Having a solid SEO content strategy is the best way to get your business to the next level. It will help you with driving traffic and establishing yourself as an industry leader.
It will also massively boost your sales…
Source: Ahrefs
This is the true power of an effective content strategy.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to create top-tier content strategy that drives massive results. We’ll give you actionable steps you can follow to achieve exceptional results.
(and also provide you with a template to make everything quick and super-easy.)
What Is an SEO Content Strategy?
SEO content strategy is a strategic approach to using content to rank high on Google and drive organic traffic to your website.
(if you fail to do so, you will get no traffic like most websites.)
Source: Ahrefs
Every SEO strategy consists of these components.
- Keywords. The phrases searchers type into Google.
- Content ideas. Compelling posts about information searchers are interested in.
- Internal linking. Connection between similar posts for best user experience.
- Optimization. Figuring out what your audience wants and sticking to it.
You will learn how to perfect each of these components so you can create the best possible content strategy and accomplish your business goals.
SEO Content Strategy vs. SEO Content Marketing Strategy
These two terms are often used interchangeably – but they are not the same.
It’s vital that you understand the difference between the two, so you know precisely what to focus on.
SEO Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is a strategy used to attract, engage, close, and retain more customers. This is done by distributing useful content in various formats, such as.
- Blog posts
- Podcast
- Videos
- Emails
Your SEO content strategy is a blueprint for creating the content that works and ranks high, The content marketing strategy is the execution of this blueprint.
We’ll focus on creating a blueprint – giving your content a strong chance to rank.
Why Do You Need a Solid SEO Content Strategy?
Having an SEO content strategy is a MUST for every business that wants to thrive. In fact, a proper content strategy can improve all aspects of your business.
Here are some of the biggest benefits of a solid SEO content strategy backed up by data.
More Customers
The first thing you do when you’re considering a purchase is to go online and research the product. If this sounds like you, you’re not alone…
Source: Backlinko
You might argue that these searches are just information – leading to no sales. But the opposite is true.
SEO content works better than PPC ads designed specifically for getting customers.
Source: Gitnux
But unlike PPC, you don’t pay for every click – you just create content, rank it well, and get all the benefits of PPC ads for free.
Improved Brand Awareness
Content strategy will help you come up with high-performing content that will improve your brand awareness.
You will no longer have to worry about increasing awareness by paying for:
- PPC ads
- Influencers
- Social media ads
Instead, you create top-funnel content that will attract more potential customers to your website.
Plus, doing so will also allow you to qualify more leads and massively increase your chances of converting them into loyal customers.
Established Authority
You need to establish yourself as an industry leader if you want to thrive in your market.
The only way to do that is to produce high quality content to showcase your expertise and provide useful information for readers.
Source: Ahrefs
Think about every authoritative website in your niche – what do they have in common?
They are credible, have a lot of hands-on experience, and share useful information with the world. SEO content strategy will help you do exactly that. It will make you an authoritative, trustworthy, and searchers go-to source of information.
What are the 3 C’s of SEO?
The three C’s of SEO are the building blocks of every successful SEO content strategy. You need to master each of them to get the best results.
Here are the three C’s of SEO.
Content
Content is king.
It’s the essential part of your SEO strategy and you have to focus your efforts on creating the best possible content at all times. Because you can perfect each area of your website’s SEO…
But if your content sucks, you still won’t rank.
Code
Google crawlers will try to find your website and index it – so it can rank.
Source: Ecreative
But if your code or website is complex, clumsy, or has no structure, it might be difficult to index. And if your site won’t get indexed, you won’t rank.
(since Google will not know that you created the unindexed pages and posts.)
WordPress is an extremely popular solution for building websites – used by 43.2% of all websites.
But its code is not alway optimized, which can lead to unindexed pages. That’s why you have to be careful, check indexation, and follow Google Web standards.
Credibility
You have to be a credible source of information for Google to rank you high.
Think about it from the perspective of search engines. You have a bunch of posts that are similar – which one will you rank?
The one that is from the most credible source – a website with the highest domain authority.
You need to make sure you provide valuable and trustworthy information. Because your content can have a huge impact on your readers’ lives.
If you are a healthcare blog and recommend your readers to take certain pills, they probably will.
(and if you are wrong, it can have fatal consequences.)
