I have been working in digital marketing for almost a decade now, and I have come across countless clients with plenty of content. Still, they don't seem to see any growth.
That's when I asked them about their strategy. I almost always find that they didn't actually have one or that the one they did have was immensely flawed.
Many fail to understand that SEO and content marketing go hand in hand. SEO and content complement and supplement each other and are significant factors for online success.
Hi, I am Shovon Joarder, a digital marketing consultant who offers top-notch digital solutions, such as SEO and content marketing.
Because I regularly see disharmony between SEO and content marketing in the space, I decided to address the issue. So, in the following, I will give you a simple SEO content marketing plan of action.
Here, you will find content optimization in SEO, what an SEO article is, and an SEO plan of action for your content. So, without any further delay, let's get into it!
What is An SEO Article?
I decided first to address the term "SEO article." So what is it? Well, it is a piece of content like an article or blog that a website features and has a unique URL, meaning it's SEO-optimized content.
Creating an SEO article requires expertise, and quality is of the utmost importance because the article's purpose is to educate, inform, or entertain a target audience. Therefore, I decided to discuss SEO articles because they are the foundation of a good SEO content plan of action.
With perfectly SEO-optimized content, your content should rank in the first pages of SERPs. So now that you know what an SEO article is, let's dive deeper into understanding how SEO and content marketing work!
How Does SEO Work?
To understand how it works, you first need to know what SEO is. Simply put, it is the process of improving key elements to ensure your site and pages rank high in SERPs.
Paid advertising, or PPC, is usually expensive in the long run. In contrast, SEO costs nothing, and all you need to do is invest your time and effort.
Many digital marketers will tell you that SEO is there to improve your site ranking, but that's not all it does. If done right, it will also improve the type of visitors to the sites and pages.
It's one of the reasons I always emphasize understanding the target audience first before creating an SEO plan of action. So, first, I will start with defining search intent.
Once you understand search intent, you will be able to better segment your target audience, helping you optimize your website and content.
So, there are four main types of user intent you can work with to segment your users. Check out the following to understand what they are!
What Are The Four Main Types Of User Intent?
Defining your target audience means knowing what they want and are looking for. That's why understanding search intent helps with SEO strategy.
That way, you will be able to segment the audience further and provide them with a more personalized approach. Here is a list of the four primary search intents and what they mean:
Navigational Search Intent: The user is trying to find something or going to a site.
Informational Search Intent: It is where the user is looking to gather information or knowledge about a field or a specific subject.
Commercial Search Intent: A user is either looking to buy something or wants to acquire information for a buyer.
Transactional Search Intent: It is where the user is looking to perform some web-mediated activity (usually monetary activity).
Now that you know the search intents, you can move into SEO. So, in the following section, I will give you a short rundown of the factors search engines look for so that you can start optimizing right away!
What Are Key SEO Ranking Factors?
SEO is intricate work. Several factors make a page, site, or content SEO-optimized. Here is a list of the key ranking factors that help with SEO optimization:
Page load speed
SSL or site security
Title tags
Quality content
Right internal linking
Comprehensive backlink profile
Image alt tags
User experience (part of technical SEO)
These are some of the most important ranking factors in SEO. There are several other factors to consider, but these will do for content optimization in SEO. So now that you know how SEO works, let's talk about content marketing.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content is the link between the audience and businesses. Content marketing is the process of creating and publishing valuable, relevant, and consistent content that resonates with and retains a well-defined target audience.
Content marketing is different from traditional marketing strategies as it doesn't interrupt users. Instead, it prompts and encourages them to find websites.
It all goes back to search intent. When creating content, utilizing the right search intent to find the best keywords will go a long way toward serving your purpose.
Quality, relevance, and proper structure play a vital role in making a successful content marketing strategy. Here are a few things you should avoid when creating content:
Do not clickbait or mislead the audience.
Do not dangle the audience. Cut to the chase as fast as possible because users usually won't have the patience to go through plenty of things before finding what they want.
Content marketing offers plenty of avenues for content. However, the best part of content marketing is the wide range of content you can utilize.
Whether audio, video, or written content, the scope of reaching the right audience increases exponentially with content marketing. Here are the types of content avenues you can explore for your content marketing strategy:
Blogs
Videos
Infographics
Webinars
Social media posts
Newsletters and informational emails
Whitepapers
Podcasts
Remember that content strategy is not about sales but connecting and building relationships with your audience. Providing quality content will help you do that. Building relationships will invoke trust in your product or service, contributing to sales. That's not all. It will also reduce your cost per customer acquisition and improve brand loyalty.
Now that you know about SEO and content marketing, you are ready to create a killer SEO-optimized content strategy. Let's talk about creating an SEO content plan of action!
How To Create An SEO Content Strategy?
Creating an SEO content strategy is easy. There are a few steps that you can follow to create one. In the following, that is precisely what you will find. I will show you step by step how you can make an SEO content strategy for your business. Here is what's on the itinerary:
Create A List Of Topics
Build A Comprehensive Long-Tail Keyword List In Accordance With The Topic
Create Specific Pages For Each Keyword
Set Up A Blog
Create A Blogging Schedule
Build A Comprehensive Link Building Strategy
Compress And Optimize All The Media Files Before Uploading Them On The Site
Always Be On Top Of New Developments And Be Ready To Update Your Practices At Any Time
Always Check Analytics To Know How Your Content Is Performing
OK, now that you know the steps, let me give you some details. In the following passages, I will provide you with the gist of what you must do on each step to create a killer strategy. So, let's get into it!
