10 Expert Tips for Building a Winning SEO Content Strategy

SEO content strategy is the process of creating a content roadmap for a website to achieve business goals. These goals could include increasing visibility on search engines, attracting relevant traffic and leads, or establishing topical expertise in the industry. 

This roadmap guides the content creation, structure, optimization, and distribution process to align with user search intent and search engine algorithms. 

It also serves as a business asset and complements other marketing strategies. For example, see this post from Laura, a sales leader at Dreamdata. She shared how easy it was to upsell a new client despite the convoluted B2B SaaS customer journey.  

Why? 

The stakeholder was already consuming content from the Dreamdata blog 271 days: 

So, what makes up a successful SEO content strategy? 

User-centricity. 

Central to Google and other changes we’ve experienced in the SEO industry is the focus on user search experience. Think Google core updates, the Search Generative Experience, Microsoft’s Copilot, Gemini, Chat-GPT, etc. They are all refining the way consumers search for solutions online. 

For example, Google SGE uses generative AI to provide answers to user questions on the search results. 

As a result, brands that deeply understand and cater to user intent — creating seamless, user-centric content experiences — stand a better chance of withstanding the search turbulence. 

10 Ways to Build an Effective SEO Content Strategy

I shared ten actionable tips in this section to help build an effective SEO content strategy. I also shared a case study showing you how we created a content strategy for an enterprise client that improved their conversion rate. 

1. Understand your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and Target audience

SEO is all about catering to user search intent. 

This year, Google designed a Helpful Content System to ensure websites provide only original and valuable content. This also meant penalizing sites that catered to search engines instead of people. 

Understanding your ICP and target audience helps you tailor your SEO efforts for success. Without this, creating a content strategy that addresses their pain will be impossible. 

So … how do you create one? 

• Use Google Analytics ‘User Attributes’ feature to gain insights into your current customer base. Here, you’ll see vitals such as the demographics, interests, and the channel they come from.
• Adopt a qualitative approach by conducting interviews with your previous customers, such as those loyal to your company or with the largest lifetime value. 
• Ask the customer success and sales team for recurring patterns in your current customers. This can help identify similar traits and characteristics unique to your ICP. 

Read more: How to define your target audience for SEO.

Next…

2. Perform Topical Research: 

You need to publish high-quality and optimized content to rank in the search results. This includes industry-related topics and those your potential customers are searching for. 

Start by brainstorming a list of topics you want to be known for. Remember that trust is an invaluable currency in the digital space, and if you want to succeed, you need to build credibility around these topics. 

For example, as a digital marketing agency, we only share marketing-related topics to showcase our expertise in this industry and help our readers make informed decisions in their marketing campaigns. So, what topic do you want to be known for? 

Here are some tips to help you identify topics to rank for: 

• Choose terms related to your industry; for example, if you’re in the automobile niche, you may list topics surrounding automobile trends, maintenance, etc. This can be seed or broad terms. 
• Ask the sales or customer success teams for questions frequently asked by potential or current customers.
• Check out Reddit communities or Quora for more inspiration on relevant search queries. For instance, this is an automobile subreddit where you can find or ask anything related to automobiles: 

• Tools like Answer the Public help to gather queries from the search results for your seed keyword: 

• Another option is to use SEO tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to gain further insights into users’ search intent. More about this later. 

Tip: You can organize these topics in a spreadsheet for further analysis during keyword research. Or, use a mind-map tool like Boadmix:

Source

3. Conduct a Website Audit: 

In this stage, review your website to identify strengths you can leverage and weaknesses you can improve on. 

The first thing to do is analyze all your web pages to identify keywords for which you’re already ranking. Why are these pages performing well? What search queries are the pages ranking for? 

For example, if you’re ranking well for buyer-intent keywords, it’s an indicator that your website is attracting ready-to-buy customers. 

In this case, you can choose to re-optimize the pages for more conversions or create new pages targeting bottom, middle, and top-of-the-funnel keywords. 

Learn about how to discover top, middle, and bottom-of-the-funnel keywords here.

Our Process:

At HigherVisibility, we examine these pages based on 

• their position on the SERPs, 
• their current and potential traffic, and 
• the keywords they’re ranking for (cost-per-click value, search volume, and difficulty). 

We also take note of each page’s monetary value to understand better where we need to channel our efforts. 

This approach gives us an idea of what’s already working so we can piggyback on this for subsequent campaigns. Tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs are helpful in providing an in-depth breakdown of each page’s SEO performance. 

Tip: Use an Excel sheet to organize your web pages based on the metrics outlined above. Remember to prioritize the keywords and metrics that are valuable to your business.  

4. Spy on your Competitor’s Content Strategy:

If your competitors are ranking for seed, non-branded keywords, it means they’re doing something correctly. You need to figure this out to inform your content strategy and shorten the research process. 

