How to create an SEO Content Marketing Strategy for 2023 : A Step-by-Step Guide
Create meaningful, effective content that drives quality traffic to your website. Learn how to develop a winning SEO content strategy.
All my clients all have their own primary metrics for success. Some want to increase their organic traffic. Others want to drive more online conversions. Whatever the metric, they all want to grow their business. SEO and content marketing are two sides of the equation for achieving that goal.
The best-proven way to rank remains consistent: by creating great content that offers value to the searcher and provides a first-class visitor experience.
SEO-focused content marketing combines the “science” of SEO with the “art” of content marketing. In a crowded sector, an SEO-driven content strategy is the surest way to break your brand away from the pack and win your customers’ attention and business.
This is especially true if you want to maximize your search engine optimization (SEO).
Are you tired of creating content that doesn’t impact your bottom line?
Develop a winning SEO content strategy by creating meaningful, effective content that drives quality traffic to your website. I’ve used this practice to help great brands build strong brand value
What is an SEO strategy?
SEO strategy is the process of organizing a website’s content by creating meaningful and effective content to improve organic search traffic and maximize your search engine optimization (SEO)
For starters, a great content strategy can increase your organic traffic from search engines, grow your email subscribers, and help expand your social reach.
In reality, content is the very first glimpse of a brand that customers see and first impressions matter. Not only is content your front runner for garnering new customers, but it guides customers through every stage of the buyer journey including initial sale and retention. Writing with intent enables you to increase the number of website visitors you gain through organic search.
The question is, how do you create your own effective SEO content strategy?
Let me walk you through my approach to creating a winning SEO content strategy. Read on to find out how you can create content that provides the best ROI for your efforts and has the highest impact on your business.
Experts have debated how Google’s algorithm decides to rank pages. The best-proven way to rank remains consistent by creating great content that offers value to the searcher and provides a first-class visitor experience.
Executing this strategy requires careful planning. You don’t want to blindly create content without a roadmap.
When we take on a new client, we focus on how we can increase their business value and brand awareness. Rather than checking boxes, we want to deliver results that make a long-term impact.
The following Steps – or fundamental building blocks – will help you create a successful content strategy that drives results.
1- Understand your business, competition, and target audience
Driving profitable traffic to your site and generating high-quality inbound leads takes in-depth research, careful planning, and developing a thoughtful SEO content strategy.
When starting a new SEO content strategy, spend the first few weeks building out a plan that covers:
Your overall sitewide content strategy
Your brand overview and value proposition
Your market overview and competitor analysis
Looking at your existing sitewide content strategy helps uncover any issues that impact overall SEO performance.
Next, it’s important to have an in and out understanding of your market, your brand’s position and who your prospects are and what they need from you. This insight guides you in creating content with a purpose and delivering the most relevant information possible.
A recent survey showed that 70% of consumers feel closer to a company as a result of content marketing. However, this is only possible when you understand your audience at a deep level so that the content you create answers to the questions they have, helps them do their job more effectively, inspires, or entertains them.
To do that, you should be able to clearly define:
Who you are as a business
What you’re trying to accomplish
Why someone should choose your business over alternatives
Who your target audience is
Once you’ve created an objective statement, content marketing is now all about writing to solve the problems of your audience and creating a positive user experience.
However, Setting a content strategy shouldn’t happen in a vacuum. Studying what your competition looks like online can give you an advantage.
To understand a brand’s competitors’ content strategy, you should look at:
What competitors are doing well
Which topics bring a site’s competitors the most traffic
How long it takes a competitor to rank for a given topic
This can help you make more efficient content planning decisions. Knowing what works for your competitors reduces the need to spend on trial and error. With this roadmap handy, you can find the most valuable opportunities for your brand.
2. Build an SEO Roadmap
Step 1 : Identify High-Value topics with thorough keyword research
Every Content Strategy Should Start With Keyword research, in order to find and analyze search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data. Then we start with well-chosen keywords as we write our client’s website content. This process will help you rank faster for the topics that will make you money, and is critical in an increasingly competitive SEO landscape. This is where keyword Research is a huge difference-maker.
When conducting keyword research, My Typical recommendations are that you target either high search volume (SV) or low SV, low-difficulty keywords in your field.
