How To Create An SEO Content Strategy For Beginners In 2024

Randomly publishing blogs based on keywords is like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. It just doesn’t work that way. 

Here’s what you need: An SEO strategy not solely focused on keywords. 

Every marketer who makes businesses earn profits through SEO knows that SEO is not only keywords. 

Simply finding keywords your audience might search for and creating content around them is the wrong approach. 

You need a sound SEO content strategy that focuses on keywords and meets content marketing goals without fooling search engines. 

In this article, I’ll discuss how you can create an SEO content strategy for your business. 

Here’s precisely what you’ll get from the article: 

• What is an SEO strategy and its pillars
• Steps to create an effective SEO strategy
• Best practices for creating the strategy
• Ethical practices to meet Google guidelines

What is an SEO Content Strategy?

An SEO strategy is creating organized content for a website to increase its visibility, attract organic traffic, and ultimately drive conversions.

While many consider search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing separate, SEO is a part of content marketing. Without a content strategy, SEO merely means optimizing your website and content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

But SEO content strategy combines SEO with content marketing to create a systematic approach for creating, optimizing, and promoting content that appeals to search engines and your target audience.

Pillars of SEO Content Strategy

An effective SEO strategy rests on four pillars: research, content creation, content optimization, and content promotion. Let’s explore each of these pillars in detail.

Research

Gone are the days when we could rank articles by stuffing keywords. Google’s gotten smarter since 2005. Only the content that gives the best and most straightforward answers ranks most. 

Instead of finding keywords, find topics or pain points your audience faces the most. Then, find keywords within those topics that have ranking potential and business value.

For example: If you’re a home renovation company, instead of finding keywords depending on the traffic score, first make a list of pain points your ideal audience faces, say:

• Budgeting and cost management
• Finding the right contractor
• Design and planning
• Increasing home value and energy efficiency 

Enter these terms into a keyword research tool, such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Keyword Planner, to generate a list of keywords with business value. 

Google’s SERPs already have a treasure trove of information to advance your research. From the related searches, people also ask sections, and from the other SERP features like carousels and images, you can pick up enough recurring terms and questions the users ask. 

Let’s take the example of the keyword “Types of blog posts.” The SERP features that will guide you are: 

• Carousel – it shows the ranking articles used images to show the blog post formats.
• Repeated keywords in “People also ask” and “Related searches”- categories, types, formats, best blog posts
• Titles of top 5 results – Focus on format
• Extended related search: Examples of content blogs

You can conclude the following: 

WHAT: Format of different types of blog posts 

Unique angle (That increases traffic)

For WHOM: Beginner bloggers

HOW to write: Explanation of the types, focus on examples of real blogs, templates for format, and images.

Finally, tap into your competitors’ content to find what they’re doing right and where you can improve. Content, UX, images, examples, and case studies—there is plenty of room to outrank their blogs. 

| Suggested reading: Content for the buyer’s journey

Content Creation 

Any successful SEO content strategy begins with high-quality, valuable content. Here are some best practices for crafting content that resonates with your audience and search engines:

1. Know what emotions drive your audience: After exploring every strategy and keyword, what remains is the audience’s emotions. No matter how much we argue, decisions are backed by emotions more than logic. 

Fear, urgency, pleasure, guilt—every reader has a different motivation to read your content. Creating quality content comes down to meeting the audience’s expectations by satisfying the emotions that brought them to your website. 

2. Optimize for E-E-A-T: Google employs the acronym E-E-A-T, which stands for “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness,” to assess web pages and websites’ quality in order to determine their ranking.

High E-E-A-T websites are more likely to appear highly in Google search results, particularly for queries pertaining to subjects where reliability and quality are important considerations.

Google uses various signals to evaluate the E-E-A-T of a website:

• Author bio and credentials
• Website’s about page and contact information
• Third-party reviews, ratings, and mentions
• Quality and accuracy of content
• Reputation and authority within the industry
• Editorial policies

Let’s look at the example of Precision Nutrition. It’s a website to help you find experienced health and fitness professionals, including registered dietitians, exercise physiologists, and certified personal trainers. They also author a blog, and many experts have decades of experience in their fields. 

The blog features dedicated author pages that provide each contributing writer with detailed biographies, credentials, and expertise.

There is a clear “About” section that outlines the company’s mission, values, and commitment to evidence-based information.

They’ve been featured in numerous reputable publications, including The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and Women’s Health.

With a domain authority of 78 and 151K backlinks, it’s no surprise when Precision Nutrition ranks for important niche keywords, weight loss calculator and macro calculator. 

| Suggested Reading: How to outsource content writing

Content Optimization

Even well-written content can benefit from optimization to improve its visibility and ranking in search engines. Here are some key on-page SEO elements to focus on:

1. Title tags: Craft compelling, keyword-rich titles that accurately represent the content and entice users to click through from the search results. Ensure the character count is below 60 since only the first 60 characters of your title are visible on Google. 

Make the title powerful by using:

• Numbers
• Power words
• Evoke curiosity
• State the outcome
• Add the primary keyword
• Keep the character length under 70

Analyze your title using the headline analyzer by CoSchedule.