Source: Galactic Fed
Google wants to prevent that at any cost – and so it ranks only credible websites.
What are the Three Pillars of SEO?
You can divide SEO into four pillars – each representing a different part of your overall SEO strategy. One of them is content, which we covered earlier, so here are the three other pillars of SEO.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is about ensuring that a search engine can read your content and explore your website.
The main areas of technical SEO we will look into include:
- Crawlability
- Indexation
- Mobile responsiveness
- Load time speed
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO refers to making your whole website optimized for users and search engines. The main areas of on-page SEO we will look into include:
- Page titles and meta descriptions
- Alternative texts
- Structured data
- H1 – H6 tags
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to the external factors that contribute to ranking your website high on Google.
The main areas of off-page SEO we’ll dive into include:
- Backlinks
- Local search
- Social media
9 Steps to Create a Top SEO Content Strategy
Now is time to create the best SEO content strategy for your business.
In this section, you will discover actionable steps you need to take to create the content strategy that works and rank your website.
#0: Set Your KPIs
You need to find a way to measure the effectiveness of your strategy, so you can see whether you are moving in the right direction. The first step is to establish the current state, so you can see the impact of the strategy.
The best way to do that is to create and measure a set of KPIs.
Organic Traffic
The most direct metric of the effectiveness of your content strategy is your organic traffic. It refers to the number of visitors that got to your site through search engines.
Of course, you might not see big results immediately.
But you should definitely see an increase in organic traffic after a few weeks of implementing your SEO content strategy.
Rankings
You can see how high you rank for certain keywords.
If you see an increase in your rankings, you know you’re doing something right. If the opposite is true, or your rankings are horrible, you might have a problem with your strategy.
For instance, you could strive for too difficult keywords or there are problems with your content.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.
It can be a great indicator of whether you give searchers what they want.
The most common reasons for a high bounce rate is a terrible user experience, irrelevant content, and not matching searcher’s intent.
Session Duration
Session duration indicates how long a searcher spent reading your post. You can see how engaging your content is with this metric.
If a searcher spent a lot of time on your site, it means your content is high-quality and valuable.
(that’s what you strive for.)
But if the opposite is true, you have to figure out what’s wrong with your content.
#1: Discover Your Target Audience
You need to align your whole SEO content strategy to your target audience. Personalization plays a crucial role in making it successful.
Source: Outgrow
The best way to achieve this is to discover your target audience and create your target persona.
Here are two ways to accomplish this:
Existing Campaigns
If you ran marketing campaigns in the past, you could pull up demographic information about your target audience from there.
For instance, if you ran a Google Ads campaign, you’d just find it there.
You can do the same with your social media ads, or any other campaign.
Existing Competitors
You can analyze your biggest competitors and see who they are targeting. It’s as simple as going to their website and reading through their blog posts.
You can also find their target audience in the About Us section – some websites include it there.
Or use tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs to run market research.
All of these are excellent choices, especially the last one, since you will get the most data-driven information from multiple sources.
After you get the information you need, put it in one place, so you can access it throughout the process of building the SEO content strategy, so you can stay aligned.
For that, you will need to create your target persona with the Make My Persona tool.
The whole process is extremely simple and will only take a couple of minutes. The end result can look like below.
#2: Perform Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis will help you discover competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, so you can see what works, what to eliminate, and how to beat them.
Also, it will save you time experimenting with what works – there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
Here is how to perform a complete competitor analysis with SEMRush.
Find Your Competitors
The first step is to create a list of your competitors. Think about the websites that rank high or often for your main target keywords.
If you’re not sure who your competitors are, you can use the Market Explorer tool.
The Market Explorer tool automatically visualizes a list of significant players in your niche with the Growth Quadrant.
There are four types of categories your competitors fall under.
- Niche players.
- Game changers.
- Leaders.
- Established players.
You can hover over each entry to see their direct traffic, search traffic, and more.
Decide Who NOT to Compete With
To identify which sites aren’t your competitor, consider factors like current ranking, resources, and time investment. It may not be worth trying to outrank sites like Wikipedia or Pinterest for specific keywords.
Instead, focus on the competitors that can impact your traffic the most. These will likely be the websites that contribute the most to your lost traffic.
Analyze Your Competitors’ Top Pages
It’s essential to identify your competitors’ most popular pages. You should find the answers to these three questions.