To start, compile a list of about 10 words and terms associated with your product or service. I also recommend using SEO tools like ( Google’s Keyword Tool, Ahrefs , SEMRush or GrowthBar just to name a few). This will help to pinpoint the keywords that would yield the best results.
In most cases, the higher volume a term is, the more difficult it will be to rank for due to competition.
Step 2: Create shareable content with the end-user in mind
When creating share-worthy content, you want to have a plan that allows for maximum efficiency and impact.
For greater time efficiency, you can also try to find scaleable content areas. For Example, you try to find Keywords that overlap under a broader topic. Then you Organize the content calendar around topics. It will guide your research for audience interest, keyword matches, and SEO content creation.
A topic-focused content calendar saves on time and cost. Instead of creating one post per keyword, you can target topics that have the potential to rank for multiple keywords.
With your calendar in mind, it’s time to start brainstorming shareable content ideas. In order to make your content stand out for your audience
Ultimately, this is what will help you create content that converts.
Be sure to provide unique information within your area of expertise to the target audience that sets you apart as a voice of authority. This helps build your brand reputation and consumer trust over time.
Once you’ve identified your topics and keywords, it’s time for the fun part : creating share-worthy content your audience will admire.
Step 3: Optimize at Every Step
Now that you’re armed with keywords that will boost your ROI, you can incorporate/ include them into your writing to create powerful content that performs.
As you draft your content, take advantage of every SEO opportunity by:
Step 1 : Including focus keywords in your H1, H2s, and meta description. Google will pick up on these more easily and use them to rank your page.
What is Meta description ?
A meta description is an HTML element that informs and interests users with a short, relevant summary of what a particular web page is about. it is like a pitch that calls out to them and says, “This is the page you’re looking for.”
Step 2: Putting your audience first and creating great content with keywords that offers value to the searcher and provides a first-class visitor experience.
Step 3: Building brand identity and customer loyalty by publishing on a regular schedule.This helps build your brand reputation and consumer trust over time. People will look forward to your posts and seek out opportunities to learn from your brand.
3. Plan Your Link Building Strategy
For SEO purposes, don’t forget about link Building! It’s a good idea to leverage internal links with keyword-rich anchor text. The beauty of an SEO-driven content marketing strategy is if you’ve built quality content, it should accumulate passive links over time.
You’re likely aware that links are an important part of SEO and page rankings. Google views these as a “stamp of authority” for a website, so we want to acquire quality links passively or through manual outreach.
You’ve probably seen plenty of links with “click here” or “learn more” as their anchor text. But Google uses anchor text to understand what the page’s content is about, so if you’re using generic phrases, Google may have a harder time understanding your link.
You can also use high-authority external links as needed. If you’re referencing a study from the CDC or the FDA, for example, those are good high-authority external links.
The beauty of an SEO-driven content marketing strategy is if you’ve built quality content, it should accumulate passive links over time.
Passive Links :
- Come from other websites finding and linking to your web pages organically
- Signal that your business is seen as an authority on the topic
- Prove that you’ve created something worthy of sharing
4. Establish Key metrics and track your progress
It takes a significant investment of time and resources to develop a well-planned content strategy.
To determine whether your efforts are worthwhile, you must constantly measure the success of your content strategy. It takes into account the 360-degree view of your competitors and the true value of your marketing strategy.
See if your plan is working by monitoring:
- Organic traffic: a good web analytics tool or spreadsheet can help you determine whether you’re gaining unpaid search results.
- Indexed pages: search engines are finding your content relevant and valuable.
- Conversions: the more effective your strategy, the more conversions you’ll earn.
- SERPs: higher rankings reveal a successful use of content.
- Tracking metrics not only helps measure your success; it shows you opportunities for improvement, which can be equally (if not more) valuable.
Tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush provide real-time data to create S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) goals to work towards.
Also, you can use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track how your site and new content pages are helping to achieve your goals
5. Optimize content and user experience over time
SEO content marketing is not a “set it and forget it” strategy. Once your content starts getting more traffic, you want to make sure it actually converts.
Research findings and societal trends are ever-changing, and references to them can become outdated quickly. Articles you may have linked to in previous articles may no longer exist. A site that posts outdated information or broken links loses a reader’s trust.
Keep in good standing with your audience (and Google). Show them that your site is fresh, current, and a reliable source for the most useful information possible.
I often recommend revisiting pages at least once a year to see if they can be updated with new statistics or developments to make them more relevant.
