5 Ways to Improve Your SEO Content Strategy

You could be tempted to treat content as if it were a “throw spaghetti at the wall” problem. If your marketing team thinks about search engine optimization (SEO), it’s only to find high-volume keywords to incorporate into your website content posts.

Allow me to paint a distinct picture of SEO in your content by introducing a novel technique.

5 tactics that will bolster your SEO content strategy

Follow these steps to ensure that your content is ready to rank in the search engines.

1. Identify the key moments within your customer journey

Your SEO content plan, like any other effective marketing endeavor, should begin with an assessment of your customer journey map. Your map should identify and define the many steps your clients go through while purchasing your product or service.

Assume you operate a clothing store. Customers may discover your company for the first time through a social media ad, rediscover it while browsing for seasonal jackets, and make their first purchase only after receiving a coupon offer.

Your potential consumer will require something different at each of these stages, and what they search for will reflect that.

The first objective for your SEO team should be to understand the needs of your target consumers in each of these major steps; these needs will influence how you choose keywords and generate content for each stage of the customer journey.

Appoint an SEO leader to your marketing team and provide them with the tools and resources they need to begin finding these important points in your existing customer journey map.

2. Start with broad keywords; end with targeted ones

You can start thinking about keywords now that you know when to effectively target your clients.

Begin broad when brainstorming keywords. Consider broad, general keywords that are relevant to your sector.

If we return to our clothing business, a broad keyword may be “jackets” or “work clothes.” From here, your SEO team can begin compiling related keywords that narrow down your broad term.

This may be as simple as using Google’s Keywords Everywhere tool, or it could be the result of a team brainstorm. Consider the following:

• What problems would prompt someone to look for my product?
• How would you phrase a search for my product?
• What are our most popular products/services?
• What external circumstances (such as time and season) cause individuals to consider our products?

Gartner uses a specialist floorcare brand as an example to demonstrate how search addresses customer behaviors at every stage of the customer journey (full report available to Gartner clients):

a honeycomb diagram illustrating five approaches to improve your content strategy for SEO

What you should do:

Begin compiling a list of broad keywords related to your business with your SEO team. They can then begin to generate more focused, relevant keywords that address important points in your customer journey.

3. Use an SEO tool

There are numerous software solutions available to assist your marketing team in identifying strategic keywords, tracking their success in your content, and comparing them to the ranks of your top competitors.

To get started, visit stridec.com directory of SEO software (which includes over 180 possibilities).

Overwhelmed by the sheer volume? A good place to start your software search is by looking for well-reviewed software solutions. You can also narrow down your search results by turning features on and off in the directory.

What you should do:

Do you have a limited budget? Today, you can still get essential SEO tools! It has compiled a list of five free SEO tools.

4. Understand what ranks and why

Your marketing team could create the most clever, useful content in the world and target all the right keywords, but your impact will be limited if Google does not rank it highly on its search engine results pages (SERPs).

So, how do you ensure that your SEO content strategy is in accordance with Google’s best practices? Here are a few pointers to bear in mind:

• Make an effort to obtain backlinks. Backlinking, or having other articles link back to your content, is an excellent way to improve your SERP ranking. Backlinks are an important element of Google’s formula for calculating content value, so focus on creating high-value, unique material (such as case studies) around your most strategic keywords.
• Include your keyword in your H1s and H2s. Strategic headers throughout your content can assist Google’s algorithms in understanding what your content offers readers. Make certain that your keyword is not only included in your article titles, but that it is also repeated throughout the subheads in your content.
• Page speed should not be compromised. Another excellent way to improve your keyword ranking is to ensure that your website runs smoothly and quickly. Slow page load times frequently result in high bounce rates for your content, which Google penalises heavily in search results. Here you can test the page load speed of your website.

What you should do:

Check out this article for a more in-depth look at how to improve your search rankings.

5. Provide helpful, informative content

Never lose sight of the fundamental aim of content: assisting people in identifying their pain areas and comprehending how the answer your product/service provides might improve their lives.

A comprehensive SEO content strategy will boost your content’s rating in the SERPs and get it in front of potential buyers, but useless content will fall flat.

As you plan your material, keep an ear to the ground. What are your consumers looking for and inquiring about? Is there any relevant, instructive information on that topic available from your marketing team?

Always begin with helpful content and then match your keyword efforts to those content themes/ideas.

What you should do:

Unsure of what type of material your clients are looking for? Inquire with them. Customer surveys are an excellent approach to determine where your marketing efforts are succeeding and where they need to be improved.

Content is (and will continue to be) king

This year, we’ve talked a lot about what constitutes a robust, successful content strategy.

We’ve defined what constitutes a winning video marketing strategy (spoiler alert: it’s the right message at the right time), we’ve identified the most important email marketing software features (the key is really good templates), and we’ve created a content scorecard to assist your marketing team in auditing its existing content.

That leaves one last crucial pillar to lay the groundwork for your excellent content foundation: an SEO content strategy.