Creating SEO content is rarely a walk through the park. No wonder 90.63% of pages get no organic traffic.
Are your pages among them? And, if so, do you know why your SEO content isn’t performing as well as it could? A leading reason may be that you don’t have a well-defined SEO content strategy in place.
Sure, you’ve probably looked into ranking factors that can help you improve your SEO game. But you’re probably not taking the action needed to rank in the search engines.
Let’s walk through a 7-step framework for creating a high-performing SEO content strategy. We’ve also included our best SEO content writing tips for you as you create new content.
Let’s start.
SEO content is content meant to drive organic traffic from search engine results pages (SERPs). Content optimization is a big part of accomplishing that goal. It’s what helps your content rank on page one of Google and, preferably, within the first few organic slots. (That’s where it can be most easily found by our audience.)
However, the kind of content that deserves to rank well isn’t optimized for search engines alone. It also keeps the reader's experience in mind. It answers all audience questions about the target keyword or phrase.
“The kind of content that deserves to rank well isn’t optimized for search engines alone.
It also keeps the reader's experience in mind and answers all audience questions about the target keyword or phrase.”
But why worry about optimizing for your target audience? Isn't it easier to just optimize for a keyword?
In reality, SEO writing and writing for your audience are synonymous. Search engines like Google prioritize satisfying their users. So when your content does that, it ends up ranking well. A win-win.
For instance, when a searcher finds their answer on your page, they are likely to spend more time on your site. This increases your click-through rate and reduces your bounce rate. Both are leading ranking factors so improving them can improve your SEO results.
💡 Learn more: Why SEO is about people, not the search engine
The obvious answer is that high-ranking SEO content generates website traffic. But traffic is a secondary goal. It often leads to the bigger objective of converting customers or users.
So it’s more accurate to say that SEO content generates relevant, quality website traffic. It helps the people with the most potential of converting to find your website. And this visibility and accessibility boost also has benefits.
For example, say your website constantly shows up in search results for a topic your audience is researching. If your content is engaging and meets their needs, it can boost your credibility (and memorability). Your target audience will begin to see you as an authority, which means more chances to engage and build relationships. Both can lead to sales or other important outcomes in the future.
What types of SEO can you create to enjoy the benefits above? Here are some of the most common SEO-friendly content types:
The worst thing you could do is pick one or more of the content types above and start creating. As with your overall marketing efforts, strategy is essential to enjoy the full benefits of SEO content. To make sure you’re doing SEO right, follow these steps.
To create a successful strategy, you must first know who it’s for.
Start with identifying your target audience. Then, look for common threads across:
These and other audience details will guide your keyword research and content creation.
Write down your goals for creating SEO content. Do you want to drive organic traffic or do you want more conversions?
According to David Farkas, Founder of The Upper Ranks, your goals can include:
As you set goals, though, be sure to look at the big picture. Wins like increased traffic and better rankings are great. But only if they lead to more meaningful outcomes that grow the business or further your cause.
Your audience research can be a goldmine of keywords, phrases, and frequently asked questions. Start there.
Jake Peterson, Senior SEO Manager at Go Fish Digital, advises researching variations and questions related to a seed keyword. From there:
Once you have a list of target and secondary keywords, brainstorm content topics. To choose the right topics, you must understand each keyword’s search intent. From there, there are many tools you can use for brainstorming. According to Adam Gingery of Majux Marketing, you can:
For each keyword, also decide the content type. Will it be a guide, a how-to piece, a short-form article, or something else?
At this point, you’ll have a clearer understanding of the topics you’ll need to cover. But don't start planning new content based only on your keyword research. Before you get ahead of yourself, audit your existing content. Have you already covered a topic surfaced in your recent research? If so, there are four buckets it might fall into.
Taking stock of the content you have helps you use your resources wisely and see results faster. (It’s usually easier and takes less time to update existing content than to create it from scratch). Plus, it keeps existing content from competing with any new pieces you create on the same topic.
With your list of target keywords and topics ready, organize them in a publishing schedule. For each topic, add a due date and assign a content writer—whether in-house or freelance.
To ensure writers create high-quality content, provide high-quality content briefs. These should distill information such as:
Link-building boosts your site’s domain authority and improves rankings. In fact, creating a comprehensive post on a target keyword and waiting for it to rank naturally is rarely enough—particularly if you have a new site.
The solution? Actively build backlinks to each piece of content. Identify relevant websites that link to others’ content on your target keywords. Then, reach out to them explaining that you offer a better resource that’s worth linking to.
Once you hit publish, review the results.
For example, monitor Google Analytics to understand:
How can you be sure you’re tracking progress the right way, though? Pre-select the metrics you'll monitor based on your goals. Every quarter or so, review progress against these metrics.