Start by picking three to five competitors performing better than you on the search results. Input these URLs into the ‘Competitor Analysis Tool’ of any SEO software you use. Click ‘Compare’ to benchmark results: 

Ahrefs has a content gap feature that enables you to see keywords you’re not ranking for — I believe this should be available on other SEO tools. You’ll see keywords your competitors are ranking for, the volume, keyword difficulty, position, and other relevant metrics (which gives you an idea of the keyword categories that drive business growth): 

Next, evaluate their best-performing web pages. What type of content format are they using? White papers? Case studies? Also, is it free access or gated? 

You also want to look at the conversion strategy. 

• Are there clear calls to action (CTAs) prompting visitors to take action, such as downloading an ebook? 
• Are there any obvious tweaks to improve user experience? 
• Consider the design, placement, and language of the CTAs. Do they align with the overall messaging?  

Lastly, take a broader view of their content strategy. Examine the content quality, distribution strategy, and link-building techniques to inform your content plan accordingly. These can help you decide how to incorporate their content strategy into yours to achieve optimal SEO results.

Read more: How to conduct competitive analysis for SEO. 

5. Set Business Goals:

The motivation behind your content strategy is central to your content efforts and their impact on your overarching marketing business objectives. In other words, your intended business results should drive what becomes your content strategy. This helps you define what success is and streamlines your efforts to what works. 

According to research, 377% of marketers with content marketing goals recorded success compared to those who didn’t. This shows that defining what success looks like is a precursor for success while building a content strategy. 

There are several goals to track in content marketing – brand awareness, user engagement, sales, etc.  

The CoSchedule 2023 B2B content marketing benchmarks report shows that marketers target major goals in their content marketing strategy: 

• Increasing brand awareness 
• Grow credibility 
• Educate audiences 

For you, the first thing to do is collaborate with other company leaders to get an overview of the year’s goals. 

For example, your company’s goal can be to increase revenue YoY by 50%. How can creating an SEO content strategy contribute to the actualization of this goal? Your goals can be: 

Goal 1: To increase organic website traffic by creating top and middle-of-the-funnel blog posts.

Goal 2: Ranking position 1 – 3 for conversion-intent keywords at the end of the year.

Goal 3: Improve website conversion rate by 15% through targeted landing pages optimized for high-intent keywords.

Goal 4: Integrate product-led content into the strategy to educate potential customers on how the product solves their problems. 

Also, ensure that your goals are SMART – Sustainable, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. They should contribute to the overarching business goals. 

Next is to break down your predefined goals into activities that’ll help you achieve them. 

Here’s what I mean. 

If you want to increase organic traffic by 20%, for example, there are different ways to go about it: 

• Conduct a content audit to identify pages that are not performing as they used to and reoptimize them 
• Create mid and top-of-the-funnel content to drive high-intent visitors to your site (by targeting keywords with low difficulty and a considerable search volume) 
• Develop a content distribution strategy that’ll drive traffic from other platforms, such as social media and podcasts. 

… etc. 

6. Find keywords you want to rank for:

Now that you’ve defined your goals, target audience, and search topics, it’s time to conduct keyword research to find the exact search queries your target audience uses to find your business online. 

Keep in mind that keywords are the pillars of your overall content strategy, and without them, it’s impossible to: 

• Appear on the search results for the right queries 
• Funnel conversion-ready visitors 
• Create content that addresses the needs of your target customers 

At HigherVisibility, we follow a data-backed approach to optimize performance and make informed decisions that will drive conversions. 

The first thing we do is establish our keyword strategy baseline. We track metrics such as: 

• Domain rating
• Keyword difficulty 
• Keyword competitiveness 
• Search volume 
• Cost per click (CPC) 
• Search intent 
• Page rankings on the SERPs 

These metrics help us define the type of keywords we choose for your business. For instance, if your website has a DR of 40, it won’t be advisable to target seed keywords that are highly competitive because the chances of ranking top on the search results are slim. 

However, don’t make speculations. Evaluate the performance of your web pages to establish a keyword difficulty threshold for your website. 

If you’re running Google ads, you’ll see the main keywords driving conversions for your business. You can leverage this information to shape your SEO content strategy. For example, if your ads are performing well for certain keywords, you can uplift the keywords into your organic keyword strategy for better results. 

Once you’ve done that, compile the list of keywords you generated into a spreadsheet and rank them based on the metrics outlined above. Remember the competitor keyword research in the fourth point? Organize the keywords you’re not ranking for in the same manner. 

Use third-party SEO tools like Ahrefs to gain insights into each keyword’s data. For example, here’s the keyword research for ‘Affiliate Marketing’: 

Your focus should be keywords that drive conversion for your business, whether it’s creating brand awareness or driving lead flow. 

Next, conduct additional keyword research to discover long tail keywords to track for each keyword. Keep in mind that the keywords generated can be used to optimize existing content or create new pages entirely. Use lowfruits.io or Google Autosuggest tool to generate ideas: 

Once you’re done finding long-tail keywords for each seed keyword, it’s time to create a content calendar. 

7.  Create a content calendar:  

A content calendar is a plan or publishing schedule for your content. It organizes your content creation, publishing, and distribution process for a specified period. Depending on your overall business goals, it can be quarterly, annually, or even monthly. 

A content calendar includes your editorial content, topics, content format, and several other vitals. 