- Which pages rank for the most keywords?
- Which pages have the most traffic?
- Which pages have the highest percentage of their overall traffic?
These pages can give you valuable insight into what your target audience likes – so you can emulate it with your content and win.
Find (and Close) Keyword Gaps
Keyword Gap tool to identify your competitors’ keywords you share and don’t share.
Start by entering your site and up to four competitor sites to see the Overview report, which then indicates top keyword opportunities for you.
The Keyword Gap tool provides a detailed look at the competitor’s search landscape for any chosen search term.
When you identify any gaps in that landscape, you can work on closing them.
Identify Strengths and Weaknesses
What are the differences in strengths and weaknesses between you and each one of your competitors – where do they excel that you don’t?
Everybody has a weak point – even the biggest website in your industry.
Here are a few areas to look at to Identify the strong and weak points of you and each of your.
- Authority. Find out why other websites have higher authority and where do they get their backlinks from.
- Content. Perform full analysis of competitors content. Look at things like grammar, tone, formatting, readability, and the overall structure.
- Keyword rankings. Identify any drops or gains in ranking positions, find out what topics are searchers interested in and drive traffic to your website.
After you perform this analysis, you will have a clear understanding of how well you compare.
The rest of the process is figuring out ways to play to your strengths and eliminate your weaknesses.
#3: Conduct Keyword Research
Now you need to see what searchers are interested in – what terms do they search for. You can easily do that by conducting keyword research.
We’re going to look at the step-by-step process of conducting keyword research with SEMRush.
Find Keywords
Head over to Keyword Magic Tool and type in a seed keyword – a bigger general keyword like .
You will get a list of all keywords related to this term.
Analyze Keywords
Now that you generated a list of keywords, it’s time to drill down to choose the ones that will work best for you.
There are two main metrics to help you prioritize your keywords.
- Search volume – how popular is the keyword
- Keyword difficulty – how hard is it to rank for the keyword
You can filter these keywords to these two metrics to find the ones that will give you the biggest chances of ranking high on Google.
We suggest going for a search volume of at least 100 and a keyword difficulty just under 30.
You can also take a look at the common questions, so you know what problems or areas of the topic are searchers interested in – and cover them in your content.
Target Keywords
You can divide your keywords you use in your content into two categories.
- A primary keyword. A keyword that is the best representation of the topic and has the highest search volume.
- A secondary keyword. Multiple keywords within the same topic with a lower search volume you also want to rank for.
You can have only one primary keyword – but you should definitely include at least 10 additional secondary keywords in your content.
Next, you need to figure out the searcher’s intent behind keywords.
Source: SEMRush
After you find keywords with the right balance of keyword traffic and difficulty, nail the searcher’s intent, and find the questions searchers have, you should have an idea of how to approach your content piece and what to include in it.
#4: Incorporate Various Content Types
Most websites do the mistake of generating only one type of content – whether it’s blog posts, videos, or social media posts.
But that’s not optimal – and you are losing a lot of potential customers with this approach.
Source: HubSpot
You can see the most common types of content customers consume below. Try to create as many of these types of content as you can.
- Blogs
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Infographics
- Memes
- Reels
- Social media posts
- Ebooks
It might seem challenging at first, but it’s definitely worth it.
Oftentimes, you can simply repurpose your already existing content into other types of content. For instance, you can transcribe a video into a post or Shorts on YouTube.
#5: Fully Optimize Content
Your content must be better than competitors’ if you are looking to rank high.
There are multiple ways you can achieve this, which we will discuss shortly. The most important thing you need to understand is that you need to provide value. The more valuable the content, the higher it ranks.
Also, plagiarizing top-ranking content and copying your competitors word-for-word is not cool. It’s spammy and won’t get you anywhere.
Here are the best ways to create top-tier content for your business.
Leverage Keywords
We are not talking about stuffing your keywords or keeping a certain keyword density. These are all outdated techniques and don’t work anymore.
Google is smart now and can understand the meaning behind every search.
Keywords are still important, though.
They can give you insights into what your target audience is interested in and what areas of the topic to cover. For instance, if you have a list of keywords like below.
You will know for sure that readers are interested in the information about B2B marketing – they want to know what it is. Selling to them would be pointless and only lead to a high bounce rate.