Finally, an important piece in the SEO content strategy puzzle. Keep refreshing old, evergreen content.
The Google algorithm loves fresh content and prioritizes it when ranking results. Be sure to add this step to your content marketing workflow.
💡 Learn more: Wrapping search and SEO into your content strategy process
Here are our 12 best tips for writing SEO content. You’ll see many of them in action across an excellent piece of content from Semrush, which we’ll use as an example.
For SEO content to do its job, it has to give readers the information they need in a way that’s easy to consume. You must understand readers’ intent so that you can cover the right topics thoroughly.
Second, avoid keyword stuffing. If your content reads like a robot wrote it, readers will be more likely to bounce. This can indirectly have ill effects on your SEO results in the long term. So use your target keyword (and variations of it) naturally.
Stephen continues: “It means going back to basics. Like writing an article about one subject as opposed to targeting multiple keywords simultaneously, which may not even exhibit the same intent. And it means keeping SEOs out of content development, which is how it should be. SEO should support content, not determine it.”
We mentioned the importance of using keywords naturally and you should. Yet, if at all possible, aim to include them at least once in each of the following:
Using keywords strategically helps search engines confirm the topic and depth of your content. This helps them rank your content so that the people you want to find it can find it.
Semrush did this well in its content optimization guide.
You can see the main keyword and a variation of it mentioned in the intro, first H2, and in the body of the content. It’s also mentioned elsewhere in the content but not overused.
The key to good SEO content writing is answering all the questions readers have on a given topic. Find these by looking at what searchers are asking about in the People Also Ask section. (You can find this section in Google search results for your target keyword.) Then, answer them thoroughly in your content.
For instance, here are a handful of questions people ask about content optimization.
Now, look at the Table of Contents from Semrush’s content optimization guide.
As you can see, it answers a few questions from the People Also Ask section. These include what content optimization is and why it matters. And the rest of the content takes a deep dive into the keys to content optimization.
Making it easy for readers to navigate and understand your content is essential. Divide content with subheadings, organize those sections in a logical order and use short paragraphs and sentences.
Additionally, use bullet points where possible and use bolding to highlight key points.
Direct subheadings help visitors see at a glance if your content answers their questions. They also improve readability. And, if you frontload main points within your paragraphs, they can help you snag featured snippets on Google.
Write inviting meta descriptions that give readers a reason to click to read your content from the search results. Mention what aspects of a topic your content covers and how the information is beneficial. Also, use action verbs such as “learn,” “dig in,” and “read” to encourage searchers to read.
💡 Tip: Get four conversion copywriting tips to help you write meta descriptions that drive clicks.
Also, include your focus keyword as close to the front of the meta description as possible, along with other relevant terms. To illustrate, Semrush uses the main keyword immediately while also highlighting the importance of optimization. Then, while using other related keywords, it sets the expectation for what readers will learn and encourages them to read the content.
Make sure all your images include alt text explaining what’s in the image. These short descriptions make content accessible to a wider range of readers. They also make it easy for Google to understand and rank.
Include your target keyword in the page title tag. This will give search engines another cue as to what your content is about, helping them rank it properly in search results.
It’s also important that your headline entices people to read. Answering what’s in it for them can help with this. For example, can you spot the promise in Semrush’s case? It's that the content will be in-depth (since it’s an ultimate guide and includes an infographic).
A large part of writing content for SEO involves creating visuals. Why is this so important? Images and other visuals help with readability and ranking. Explanatory visuals such as concept maps further readers’ understanding of a topic.
They break up text, support learning, and keep visitors on-site longer. Plus, other sites may feature your images and link back to your content. More backlinks can boost your search engine rankings.
Keep your URLs simple and as short as possible. Rather than using your whole headline, use your focus keyword as the URL slug.
But it’s worth mentioning that, if your target keyword includes words like “the” or “a,” you can remove them. And, in some cases, you can also add words as needed. For example, Semrush’s URL adds the word “guide” even though the main keyword is just “content optimization.”
Do you produce video content? Add transcripts to the videos as you upload them. They tell search engines like Google what was said in your video. This can help the content rank for relevant search queries.
Linking to related pieces of content on your website has a couple of benefits. It:
With that, we’ve reached the end. You now have the know-how to create a solid SEO content strategy and write content that ranks. All that’s left is to put that knowledge into action consistently.
On the consistency front, GatherContent is an invaluable tool. It can help with:
And those are just a few of the features loved by the more than 2,000 businesses that use our platform.
Want to see how easy it is to plan and manage SEO content in GatherContent? Try it for free for 14 days.