Your Topic List
If you've read blogs from a few years back, you'd think I am wrong because keywords used to be the first thing you'd need to think about when creating a content marketing plan. However, that's not the case anymore.
It all goes back to search intent. Search engines now prioritize topics more than keywords because that addresses the users' needs more.
To make your topic list, just take some terms and words associated with your product or service. There are plenty of tools out there that will help you identify topics, like Google's Keyword Planner.
Building Your Long-Tain Keyword List
Just because they aren't the first priority doesn't mean keywords are dead. They are still a vital part of creating a comprehensive strategy. With each topic, you will also be optimizing a page.
For each page, identify 4-10 long-tail keywords that go deeper into your chosen topics. By creating multiple entry points, you will be able to attract a wide range of people.
However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't integrate other related keywords. On the contrary, Google explicitly suggests that you should always try more general keywords for your content to attract as many people as possible.
While your specific topic and long-tail keywords fill a particular user need, your other general keywords will help attract more people to your blogs.
Building Separate Pages
There's a reason why you need to build separate pages for your plan of action. It is almost impossible to have a single page rank for multiple keywords.
However, using these pages as pillars for your topics and the long tail keywords, you can build content within the page that acts like a table of contents for everything you cover.
You can cover the main pillar content while also delivering briefs on other subtopics that you will cover or have already covered.
Doing this will make your site, content, and products or services easier to find as you will provide multiple entry points for your audience.
Set Up Your Blog
If you are reading this, I don't need to tell you how important blogging is for your content marketing efforts. With every blog, you create a web page. It becomes a stage for you to attract more visitors and rank high for keywords in SERPs.
If you don't already have a blog for your business, create one ASAP. When you write a blog and expand your keyword clusters, make sure you do the following:
Please do not use your long-tail keywords more than three to four times. Doing so can be considered keyword stuffing, which will hamper your ranking.
Ensure you link your content to the pillar pages as tags in your CMS or as a basic anchor text within the posts.
Make sure you link each subtopic with its parent pillar content to inform the SERP crawlers about the relationship between the long-tail keywords and showcase your understanding of the overarching topic.
Making Sure Of A Consistent Blogging Schedule
Now, you don't always have to write about the pillar topics and related subtopics. You can always write about other topics your audience cares about to build authority within your niche and the algorithm.
However, the algorithms will look for a consistent schedule, so make sure you post at least one blog post a week. However, keep in mind that you are not writing for the algorithm.
Link-Building Is Vital
While cluster topics and pillar pages are fantastic for SEO, they aren't the only way you can optimize your site and pages for SEO.
Link-building is a brilliant way to generate a good SEO score. But first, you should find innovative ways to create a comprehensive inbound link (backlink profile). Backlinks are links to your website from other sources.
If your site has links from sources with more authority than yours, it can do wonders for your SERP rankings. You start building your backlink profile in the following ways:
Share links with other local businesses in exchange for their links.
Write blogs and share them on social media platforms.
Try out guest posting.
File Compression & Optimization
While compressing media files and optimizing them might seem like a small step. However, they have enormous consequences since search engines like Google started "mobile-first indexing" practices.
In addition, as you keep posting new blogs, they will need to be supported by images, videos, and other forms of media. Now, there is no doubt that these videos can be huge and will be slow to load online as is.
That's why it is vital to ensure that every form of media is optimized and compressed to specific requirements that meet best practice standards.
Be On Top Of New Developments
One of the things that I always repeat to my clients is that the world of digital marketing is in constant flux, meaning it is constantly changing. As a result, there are always new trends and best practices to improve their efforts.
That's why you always need to be informed about what's new and how you can leverage them for your betterment. Here are some resources that you can always check out for the latest developments in digital marketing:
Utilizing Analytics To Measure Content Performance
SEO content strategies are usually time-consuming and take a lot of effort to pull off. Knowing whether it's working will give you the upper hand to rank high in SERPs.
You must identify all the metrics that will help you track the overall process and identify possible areas of improvement.
There are plenty of analytics tools, but I prefer using Google Analytics as my primary analytics tool to measure and track my efforts for my clients.
Create, Process, & Move Forward
Once you've implemented your plan of action and let it run for some time, you'd want to check the progress by checking the analytics.
From there, you can use the data to create SEO reports that show exactly how far you've come while also helping you identify where you can improve. Here are some of the things an SEO report will help you find out:
Organic traffic numbers,
The site's SEO health,
Backlink generation,
ROI,
SERP ranking,
And many other valuable pieces of information!
So that covers all the aspects of creating an SEO content strategy that will surely bring you success. Ensure you follow them thoroughly to see your site's performance rise through the ranks and directly to the top.
Hopefully, now you will be able to see your site dominate the competition. So that's all I have for you today. Let me know in the comments below if I've missed something about content optimization in SEO.
If you have any questions or want to know more about how SEO and content can help build your business, contact me or connect with me on my social media. I will gladly answer all your queries.
That brings us to the end of today's topic. I will come back with something new about the delightful world of digital marketing soon. Until then, see you!
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