Having a content strategy and planning ahead has always been important in SEO, in 2015 that is more important than ever.
Webmaster Tools Search Queries pedromatias.co.uk
Before we go any further some time ago in one of my first posts on this blog, I wrote about the difference between strategy and planning, this may be helpful to some of you, below is a gist summary of it that will save you the click through.
Strategy vs planning
There are still many that confuse strategy with planning, if you are one of them just remember that strategy is normally focused on the objectives and long term goals or vision, this is sometimes encompassed in a mission statement. Planning includes the more detailed course of action and tactics to be used.
Needless to say that your content strategy should be inline with your overall SEO strategy and business goals. If you pay attention at big brands and high street shops they are now planning Easter and beyond and generally 3 months ahead in some detail and up to a year.
On the other hand the 5, 10 and 20 year long term goals belong in your business strategy.
In terms of SEO, I’m not going as far as Michael Martinez and say that you need a ten year plan, however, he does make some good points, the more you plan ahead the greater your chances of having your goals aligned and business objectives met, this in SEO of course translates at the end of the pipeline into more conversions, leads, sales, net income and profit, possibly visitor volume and even rankings, thought these last two may not correlate directly to your business goals, you may be attracting lots of clients and lots of work but low profit margins, in your SEO and content you can plan these.
Some keywords could be:
Cheap {product or service name} or low cost {product or service name}
All the way to:
Premium {product or service name} or exclusive {product or service name}
You can see how the choice of keywords and more specifically the market position you choose affect the relationship between volume of rankings and visitors and the business goals.
Part of the motivation for writing this now is that I’m in middle of planning 2015 content with a few clients and the degree of difficulty into getting this right is proportional to the number of people or agencies involved.
Defining content types for SEO
It may help you to begin by defining content types:
Aligning the creation of new business content; pages about services and products, some blog posts that talk directly about your services/products, I call this your promotional content, with your informative content; generally blog posts or articles that DO NOT talk directly about your services/products – I call this your informative content, as its primary objective is to establish your expertise in your field and inform your visitors, and yes to get Google’s attention.
Coming up with ideas for new content is not easy until you get the hang of it, the other hard concept to grasp and that applies both to blog writing and social media use, is that your blog and social media feeds, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and beyond should not be about your services or products, primarily they should be about your users and about asserting your knowledge, expertise and authority in your field.
Until you think of yourself and your business as someone with a unique proposition to offer you will probably struggle to grasp this concept, but once you do it will become second nature, no matter at what stage of your business or blogging life you are I would encourage you to think in these simple terms.
This post is about aligning your blog post creation with your business content, your business goals and your agenda.
Think in terms of:
- Your business goals
- Your business agenda
- Holidays and seasons
- What do you already rank for
The best source of keyword data
If you are familiar with Google Webmaster Tools you probably recognised the screenshot at the beginning of this post and below again. If not Google Webmaster Tools is the single most valuable resource for real Google keyword data, anything else, meaning any other keyword tools (despite the endless good pitches) are a second scrape of this same data that no one has more accurately than Google itself; of course.
If you do not have that setup on your site go ahead and get it done. Now 🙂 – if you do, that is great just head on to your keyword section.
The path is as follows:
- Login to webmaster tools
- Click on your site
- Search traffic
- Search queries
- Click on “Avg position” >> red arrow
When you click on average this will toggle the highest/lowest position you already rank for, now the best thing would be to extract all these to an Excel or Google sheet from where you can slice and dice at your leisure, first grey button in the image above with: “download this table”.
Secret sauce tip: page two and three are the best source of content ideas, these would be average position of 11 to 30, but you should look at all of them of course and see which ones best fit your business goals listed above.
By default Google Webmaster Tools view shows you the last 30 days, but you can get a maximum of the last 90 days. Yes, that is all Google gives here.
The blog schedule you can plan in a spreadsheet or my favourite in a Google Sheet, this will enable you to collaborate with for example your client or copywriter and any external agencies you use.
If your site is in WordPress there are some handy tools for that and those are in the form of… you’ve guessed it, a plugin. See Editorial Calendar.
Lastly: how often should you publish a blog post?
Fabolous question, and the answer, well, I’ve argued that before so there you have it my summary take on blog post frequency below and the link too: How Often Should You Update A Business Blog.
Pundits of all shapes, sizes and provenances will give you their own recipe for success. The answer is as varied as there are business types, so it can be as often as you possibly can, as sparsely as you can get away with and anything else in between.
What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below and please share it on your social streams. Thanks for reading.