2. Header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4): Use header tags to structure your content logically, making it easier for search engines and users to understand the hierarchy and flow of information. 

When crawling your blog posts, search engines examine the header tags and content structure to determine whether the post is good enough to rank. 

3. Image optimization: Include relevant images and optimize them with descriptive file names, alt text, and appropriate sizing for faster load times. 

4. Internal linking: Strong internal linking and topic clusters signal Google about your authority. 

• Have 2-3 internal links to related posts from the same category. 
• Add 1-2 internal links to posts from other categories that are relevant. 
• Strategically use anchor text. Use “boost blog traffic without spending a dime” and other variations instead of adding “ways to promote blog” every time.

Content Promotion

Creating great content is only half the battle; you also need to promote it to ensure it reaches your target audience actively. Here are some effective promotion strategies:

1. Social media marketing: Share your content on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and industry-specific communities to drive traffic and engagement.

2. Email marketing: Start an email newsletter, inform your subscribers about new content releases, and encourage them to share and engage with your posts.

3. Influencer outreach: Collaborate with industry influencers, experts, or thought leaders to share your content with their audiences, potentially earning high-quality backlinks and exposing your brand to new readers.

4. Guest blogging: Contributing guest posts to reputable industry blogs or publications can help expand your reach, build authority, and attract new visitors to your website.

5. Paid promotion: Consider running targeted paid campaigns on social media platforms or search engines (e.g., Google Ads) to amplify the reach of your top-performing content.

I’ve published an article about content promotion. Read it to learn more about the free ways to promote your blog.

How to Create an SEO Content Strategy for Beginners

If you’re new to SEO content strategy, here’s a step-by-step guide to get you started:

Generate a List of Keywords With Business Value

From the research step we saw earlier, choose keywords with some business value. Even keywords with high search volume might not always hold value for you. Business value is nothing but how easily you can fit your product in the blog’s narrative and pitch it without making the audience pitch-slapped. 

For example: If you’re a SaaS company offering project management software, keywords like “best project management tools for remote teams” both hold business value and have a lesser keyword difficulty. It suits your content strategy well to target easy keywords that bring business. 

Generate a list of such keywords and put them in your planner.

Create a Content Plan/Calendar for Your Blog 

Develop a content plan or calendar that outlines the types of content you’ll create (blog posts, videos, guides, etc.), the target keywords for each piece, and a consistent publishing schedule. 

It helps ensure that you’re consistently producing fresh, optimized content.

Create pillar pages and topic clusters. Topic clusters are pages linked with each other and one focus/main topic. 

Not only do they help you with:

– Better interlinking

– Building authority

– Improved website navigation

But they also remove the randomness from creating each month’s content plan.

Targeting one topic cluster each month shows your website as an expert on that topic to Google. So, you can increase ranking and traffic without having many backlinks. 

Here’s my process of using topic clusters:

1. Pick the most searched keyword for your niche. 

For example: “Content Writing.”

2. Pick the keyword for the Pillar page

With keyword research, find the related keywords for your chosen topic. For our example, the keywords can be:

• How to become a content writer
• Content writing vs copywriting
• AI tools for content writing
• SEO Content writing
• Content research

Make a list of 5-10 keywords.

Now, select a keyword from these for the pillar page. 

The pillar page is the main page that goes deep into the topic. So, choose one that can cover each of the other keywords in brief. 

Let’s go with “How to become a content writer”

3. Decide on search intent and content format

Pick out some keywords depending on the number of blog posts you publish each month. 

Don’t forget the search intent. 

Go for informational and commercial intent. 

For our example, I went with one commercial keyword for 3 informational keywords. 

Create a content calendar, plan the content, publish, and create internal links.

Link each cluster blog with the pillar page and vice versa. 

| Suggested Reading: The Importance of grouping keywords into clusters

Have a Plan for Building Backlinks

Though we discussed a way to earn topical authority without worrying about backlinks, you should work on them sooner rather than later. 

In search engine rankings, backlinks (links to your site from other websites) play a crucial role.

It’s a general rule that the more authoritative the site linking to you, the more value the backlink holds. Remember, you can no longer build backlinks by paying for them or using the ‘link-for-link’ policy. With Google’s new March 2024 update, you can say those practices goodbye unless you want to get on the radar of Google for wrong practices. 

Instead, create a strategy for obtaining high-quality backlinks by contacting magazines and industry leaders and guest blogging, among other methods.

An example is how Byword built backlinks from giants like Ahrefs and Neil Patel. The AI content creation tool was featured in Neil Patel’s Marketing School episode, which discussed how the co-founder Jake Ward uses Byword to generate high-quality AI articles. Similarly, Ahrefs linked to Byword from their article, “12 AI Copywriting Tools to Improve Efficiency.” 

The best approach to building backlinks is getting featured on podcasts and interviews, and if you have a product, getting it mentioned in listicles, comparing the products of its likes, or getting reviews from your Google My Business profile. 

Track Progress With A Monthly SEO Plan 

Publishing and promoting content is just the beginning. You must not forget to update the existing content. Some small tweaks help improve traffic and ranking drastically.

