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SEO Isn’t Easy, but It is Effective! A Beginner’s Guide to SEO Content Strategy 2022

Reading Time: 9 minutes

Are you unsure about the best strategy for your digital marketing campaign?

A survey carried out on small businesses by The Manifest reveals that only about 49% of small businesses invest in SEO.

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(Source: The Manifest)

If SEO was as easy as some digital marketers claimed, why isn’t every small business actively investing in SEO?

Why would they choose to miss out on the traffic and new leads SEO could bring to their website?

Getting your business noticed online takes time, resources, planning, and strategizing. As a result, you’ll have some failed attempts and some small wins before you finally start reaping the immense benefits of your SEO content marketing campaign – and that’s only if your SEO content strategy is top-notch.

Small businesses want quick wins, which they can’t get from SEO.

This article is for small and medium-sized business owners who want to grow their traffic steadily over some time and reap immense benefits.

We’ll cover:

  • What is an SEO content strategy is
  • How to plan an SEO content strategy
  • How to create a content strategy for SEO

Let’s proceed.

What is an SEO Content Strategy?

An SEO content strategy uses SEO principles and best practices to drive traffic and boost conversions to a business.

Including SEO in your content marketing strategy will get you the kind of online attention you need and increase your likelihood of success.

There are different types of SEO content you can choose from, some of which are listed below:

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(Source: MBASkool)

  • Blog posts
  • Product pages
  • Videos
  • Guides
  • Lists
  • Slideshows
  • Infographics
  • Directories
  • Glossaries

How Do You Plan an SEO Content Strategy?

Whoever says SEO is easy is most likely trying to scam you.

Planning and creating an SEO content strategy could take months to try different approaches and monitor the outcome.

Do you want content marketing to yield excellent results for your business?

Our SEO content strategy comprises ten tactics we have been using to get remarkable results for our clients. Although they may take time to yield the desired outcome, they will put you on the right track to success.

So, what SEO content strategy must you put in place to ensure higher rankings?

1. Update Your Current Algorithm

Google’s algorithm updates are becoming quite frequent, although they do not render older techniques irrelevant. Therefore, having an effective SEO content strategy should include regularly checking Google for updates and changes and understanding their impact on your content.

2. Compile a List of Relevant Topics

What is your niche?

What subjects will you like to address through your content marketing efforts?

If you can answer these questions, you will not have difficulty putting together words, phrases, and topics related to your brand.

After making a list of topics, research them, find out their search volume, and get different variations to make your content unique. You’ll need an SEO tool like Google’s Keyword Tool or Ahrefs for these.

Create a list of short-tail keywords and rank them based on their monthly search volume. These will serve as pillars to the longer-tail keywords you will need for your topic clusters.

3. Find Keywords That Resonate With Your Target Audience

Keyword research is a great way to find words, phrases, and topics that your target audience will find relevant and meaningful.

Start by getting a keyword research tool like Ahrefs Keyword Explorer. Then search for a general term that relates to your content. You can then narrow the scope of these broad terms by using relevant longer-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords will allow for in-depth research on the topic and open up new ideas for further study.

Run your list of keywords through your keyword research tool to see the ones that will yield excellent results.

4. Use Topic Clusters

Topic clusters have become paramount to an effective SEO content strategy. They contain a central pillar page that extensively covers a broad topic. Attached to the pillar page are a couple of related cluster pages that address related subtopics to understand the subject better.

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(Source: Speech Silver)

After that, internal links help to connect the cluster pages to the pillar page.

Topic clusters, therefore, make it easier for your target audience to find answers to their queries and get relevant information without much stress. They also shed more light on each page of a particular subject matter to enable search engines to relate to the context and relationships between each page easily.

5. Create Engaging Content

Can you publish quality content every week?

As far as digital marketing is concerned, content remains king.

If you are interested in meeting your set SEO goals, you need to create quality blog posts consistently. Unfortunately, regular SEO content writing is a difficult task to carry out alone. You could run out of topics to write on or get busy making other aspects of your content marketing strategy work.

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(Source: Business2Community)

Whatever the reason, you have the option of hiring an SEO company Orange County to consistently create top-notch articles for your website while you handle other business.

How do you make sure your content is engaging and satisfies user intent?

Tackle Problems

What issues is your target audience experiencing?

Can you solve them?

What are the popular search queries related to your niche?

How-to guides, DIYs, and instructional videos are some of the ways you can answer users’ queries through blogging. In addition, you can use a tool like Fraise to see the questions that people are asking.

In addition, you can also create special subheadings or Frequently Asked Questions to face these queries squarely and earn your customers’ trust and loyalty.

Use Calls to Action (CTAs)

What action do you want your readers to take after going through your content?

A CTA placed strategically within your content will invite your readers to take action. For example, with CTAs in your blog posts, you can ask users to contact you for more insight, share your blog posts on their social media channels, start a free trial, or subscribe to your newsletters.

Make Sure Your Content is Flawless.

Can people trust your opinion when your content is full of spelling and grammar errors?

Very unlikely.

Do not underestimate the importance of proofreading your content before publishing it. However, if you are unsure of your proofreading and editing skills, get someone to do it for you.