Creating SEO content is rarely a walk through the park. No wonder 90.63% of pages get no organic traffic.
Are your pages among them? And, if so, do you know why your SEO content isn’t performing as well as it could? A leading reason may be that you don’t have a well-defined SEO content strategy in place.
Sure, you’ve probably looked into ranking factors that can help you improve your SEO game. But you’re probably not taking the action needed to rank in the search engines.
Let’s walk through a 7-step framework for creating a high-performing SEO content strategy. We’ve also included our best SEO content writing tips for you as you create new content.
Let’s start.
SEO content is content meant to drive organic traffic from search engine results pages (SERPs). Content optimization is a big part of accomplishing that goal. It’s what helps your content rank on page one of Google and, preferably, within the first few organic slots. (That’s where it can be most easily found by our audience.)
However, the kind of content that deserves to rank well isn’t optimized for search engines alone. It also keeps the reader's experience in mind. It answers all audience questions about the target keyword or phrase.
“The kind of content that deserves to rank well isn’t optimized for search engines alone.
It also keeps the reader's experience in mind and answers all audience questions about the target keyword or phrase.”
But why worry about optimizing for your target audience? Isn't it easier to just optimize for a keyword?
In reality, SEO writing and writing for your audience are synonymous. Search engines like Google prioritize satisfying their users. So when your content does that, it ends up ranking well. A win-win.
For instance, when a searcher finds their answer on your page, they are likely to spend more time on your site. This increases your click-through rate and reduces your bounce rate. Both are leading ranking factors so improving them can improve your SEO results.
💡 Learn more: Why SEO is about people, not the search engine
The obvious answer is that high-ranking SEO content generates website traffic. But traffic is a secondary goal. It often leads to the bigger objective of converting customers or users.
So it’s more accurate to say that SEO content generates relevant, quality website traffic. It helps the people with the most potential of converting to find your website. And this visibility and accessibility boost also has benefits.
For example, say your website constantly shows up in search results for a topic your audience is researching. If your content is engaging and meets their needs, it can boost your credibility (and memorability). Your target audience will begin to see you as an authority, which means more chances to engage and build relationships. Both can lead to sales or other important outcomes in the future.
What types of SEO can you create to enjoy the benefits above? Here are some of the most common SEO-friendly content types:
The worst thing you could do is pick one or more of the content types above and start creating. As with your overall marketing efforts, strategy is essential to enjoy the full benefits of SEO content. To make sure you’re doing SEO right, follow these steps.
To create a successful strategy, you must first know who it’s for.
Start with identifying your target audience. Then, look for common threads across:
These and other audience details will guide your keyword research and content creation.
Write down your goals for creating SEO content. Do you want to drive organic traffic or do you want more conversions?
According to David Farkas, Founder of The Upper Ranks, your goals can include:
As you set goals, though, be sure to look at the big picture. Wins like increased traffic and better rankings are great. But only if they lead to more meaningful outcomes that grow the business or further your cause.
Your audience research can be a goldmine of keywords, phrases, and frequently asked questions. Start there.
Jake Peterson, Senior SEO Manager at Go Fish Digital, advises researching variations and questions related to a seed keyword. From there:
Once you have a list of target and secondary keywords, brainstorm content topics. To choose the right topics, you must understand each keyword’s search intent. From there, there are many tools you can use for brainstorming. According to Adam Gingery of Majux Marketing, you can:
For each keyword, also decide the content type. Will it be a guide, a how-to piece, a short-form article, or something else?
At this point, you’ll have a clearer understanding of the topics you’ll need to cover. But don't start planning new content based only on your keyword research. Before you get ahead of yourself, audit your existing content. Have you already covered a topic surfaced in your recent research? If so, there are four buckets it might fall into.
Taking stock of the content you have helps you use your resources wisely and see results faster. (It’s usually easier and takes less time to update existing content than to create it from scratch). Plus, it keeps existing content from competing with any new pieces you create on the same topic.
With your list of target keywords and topics ready, organize them in a publishing schedule. For each topic, add a due date and assign a content writer—whether in-house or freelance.
To ensure writers create high-quality content, provide high-quality content briefs. These should distill information such as:
Link-building boosts your site’s domain authority and improves rankings. In fact, creating a comprehensive post on a target keyword and waiting for it to rank naturally is rarely enough—particularly if you have a new site.
The solution? Actively build backlinks to each piece of content. Identify relevant websites that link to others’ content on your target keywords. Then, reach out to them explaining that you offer a better resource that’s worth linking to.
Once you hit publish, review the results.
For example, monitor Google Analytics to understand:
How can you be sure you’re tracking progress the right way, though? Pre-select the metrics you'll monitor based on your goals. Every quarter or so, review progress against these metrics.