That’s how you provide value in your posts – you give readers what they want.
Make it Actionable
The problem with most content is that it’s not actionable.
Most blog posts just tell readers about a problem and suggest what could help fixing it. But there are no actionable steps or the process is not clear. And readers take no action…
Unfortunately, that’s not optimal. If you can change readers’ lives with your content, they will be more than happy to buy products from you. And that’s how you convert readers into customers, rank higher, and make more sales.
Create Easy-To-Read Structure
If you create a wall of text, no one will read your post – you’ll scare readers away. Just imagine looking for something on Google, and getting this as a result.
It’s completely unreadable.
A much better way to deliver your content is to use short paragraphs, bullet points, and visuals to create an easy to read structure everyone can navigate.
Source: Chartbeat
You can also highlight important points in your text to make your posts easy for skimming.
#6: Scheduling & Editorial Calendar
You should push content regularly to show Google you are an active site.
It can help you with getting more traffic to your website. Also, it will let your readers know that you care about them and want to give them the most recent information.
Source: Marketing Insider Group
Ideally, you would create a schedule and push content at certain times every week.
This will help you stay consistent and gain momentum which is a great way to start increasing your traffic and creating an authoritative site.
Plus, your readers will know when to expect a new post.
Editorial Calendar
Editorial calendar is a visual workflow that helps content creators schedule their work on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
It can make your content creation organized so you can stay on track.
Here are some of the best editorial calendars from our hands-on experience.
- Trello
- Monday
- Asana
If you’re not using it already, you should definitely give it a shot.
#7: Develop a Link Building Strategy
Domain authority plays a huge role in whether you’ll rank high on Google.
If your site has high domain authority, you will be perceived as a credible source of information, and rank higher. A way to increase authority is to get backlinks from other websites.
Source: Backlinko
The quality of your backlink portfolio is a lot more important than quantity. Therefore don’t just try to hunt backlinks from low-authority sites.
Source: Beaglecat
Make it strategic and aim to reach websites with decent authority.
Here are the best strategies for getting high-quality backlinks.
Guest Posting
The easiest way to obtain valuable backlinks is through guest posting websites.
There are websites or blogs that allow external writers to create valuable content in exchange for a few backlinks to their site.
Of course, you can’t just write a low-quality post and promote your content – it will be rejected.
It needs to be solid and only subtly link to your site.
Also, be sure to check the website’s guidelines for guest posting and follow each of the rules they provide. It’s extremely easy to get rejected – a lot of posts do.
Linkographics
Linkographics is a link-building method based on creating unique visuals with value that other blogs can use in their content and link back to you as a source.
To make this work, you visuals must be:
- Unique
- Appealing
- Valuable
Broken Link Method
Broken links are links that are not working properly.
These are links that are invalid, have been deleted, or just don’t work for one reason or another. If you try to access them, you get a 404 Not Found error.
This can have fatal consequences on user experience.
You can leverage this fact, reach out to websites with a broken link, and offer your link as a replacement.
Do that by running a broken link check on websites that could link to you. Just go to the Broken Link Check tool, insert the URL and run a check.
You’ll find the broken links and you can reach out to the blog owners to fix it.
It’s a win-win.
#8: Track & Measure Results
After you’ve created the SEO content strategy, you need to see how well you perform. Give it a few weeks and check the KPIs you set in the 0th step.
If you see an increase in most of them, you are doing the right job.
Ideally, you would try to identify what brought the best results, so you can do more of it. You should definitely leverage Pareto principle here.
Source: Openup
Find out the 20% that brings you the most results and give all your energy into them.
On the other hand, if you don’t see an improvement in your KPIs, it suggests something’s wrong. If that’s the case, you need to fix something quickly.
If you don’t, you risk hurting your website even more – getting penalties or going backwards.
Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it looks…
Figuring out what’s wrong with your website and why your strategy does not work is one of the most difficult things to do.
Get Help From Us.
Reach out to us and we will do the whole process for you. We’ll connect you with our professionals who have ranked 100+ posts on the #1 page and fix your website.
It’s the best way to get the results you desire.
4 BEST Tips for SEO Content in 2023
This section will help you crush your competitors.
We will look at our secrets that helped us rank our clients on the #1 page of Google in the most difficult niche.
If you follow these tips, you will not only rank high, but also gain a competitive advantage.