Here’s an inspiration: 

Source

Start by targeting the keyword gaps in your strategy, i.e., those with high conversion potential but are currently underutilized in your keyword strategy. 

You can also create a decision matrix like this to cover high-priority, high-volume keywords, then high-priority, low-volume keywords in that order: 

Another effective method is organizing content topics based on your customer’s journey. For each stage, clearly define opportunities available for your business to leverage while catering to user search intent. 

For example: 

• The Awareness Stage: Here, the goal will be increasing brand awareness and inciting customer engagement. This is because users in the awareness stage are looking for informative articles that address their pain points. 

However, there are likely several websites ranking for keywords similar to yours, so you want to ensure your content cuts through the noise and gets seen. 

Content plan: Create a series of blog posts that position your brand as a thought leader in the industry. Infographics, explainer videos, eBooks, and white papers are alternative content formats that’ll attract and inform them. 

• The Consideration Stage: Users in this category know what they’re searching for and are making comparisons to make the best choice. They need more information about the effectiveness of your product/service. 

Content plan: Publish comparison content, such as X vs. Y, case studies, or a cost calculator, to inform their decision-making process. 

• The Decision Stage: In this stage, users are well aware of your product/services and ready to make commitments. Your content needs to convince them that you’re a better option compared to the competition. 

Content Plan: Publish product reviews, product/service relevant FAQs (frequently asked questions), product demos, etc. You can also offer personalized, free consultations to give them a clearer view of your company offerings (this is most relevant for B2B). 

• Retention Stage: This comes after the user has converted into a paying customer. To retain their loyalty, you need to consistently improve user experience and expand your business offerings to cater to their pain points. 

Content Plan: Keep them in the loop by sharing relevant product/service updates. Helpful blog posts covering how to make the most of the products will also be effective in retaining customer loyalty. 

• Advocacy Stage: Lastly, this is where your customers become your marketers. It’s the sweetest spot of the marketing funnel because nothing beats word-of-mouth marketing. However, you need to ensure you’re delivering your promises to your customers by providing solutions to their pain points. 

Content Plan: Have a referral benefit strategy, such as affiliate or loyalty programs. Offer personalized offers to show how much you care about their preferences.

Next, we’ll be covering the SEO-related aspects, which are: 

• On-page SEO
• Off-page SEO
• Technical SEO 

8. Cover on-page and technical SEO basics: 

Your content strategy needs a solid foundation to rank well in the search results. This is where on-page and technical SEO come in. While on-page SEO covers everything done on your website to improve its performance on the SERPs, technical SEO ensures your website is ‘healthy.’ It also makes it easier for search engines to index your content on the SERPs. 

Here are some practices for your on-page SEO: 

• Ensure the meta title and description contains the primary keyword for the web page. For example, see this for ‘best digital marketing agencies for franchise.’

• Optimize web content — headings, body texts, images — with the right keywords.
• Add contextual links to each page to distribute link equity and create a well-structured website architecture. 
• Implement schema markup in content to appear on the SERPs for rich results. 
• Add a table of contents to your blog posts to make it easier for people to skim through the content. 
• Use heatmaps to understand how consumers navigate your website to improve your conversion rate.

… and for technical SEO: 

• Conduct a website audit to find issues impacting your rankings in search results. Check out for duplicate content issues. 
• Create and submit an XML sitemap to Google to make it easier for search engine bots to find and index your content.
• Use Noindex tags for pages you don’t want to rank on the search results. 
• Ensure your URL is well optimized for SEO, I.e., short and containing the target keyword. 
• Optimize for Google Core Web Vitals to improve user experience. 
• Ensure your page is mobile-friendly by using a responsive web page design. 
• Use Breadcrumb navigation to make it easier for users to find your content. 

Read more: How to conduct technical SEO analysis.

9. Have a solid off-page SEO Strategy: 

Off-page SEO covers everything you do outside your website to improve visibility, rankings, and overall performance on the SERPs. This includes link-building, content distribution, and syndication strategy. Off-page SEO is very important because it contributes to your ‘Trust’ score on Google. 

I strongly believe it is a major contributor to your domain authority score. 

Here are some tips to start with: 

• Review your backlink profile. Are there any low-quality sites linking to your web page? Or are there disavows that are hurting your link-building efforts? Create a strategic link-building strategy to remedy all issues and acquire new links.

• Develop a content distribution strategy to repurpose content across platforms to amplify reach. Use Goole Analytics to identify your top traffic sources for inspiration. For example, if your traffic channels are organic, social, and email marketing, increase your efforts in these channels accordingly. 
• Collaborate with non-competitive sites to drive their traffic to your site. This can be holding joint webinars, sharing expert insights via podcasts, etc. 

10. Track your performance 

How do you improve your content strategy? By monitoring your performance. 

Use third-party SEO tools to track key metrics such as traffic sources, conversion rates, organic traffic, and other essentials unique to your business goals. 

SEO doesn’t have overnight gains, so evaluate your overall strategy in 3 – 6 months to track success. 

Read more: How to measure your SEO success.