Build a monthly SEO plan to publish, promote, and update content. Revise the old content every 90 days and remove outdated and poor content.

Track your monthly progress using Google Search Console or tools like Ahrefs and Semrush.

Best SEO Practices

Keep up with the latest SEO practices by incorporating these advanced practices:

Structured Data and Schema Markup

Structured data, or schematic markup, can improve the way your information shows up in search results. It gives the content more context and significance, which makes it simpler for search engines to comprehend and present relevant information to users. To be eligible for knowledge panels, featured snippets, or rich snippets can assist in boosting visibility and click-through rates. 

You can use RankMath or Yoast to add schema to your content. Even with a free plan, you get plenty of schemas to choose from.

Optimization for Page Speed

Both search engine optimization and user experience depend on page speed. Better engagement and fewer bounce rates can result from faster loading times.

To optimize your website’s page speed:

1. Compress and optimize images: Reduce the size and improve the quality of your images. Large, poorly sized images can cause your website to load far more slowly. Use tools like TinyPNG to optimize and reduce the size of your photos without sacrificing quality.

2. Use browser caching: By using caching headers, you may tell browsers to save static resources for later use, saving downloads.

3. Optimize for mobile: Ensure your website is optimized for mobile devices, as slow loading times can negatively impact user experience and search rankings.

Mobile Optimization

With most web traffic from mobile devices, your website must be optimized for mobile users. Google’s “mobile-first” indexing technique prioritizes the mobile version of your website when ranking and indexing it.

To optimize for mobile:

1. Responsive design: Use responsive design to create a layout and content that adapts to various screen sizes and orientations.

2. Prioritize mobile usability: Make sure your website has user-friendly interfaces that make navigating and engaging on mobile devices simple.

3. Optimize content for mobile: Make your material more readable on smaller screens by utilizing bolder typefaces, shorter paragraphs, and clearer wording.

Video Content Optimization

With the increasing popularity of video content, optimizing your videos for search can unlock additional traffic sources. For optimizing video content: 

• Transcribe videos
• Optimize titles and descriptions
• Use video schema markup

Local SEO

If your business serves a specific geographic area, local SEO tactics like Google My Business optimization, local citation building, and locally relevant content can help you rank higher in “near me” searches.

Claim your Google My Business listing by adding accurate details, such as contact information, company hours, and related categories.

Make sure that your company is accurately included in online directories, review sites, and local listing systems with the correct name, address, and phone number (NAP).

Produce content focusing on local keywords and subjects and industry-specific and regionally relevant information.

Encourage your customers to post reviews on Google My Business by encouraging them to do so. Then, swiftly respond to both good and bad remarks. 

Below is the result of the query, “coffee shops in LA.”

Voice Search Optimization

Voice searches often involve more natural language queries, so optimizing for these conversational queries can improve your visibility in voice search results.

1. Analyze and understand natural language queries: Use tools like Google’s Natural Language AI or other AI-powered solutions to analyze and understand how people phrase queries using natural language.
2. Create conversational content: Adapt your content to align with how people speak, using a more conversational tone and addressing common questions and queries.
3. Utilize long-tail keywords: Incorporate longer, more specific keyword phrases that better match how people ask questions using voice search.
4. Optimize for featured snippets: Featured snippets, which are concise, direct answers to queries, are often used in voice search results. Optimize your content to be selected as a featured snippet.
5. Use schema markup for voice search: For example, FAQs and HowTos can help search engines better understand and present your content.

Ethical SEO Practices to Stay Safe on Google’s Radar

Since Google’s March 2024 update, many practices will be curbed. Ethical SEO has become an important aspect of keeping your website safe. Here are a few ways you can ensure your website’s safety through ethical SEO practices:

Focus on Creating High-Quality, Valuable Content

Google has developed algorithms that prioritize material that meets users’ search intent and offers an excellent user experience. Producing well-researched, educational, and interesting content will automatically align with Google’s objectives and improve your chances of ranking well. 

Prioritize User Experience

Google strongly values factors such as site speed, mobile-friendliness, and easy navigation, in addition to quality content. Regularly audit and optimize your website’s UX to benefit users and search rankings.

Build Natural, Relevant Backlinks

Although backlinks are still important ranking factors, Google penalizes websites that use link schemes or acquire spammy, low-quality backlinks. Focus on earning natural backlinks by creating shareable content, guest posting on reputable sites, and building relationships with industry influencers.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing and Cloaking

Stuffing your content with excessive keywords or using cloaking techniques to show different content to search engines than users are considered black hat SEO practices and can lead to penalties.

Prioritize Transparency and Trust Signals

Build trust with your audience and search engines by being transparent about your business, displaying contact information, and showcasing customer reviews or testimonials. These trust signals can positively impact your rankings and credibility.

Final Thoughts

Creating an SEO content strategy ensures long-term success in organic search visibility. It drives sustainable organic growth while positioning your business as an expert in the growing digital space.

You don’t need to complicate the SEO strategy. Simplicity followed by consistency results in growth.

Do you have any questions? Let’s chat on LinkedIn.

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