You can also use spelling and grammar tools like Grammarly to check your content for spelling, grammar, and readability before publishing it on your website.

6. Create a Blogging Schedule and Stick To It

You do not have to add all your blog posts to a topic cluster. If there is a topic that your target audience cares about, go ahead and write about it. Your audience is paramount and not search engines.

Blogging consistently, at least once every week, will show that you have many fresh ideas to share. It will also help to attract a steady flow of traffic, and people will come to rely on your blogs for current information.

However, consistent blogging may not be as easy as it sounds. You may get so busy and forget to plan for your next blog post. It will help to create a blogging schedule and, as much as possible, stick to it.

7. Optimize Your Content for Users

Your work does not end at creating a blog post. SEO content writing goes beyond that!

After creating high-quality content, you must optimize it for your target audience; otherwise, it will not rank.

What does this entail?

Optimizing your content for users means making it easy to read, understand, and find the answers they need.

User Experience Signals have become a tool that Google uses to determine which pages rank higher and which ones don’t.

So, do you want to give your web pages a boost in SERPs?

Get people to love your content using these three tips:

  • Shorten the first couple of sentences in your content.
  • Break up your long-form content with H-tag subheadings.
  • Add quality multimedia such as video, graphics, infographics, charts, quizzes, audio, and other interactive media to your content.

8. Hone In On Linkability

Why should someone link to your blog post or website?

The essence of linkability is to make your content worth link-worthy. Links offer lots of benefits, including ranking. You must focus on this opportunity while planning your content.

You also need to establish the segment of readers that are more likely to link to your content. To discover this audience, you may have to look out for the following:

  • What kinds of pages link to the top results on Google
  • Can you get them to link to your content too?
  • What is the search volume for your main keyword?
  • What is the authority of the domains that link to top results?

If you want to get people to link to your content, you also need to capitalize on link opportunities. One strategy is to find quality content in your niche, check the quality of sites that link to the content, create better content, and reach out to the same websites.

How can you improve your content to make it rank?

  • Make your titles more searchable.
  • Use pain points.
  • Optimize your content for speed.
  • Create and publish unique content.
  • Cite reputable sources and authorities.
  • Include current statistics.
  • Explore all aspects of the topic.
  • Improve readability using headers, subheaders, lists, bullets, etc.
  • Include images, videos, GIFs, infographics, and other formats.

When creating your blog posts, considering these tips will make your content unique and increase your linking opportunities. Consequently, it will set you apart and help you to outrank your rivals.

9. Optimize your website for all devices

It is advisable to support your content with images, videos, and other media that relate to your content. Using these will help make your content less boring and keep your readers interested in your content.

But there is a twist.

These visual assets can be bulky, thereby resulting in slow page load speed and increased bounce rates. On the other hand, people’s engagement with your site will increase when your page speed increases.

Page load time has a severe impact on conversion rate. For example, HubSpot reports that an average mobile web page should take 15.3 seconds to load.

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(Source: Host reviews)

So, how fast is your page speed?

Can people quickly take the desired action on your web page?

If you have noticed a high bounce rate on your site or no conversions, it is about time you looked into your website performance and optimize it for both desktop and mobile users.

Here are few tips to help cut down your site’s loading time:

  • Go to WebPageTest or GTMetric websites to test your site’s web pages or homepage using a URL search.
  • Compress graphics and other media files on your site.
  • Update your plugins.
  • Use a CDN  like Cloudflare.
  • Enable cache and include a GZIP compression.
  • Install updates to PHP’s latest versions.
  • Remove unnecessary redirects and create minor CSS, HTML, and JS files.

Google constantly notes bounce rates, and it could look like a sign of little or no value, which leads to a lower ranking in search engine result pages. The need for speed optimization, therefore, cannot be overemphasized.

10. Run a Content Audit

A content audit is necessary to identify and take note of all your existing content. It also helps to ascertain the effectiveness and ranking of your content. In addition, conducting a content audit will reveal gaps in your competitors’ content and your content as well.

Reviewing your content will expose your existing irrelevant content, underperforming web pages, and any missing steps in the customer journey.

A competitive analysis is essential while conducting a content audit. It will give you insight into your competitors and their content marketing strategy.

After scrutinizing your content, you may need to delete irrelevant blog posts, refresh outdated content, combine several blog posts to form one valuable blog post or create fresh content aligned with your business goals.

Is Your Content Strategy SEO-Driven?

SEO is Not Easy!

A lot of work goes into planning and executing an effective SEO content strategy. Sometimes, it takes years of careful planning and consistent execution of your plan to begin to drive profitable traffic and gain conversions.

At FlyingVGroup, we’ve had a lot of success with SEO for clients in different fields. As an SEO California agency, we can help you plan and execute a winning SEO content strategy that will yield excellent ROI. Give us a call!

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Written by Robb Fahrion

Robb Fahrion is a Co-Founder and Partner of Flying V Group. Robb has helped over 350+ companies build their businesses online and is responsible for building Flying V Group into one of the premier marketing agencies in the United States. Robb and his team have managed over $10M in marketing budget and continue to accelerate the growth of clients' businesses. A love for business and competition is what fuels Robb to create dynamic marketing plans to help his clients grow exponentially.

September 30, 2021

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