How to Build Your SEO Content Strategy
Developing a search engine focused content strategy is essential for content marketing to be successful. Putting up any content without any plan will not produce the results you desire to get more traffic, engage with your audience, and convert them into becoming a customer.
- Define Your Brand’s Purpose and Expertise – What do you do? Who do you do it for? Why do you do it? And how do you do it? You should be able to write an easy paragraph about your brand and why it exists and, of course, why you’re the right person to do what it is that you do.
- Understand Your Competition – Study how your competition is using SEO to attract their audience – who, by the way, is also your audience. Use tools like iSpionage.com by TapClicks to find out the keywords they’re using. Then use Google Alerts to find discussions about the products and services you offer.
- Know Your Ideal Audience – Even if you don’t have an audience yet due to just starting, you can define your audience by checking out your competitors. However, if you already know who your ideal audience is, create audience personas or avatars to help you focus the content you are going to create.
- Map Your Audience’s Buying Journey – Now that you know who your audience is, it can help you to map out the journey they take from awareness through to purchase, so that you know how to reach them on the journey.
- Set the Right Goals – Once you know the information needed to start developing content, you’ll want to set goals for the content. The SEO content you publish on your blog, social media, or elsewhere needs a specific reason for being. That reason for being is the goal of the content.
- Develop Your USP – What is your unique selling point, or what makes you stand out from the competition? Why are you better, or different, and why should they pick you over someone else?
- Develop Your Brand Voice – If you already have branding, consider the tone you want the content you publish to have so that you can put that voice into everything you publish. Are you lighthearted or are you serious? Are you passionate or calming? It’s up to you.
- Conduct Keyword Research – Now that you have all that information, you’ll want to start studying and collecting keywords that inform the direction of your content and the messages you want to send. Try to collect at least 100 keywords to turn into all types of content, from long-form to short-form to blog posts to social posts.
- Create a Content Calendar – Don’t try to wing it. Instead, plan your year out in advance so that you can get the content created, published, and marketed effectively.
- Implement Your Plan – Nothing is going to happen if you don’t do it. Once you have the plans made, do them. Remember that nothing is ever perfect but that done is better than perfect because you can always correct errors later.
Your SEO content strategy will not do anything if you don’t publish and then promote the content you publish. Use all the tools that are available for you to get the word out about your brand work together, and don’t live in isolation. Use the tools at your fingertips to get the word out, starting with your SEO content strategy.