Finally, an important piece in the SEO content strategy puzzle. Keep refreshing old, evergreen content.
The Google algorithm loves fresh content and prioritizes it when ranking results. Be sure to add this step to your content marketing workflow.
💡 Learn more: Wrapping search and SEO into your content strategy process
Here are our 12 best tips for writing SEO content. You’ll see many of them in action across an excellent piece of content from Semrush, which we’ll use as an example.
For SEO content to do its job, it has to give readers the information they need in a way that’s easy to consume. You must understand readers’ intent so that you can cover the right topics thoroughly.
Second, avoid keyword stuffing. If your content reads like a robot wrote it, readers will be more likely to bounce. This can indirectly have ill effects on your SEO results in the long term. So use your target keyword (and variations of it) naturally.
Stephen continues: “It means going back to basics. Like writing an article about one subject as opposed to targeting multiple keywords simultaneously, which may not even exhibit the same intent. And it means keeping SEOs out of content development, which is how it should be. SEO should support content, not determine it.”
We mentioned the importance of using keywords naturally and you should. Yet, if at all possible, aim to include them at least once in each of the following:
Using keywords strategically helps search engines confirm the topic and depth of your content. This helps them rank your content so that the people you want to find it can find it.
Semrush did this well in its content optimization guide.
You can see the main keyword and a variation of it mentioned in the intro, first H2, and in the body of the content. It’s also mentioned elsewhere in the content but not overused.
The key to good SEO content writing is answering all the questions readers have on a given topic. Find these by looking at what searchers are asking about in the People Also Ask section. (You can find this section in Google search results for your target keyword.) Then, answer them thoroughly in your content.
For instance, here are a handful of questions people ask about content optimization.
Now, look at the Table of Contents from Semrush’s content optimization guide.
As you can see, it answers a few questions from the People Also Ask section. These include what content optimization is and why it matters. And the rest of the content takes a deep dive into the keys to content optimization.
Making it easy for readers to navigate and understand your content is essential. Divide content with subheadings, organize those sections in a logical order and use short paragraphs and sentences.
Additionally, use bullet points where possible and use bolding to highlight key points.
Direct subheadings help visitors see at a glance if your content answers their questions. They also improve readability. And, if you frontload main points within your paragraphs, they can help you snag featured snippets on Google.
Write inviting meta descriptions that give readers a reason to click to read your content from the search results. Mention what aspects of a topic your content covers and how the information is beneficial. Also, use action verbs such as “learn,” “dig in,” and “read” to encourage searchers to read.
💡 Tip: Get four conversion copywriting tips to help you write meta descriptions that drive clicks.
Also, include your focus keyword as close to the front of the meta description as possible, along with other relevant terms. To illustrate, Semrush uses the main keyword immediately while also highlighting the importance of optimization. Then, while using other related keywords, it sets the expectation for what readers will learn and encourages them to read the content.
Make sure all your images include alt text explaining what’s in the image. These short descriptions make content accessible to a wider range of readers. They also make it easy for Google to understand and rank.
Include your target keyword in the page title tag. This will give search engines another cue as to what your content is about, helping them rank it properly in search results.
It’s also important that your headline entices people to read. Answering what’s in it for them can help with this. For example, can you spot the promise in Semrush’s case? It's that the content will be in-depth (since it’s an ultimate guide and includes an infographic).
A large part of writing content for SEO involves creating visuals. Why is this so important? Images and other visuals help with readability and ranking. Explanatory visuals such as concept maps further readers’ understanding of a topic.
They break up text, support learning, and keep visitors on-site longer. Plus, other sites may feature your images and link back to your content. More backlinks can boost your search engine rankings.
Keep your URLs simple and as short as possible. Rather than using your whole headline, use your focus keyword as the URL slug.
But it’s worth mentioning that, if your target keyword includes words like “the” or “a,” you can remove them. And, in some cases, you can also add words as needed. For example, Semrush’s URL adds the word “guide” even though the main keyword is just “content optimization.”
Do you produce video content? Add transcripts to the videos as you upload them. They tell search engines like Google what was said in your video. This can help the content rank for relevant search queries.
Linking to related pieces of content on your website has a couple of benefits. It:
With that, we’ve reached the end. You now have the know-how to create a solid SEO content strategy and write content that ranks. All that’s left is to put that knowledge into action consistently.
On the consistency front, GatherContent is an invaluable tool. It can help with:
And those are just a few of the features loved by the more than 2,000 businesses that use our platform.
Want to see how easy it is to plan and manage SEO content in GatherContent? Try it for free for 14 days.