CEO of Aha Media Group, to draw the line between the two properly.

The panel explores a distinction she refuses to let slide. Ahava argues SEO and content marketing should never be used interchangeably, since a content marketing agency builds the strategy that answers five questions about who you are talking to and what you are saying, while SEO is the research telling you which words people actually use. Her sharper line: SEO should never have been a siloed department at all, because nobody has a VP of phone.

They also discuss the most common mistakes healthcare websites make, why seven specialists is the average before a diagnosis, how to differentiate when the treatment is identical everywhere, her CRISP framework for getting content ready for agentic AI, why marketers now have to make friends with IT, why her agency refuses to do paid ads, and how a hub and spoke model turns knee pain into an entire content structure.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

– Why SEO is a tactic within content marketing, not a synonym

– The five questions a real content strategy answers first

– Why SEO should never have been a siloed department

– The CRISP framework for getting content ready for AI

– Why seven specialists is the average before a diagnosis

– How to differentiate when the treatment is identical everywhere

– The most common mistakes healthcare websites make

– Why marketers now have to make friends with IT

– Why one agency deliberately refuses to do paid ads

– How hub and spoke turns one topic into a content model

Whether you’re an agency owner, content or SEO lead, healthcare marketer, or explaining your role to a stakeholder who does not get it, this episode provides actionable insights into structuring a content strategy, preparing content for agentic AI, and defining where SEO actually belongs.

Because the teams winning at search won’t be the ones who renamed the department.

They’ll be the ones who knew what it was a part of all along.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 Introduction to SEO On-Air & Meet Ahava Leibtag

04:39 Why Seven Specialists Is the Average Before a Diagnosis

05:48 The Most Common Mistakes Healthcare Websites Make

11:08 How to Differentiate When the Treatment Is Identical

11:50 Why Generic Content Makes You a Commodity

16:52 Why Schema Is Now Part of the Content Job

19:43 Why Marketers Have to Make Friends With IT

24:39 Why This Agency Refuses to Do Paid Ads

31:55 Why SEO Is a Tactic Inside Content Marketing

34:14 Hub and Spoke: How Knee Pain Becomes a Content Model

Twenty years in healthcare content, and nobody has ever walked in asking for SEO.