How to create a good content marketing strategy for SEO [7 tips]

When youre focused on increasing your websites findability in Google, youre probably aware that good content is an indispensable part of your SEO efforts. But in todays competitive landscape, simply cranking out SEO-optimized content probably wont get you the results youre looking for.

A good content marketing strategy for SEO can get you that edge youre looking for. It can help you beat your competitors, by following a structured approach in which the content you create builds on and strengthens itself.

In this article youll learn:

• What content marketing and SEO have in common
• Why a good content marketing strategy is important for SEO
• Tips for creating your own content marketing strategy

What is content marketing?

Before we dive into the relationship between content marketing and SEO, lets first look at what content marketing actually is.

Content marketing - according to the Content Marketing Institute - is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

If youre familiar with SEO, you can see how an SEO strategy and a content marketing strategy can go hand in hand. Both focus on creating high-quality content to attract your audience. The difference is that SEO entails more than content to increase search engine visibility, and content marketing relies on more channels than just search engines to promote content.

Nonetheless, the two can benefit from each other. In this article, well focus on how a good content marketing strategy can boost SEO strategies and results.

What is a content marketing strategy for SEO?

A content marketing strategy for SEO focuses on creating content that people are searching for and trying to get those articles found via search engines. It is where content marketing and SEO marketing naturally come together.

Both content marketing and SEO are legitimate marketing channels in their own way. They overlap in their focus on creating great, valuable content. This is why a content marketing strategy is invaluable for anyone trying to increase the SEO of their website.

From an SEO viewpoint, content marketing is a valuable strategy for improving your website's search engine optimization. By creating high-quality, relevant content, you can attract more visitors to your site, improve your online reputation, and ultimately boost your search engine rankings.

A good content marketing strategy for SEO focuses on three pillars:

• Finding the right topics to write about. What is your target audience searching for?
• Writing the best piece of content on the internet on said topic. Heres where you try to answer the searchers questions and match their search intent as thoroughly as possible.
• Making sure people actually read the content youre putting out there.

Its that last point where many SEO writers drop the ball. They focus on putting out content but forget to promote their articles once theyre out there. This is a pity, because most often they spend lots of time writing a great piece of content. Taking just a little extra time to also promote your content can greatly increase the impact, with relatively little extra effort.

Plotting and following a great SEO content marketing strategy can help you to get more from each piece of content, by making sure they strengthen each other and by helping you to promote your content as well.

Tips for creating a good content marketing strategy for boosting your SEO

Now that you have an idea about why its so important to have a content strategy for SEO, lets delve into how its done. Here are some tips to help you create a successful strategy for the content part of your SEO efforts.

1. Know your target audience

Before you start typing, it's important to understand who you're creating content for. Consider the demographics and interests, and - most importantly - pain points and questions of your target audience. Tailor your content to address their needs and preferences and ideally take away those pain points.

Answering specific questions your audience has is one of the best ways to get your content found via Google. To get there, you need to know the questions they harbor.

2. Set specific goals

What do you want to achieve with your content marketing efforts? Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or build an audience for yourself by attracting a follow on socials and filling your e-mail lists? Having specific goals in mind will help you create content that is focused, relevant, and effective.

3. Research keywords and build content silos

Keywords research is the bread and butter of your SEO content. By including relevant keywords in your content, you can improve your search engine rankings and attract more organic traffic to your site. Once you know what occupies the minds of your audience, you can use keyword planners to find out interesting keywords to write content about.

An overview of which keywords you wish to target should be at the heart of your SEO content strategy. Find which keywords are high profile and might take more effort to rank. Regard these as the backbone of your content strategy. Write pillar content (the best possible piece of content you can create around that keyword) and create other pieces to link to this masterpiece, in order to get the internal link juice flowing.

In this way, you create whats called a content silo, an excellent way to go about ranking for high-traffic and high-competition keywords.

For example, if you want to rank on new age you might create pillar content that is highly optimized for that term. Then youd create sub-pages about specific new-age items, like incense burners and chimes, looking something like:

• www.yourwebsite.com/new-age/
• www.yourwebsite.com/new-age/chimes/
• www.yourwebsite.com/new-age/incence-burners/

To build even further on this content strategy, you could write blogs that answer specific questions about these topics, to further build the internal linking game of these pages. In our new age example, you might write content that answers questions like:

• What is new age spirituality?
• Where to hang a wind chime?
• How does a backflow incense burner work?

In this way, you treat your SEO content strategy as a kind of puzzle, where each piece of content contributes to the bigger picture. This is the essence of a good content strategy: every piece of content that you create serves a double purpose. It creates findability on its own (by targeting a keyword that is valuable to you) and it strengthens the content silo that its a part of (bumping the findability of those articles as well).

4. Create a content calendar

Planning is everything when youre trying to build a strong content silo as outlined above. This is where the content calendar comes in.

A content calendar is a plan that outlines the topics, titles, and publishing dates of your content. Having a calendar in place will help you stay organized, maintain a consistent publishing schedule, and avoid running out of ideas.

A good strategy might, for example, be to block specific points in your personal schedule to fill your content calendar for the upcoming period. You might do this weekly or monthly, whichever best suits you. The point is to reserve a specific period to think about which content you are going to write. This will take away the thinking process at the times youve dedicated to actually writing, thus eliminating the danger of not knowing what to write about and wasting valuable time procrastinating.

When youve already decided which articles youll need to write, its a lot easier to dive head-in at those moments you have dedicated to actually writing.

5. Focus on quality

About the writing process itself then. Quality is everything when writing content for SEO purposes. Google and other search engines all aim at ranking the best possible content about any subject to bring their users the best possible answer to their search intent and a great user experience.

This is why a focus on quality should always be at the center of your content marketing strategy for SEO.

Quality trumps quantity when it comes to content marketing in general as well because content marketing is all about hooking your audience and keeping them interested. Focus on creating content that is informative, engaging, and valuable to your audience. Avoid keyword stuffing and other black hat SEO techniques, as these can actually hurt your search engine rankings. Write for your readers in the first place, not for search engines (although you should keep best practices in mind while writing, of course).

6. Optimize your content for search engines and your readers

In addition to including keywords in your content, there are other ways to optimize your content for search engines, while at the same time optimizing the user experience of your reader as well.

Here are some pointers to incorporate in your writing from now on:

• Use subheadings to help both readers and search engines to better understand what your text is about.
• Incorporate a table of contents to quickly guide people to the information theyre looking for and give a summary of what to expect from the article.
• Work with bullet points and lists to make your text easier to scan and help people find the most important information quickly.
• Dont forget to add meta descriptions to your images to help search engines read the visuals in your text.

7. Promote your content

As stated at the beginning of this article: promotion is an important part of your SEO content marketing strategy. Once your content is published, it's important to promote it to get it in front of the right people. Share your content on social media, email it to your subscribers, and reach out to influencers and other industry experts to get them to share it as well.

A good approach to get the ball rolling is to write a round post. This is an article in which you answer a certain question by getting the opinion of different specialists in the field. In this way, you create a highly valuable piece of content and create an opportunity for yourself to tag each contributor when sharing the piece on social media, thus leveraging their reach as well.

By following these steps and creating a solid content marketing strategy, you can improve your SEO and attract more organic traffic to your site. Remember to focus on creating high-quality, relevant content, and promote it effectively to reach your target audience.