#1: Leverage Tools
You can perform almost every necessary task without using any tools whatsoever.
But this is highly ineffective and will cost you a lot of time (and money) while giving you only suboptimal results.
If you want to rank on the #1 page and crush competitors, you need to leverage these tools.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides you with the most important metrics for your website. In fact, it’s one of the best ways to measure your performance and KPI trends.
It’s very clear, intuitive, and free.
Moreover, you can easily connect it with any website and start tracking performance instantly.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a tool that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in the Google Search results.
It provides insight on ways to make adjustments to the site in the Google index.
(can help you with unindexed pages.)
It can also help you see your rankings.
It’s mainly used for spotting issues and adjusting your strategy to get the best results.
SEM Rush
SEMRush is an excellent tool for keyword research, SEO strategy, and competitor analysis. Sure, you can do all of these things without any tools.
For instance, conduct keyword research by looking at related terms in the bottom of SERP.
But that’s extremely ineffective…
As you can see, SEMRush provides you with a lot more data that will help you make the best decisions for your business.
Grammarly
Grammarly is a great tool for proofreading posts and avoiding grammar errors. This is more important than you think…
In fact, according to data, only one grammatical error can cut your sales in half.
Therefore make sure to use Grammarly and have perfect grammar in each of your blog posts.
Hemingway App
Hemingway App is a tool to make your content more readable and easier to understand.
It highlights difficult phrases, long sentences, and gives you suggestions to make changes and get your content to the next level.
The best thing about it is that it’s not very popular – almost no content writers use it.
(which gives you a huge competitive advantage.)
#2: Refresh Old Content
Refreshing old content will help you deliver the most up-to-date information.
This eliminates the chances of giving your readers information that is not true anymore or hurting them in any way – which is a huge thing for ranking high.
Also, it will help you create more relevant content.
For instance, if you were to write about AI, your content would be a lot different ten years ago than it would be today, right?
That’s why you need to update your content regularly – to stay relevant.
That’s right, relevance is the most important ranking factor – so you better get it right.
#3: Keep an Eye out for Google Updates
Google updates its algorithms to deliver the best possible results to its searchers. Unfortunately, it can have a negative impact on your site.
And you may experience a huge drop in traffic or a penalty.
If that happens, you need to act fast, and find out why it happened and what to change. The first place to visit is Google Search Ranking Algorithm page.
But this might be too late and lead to a lot of headaches and issues in the future.
To prevent that, keep an eye out for Google updates. Don’t wait for something to go wrong and then start fixing it.
Instead, change your strategy and align to the new recommendations before all this trouble.
#4: Take Advantage of Local SEO
Local SEO is a MUST for every local business.
The biggest advantage of local SEO is that you’re not competing with the whole world – rather a small segment of businesses in your neighborhood.
Source: Uberall
Local searchers are also super-popular.
Source: Safari Digital
And most of them lead to a purchase which can massively increase the profitability of your business. The first step to start with local SEO is to create a Google My Business profile.
It will allow you to be listed as a local business in your area.
Also, try to add local-based keywords to your content. This can be as simple as adding your city in the keywords you’ll use.
Of course, this tip is not for everyone, but if you can apply this to your business, you should!
You may also like: SEO Strategy For Small Business
SEO Content Strategy Template
The process of creating SEO content strategy is very complex,
It can take a lot of time to create and stay organized throughout the creation. That’s why we prepared this SEO Content Strategy template for you.
It will help you to:
- Create content strategy a lot faster
- Make the whole process easier
- Help you stay organized
- Deliver better results
It’s a complete game changer and it will make your strategy on-point and give you the results your business deserves.
Ready to push your business to the next level?
Schedule a visit, download our SEO content strategy template, and speed up the process to get substantial results instantly.
DOWNLOAD THE SEO CONTENT STRATEGY TEMPLATE
Conclusion
SEO content strategy is the only way to rule the #1 page of Google. It will help you with:
- Driving organic traffic
- Increasing authority
- Generating sales
And so much more…
You have now all the information and template you need to create the most effective SEO content strategy and get the results you deserve.
Not sure how to implement what you’ve learnt into your business?
Reach out to us and we will do the whole process for you. We’ll connect you with our professionals who have ranked 100+ posts on the #1 page.
It’s the best way to get the results you desire.
