You have a website, but unless search engines display it near the top of their rankings for key terms, most people will never find it. Of course, you could pay for your moment in the limelight, but most people trust organic rankings more, and to get them, you need an SEO content strategy.
It’s a plan that helps your website to build credibility with search engines by publishing content that helps them to “see” that you have valuable information to share. A good SEO content marketing strategy helps your website to rise in search engine rankings based on specific terms that are relevant to your business. When people search these terms, they stand a better chance of finding your website, and once they’re there, you have a golden opportunity to win over new customers.
Sounds good? It can be, but in order to succeed you will have to plan very carefully. Almost all businesses have competitors, and they’re also fighting for those coveted top spots on search engine results. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Before we dive into the process of creating an SEO content strategy, let’s look at some general principles you should bear in mind.
Components of an SEO Content Strategy
The two most important things to consider in your content strategy are your business and your ideal customers. Consider the reasons why they might want your product or service and which questions they might ask while looking for solutions to the problems your business can solve for them. These broad topics will form the basis of your SEO content strategy.
The content you create around any of these broad topics will include “pillar content,” which comprehensively covers the broad topic, sub-pillar content with a focus on elements of the pillar content, and supporting content that’s less in-depth but relates to the pillar and sub-pillar content. The lesser two tiers of content provide supporting information that can be linked to the all-important pillar content and to one another when the sub-topics overlap, and all the content is optimised using the keywords you’ll uncover during your keyword research.
But your carefully-crafted content shouldn’t just go on your website where it waits to be seen. Share it in your newsletters and social media posts, driving traffic to your website and customers to your business.
Now that you know what components your content strategy for SEO consists of, it’s time to unpack some tips for creating and executing that strategy.
SEO Content Strategy Tips and Techniques
The first, and most important, thing to remember is that you are trying to draw a specific audience, and to do so, you need to get to know them. Think about the reasons why people would support your business, and the kind of people to whom those reasons are likeliest to apply.
Now consider what kind of search queries your target audience might use when searching for information on what you do. Do thorough keyword research to uncover the words and phrases you will use when optimising your content.
You should also consider the fact that people like their content to be delivered in various formats. For example, some people may prefer to get their information by watching videos while others prefer to read.
With content topics built around your targeted keywords and representing the various components of your SEO strategy, you’re already off to a good start. Now, it’s time to begin creating content, fully optimising it for SEO. And, since search engines will reward activity on your website, be sure to schedule regular additions to your website’s content.
Search engines also look at links to your content. You’ll build links between content clusters within your website, but if high authority websites reference your information through links, you’ll get an extra boost.
Finally, you want to know what’s working for you and your website visitors, so track and measure your results. Update content that doesn’t work for you, and aim for a user experience that keeps visitors coming back for more.
SEO Content Strategy: Need Help?
Our introduction to crafting an SEO content strategy may have left you with some extra questions. The most pressing of these might be “Where on earth am I to find time to do all this?” It’s a problem that many businesses face. From doing keyword research to the creation and optimisation of content, there are a lot of different skills that come into play. At the same time, you and your staff already have full schedules and customers to satisfy.
Why not skip the learning curves and time constraints and begin with professional-level SEO? Yellowball is a leading provider of SEO services, and we love helping our clients to achieve those coveted Page 1 rankings. Let us craft your content strategy for SEO, powering you up those search engine rankings and helping people in your target market to discover your business. Contact us today and get the ball rolling.
