How to Develop an SEO Content Strategy for Publishing Online

For digital publishing to be effective you have to have an SEO content strategy that delivers.

How to Develop an SEO Content Strategy

Content marketing is one of the important attributes of an active search engine optimization or SEO campaign. If you are a content creator, editor, marketer, or administer who is in any way engaged and managing the content part of an online business or brand website, you are technically part of an editorial SEO department. When it comes to publishing online media; having an SEO content strategy is the single most important part of your success.

While 72% of B2B marketers said that developing a content strategy contributed to their organization’s increased success, only 27% reported actually having a documented content marketing strategy, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s research.

 

You can scratch that old “content is the king” saying; when it comes to running a successful SEO campaign only great content that your audience is thirsty for will move the needle to success. There are far too many websites still churning out garbage posts that nobody cares about. Why? I just don’t know, because it certainly doesn’t attract more visitors or convert existing ones. Publishing content is easy. Publishing effective content that delivers results only comes from a planned SEO content strategy, so let’s talk about how we can do that.

content marketing

Publishing online content means addressing both emotional and technical aspects as it will be read by both your audience and search engines. By approaching your content with a voracious drive and high-quality filter you will gain success in your content marketing efforts. If you’re desire is to solidify the core of your editorial team and SEO content strategy; take a look at these steps that will help you in becoming an expert in editorial SEO and ensure a higher return on investment:

What Are Your Goals?

You’re not just out there publishing content on a lark, so what exactly are your goals? How will you measure the success of your campaign? Are you trying to generate new traffic? New subscribers? App downloads? Conversions? Social shares and engagement? Ultimately, you’re probably trying to increase or motivate sales. Regardless, you will need to define your goals in order to discover what you need to offer your audience.

Know Your Audience and Their Search Intent

When it comes to mastering editorial white label SEO services, the first step is to learn about your audience and their behavioral patterns on the major search engines. After all, creating content simply for the sake of it will not do anything good for your content marketing efforts. Make sure that you craft superior quality content that your readers will find valuable and captivating. In order to formulate such compelling digital content, you will need to research your target niche and learn about the needs and wants of your customers. This will help you in building the tone of the content that will focus on the major points which will entertain your readers.

It can also be very beneficial to create buyer personas, a fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. Creating buyer personas are essential in helping you identify and define what type of content your audience likes as well as where they spend their time looking for it.

Hubspot gives great practical tips for getting the info you need to develop personas:

 

  • Building your own database and analyzing your current customers for trends about how they find and consume content.
  • Use Google Analytics to understand where your visitors live, their age, gender, and technology preferences.
  • Use form fields on your website forms to capture important persona information (e.g. business type, job title, etc.).
  • Interview current customers and customer prospects to find out what they like about your product or service and what their pain points are.

 

Determine Types of Content Relevant to Your Audience

Based on the information you can get from your buyer personas and existing customer research you can determine what types of content may be best suited for them. Some of the most popular include:

  • Blog posts
  • How-Tos
  • Ebooks
  • Infographics
  • Videos
  • Podcasts

Raise the Level of Your Content Game

Successful editorial SEO calls for publishing premium quality content right from the introduction to the conclusion. Raising the level of your content game deals with many factors such as:

  • Multimedia: Focus on making your content more visually compelling, as the contemporary readers only give you a few seconds of time to lock their attention. Digital content offers you a great opportunity of inserting multimedia options like photos, videos, GIFs, and screenshots and so on for making your content more relevant and engaging. However, be sure to fill out alt text, caption fields, and filename on every visual that you share.
  • Proofread: Keeping the paragraphs brief and making the content crisp is the major recommendation for any content marketing campaign. However, creating meaningful and grammatically correct sentences are still as important as it was before. Take the required time for a quality check especially when it comes to spelling and grammar in your article.

Go Straight and Big With Headlines

Make sure that you have crafted an appealing title, headline, and subheads for keeping your readers engaged all throughout the content.

Optimizing your URL and headlines are necessary for the overall impact of your article. Headlines are like the billboards of editorial SEO, which have the capability to make an online user stop and check your content. When it comes to creating headlines for your article, ensure being provocative, concise, and inspirational. Command the attention of people in a few words without breaking the integrity of your overall tone of the content. Also, for dominating the organic search, you need to have a powerful command over the headlines of your articles. Once you have made up your mind on the perfect title, work on the URL and customize it carefully to ensure that your readers do not get confused.

Keep the Momentum Going

Assuming that you have constructed the best possible title and URL for your article, it is time for leading your readers with a purpose. A successful editorial SEO campaign is all about crafting opening paragraphs that are captivating enough for engaging the readers. The opening sentences in your article should give your readers a compact, yet a convincing summary of the article. Rendering value to your readers through captivating paragraphs will help you in achieving rewards from the major search engine like Google that prioritizes user experience as a prime factor when ranking sites and blogs.

 

Leverage the Power of Voice Search

It goes without saying that voice searches are on a rise and embracing the power of voice search will bring success to your editorial SEO campaign. Creating your content on the basis of voice search is all about keeping the tone of your content similar to the conversation of people instead of how they are going to type on the search engine. Although leveraging the power of voice search is great, ensure making sense in your content so that the readers do not get confused.

 

Be Strategic with Link Optimization

In order to ensure that your content is reaching out to a large number of audiences, focusing on link optimization is extremely important. Creating and sharing high-quality content will not be that much effective if you fail to link your content. The more relevant links you get for your content, the more longevity your content will enjoy on the digital platform.

 

Social Media Marketing and Following the Latest Trends

For establishing your business as a game changer in the industry, you have to keep your content updated with the latest niche trends. From publishing links to your posts on social media to working with big influencers, using the various channels for sharing and promoting your content will boost visibility and create more brand awareness.

 

Track and Assess

The only way to know if your SEO content strategy is doing what it’s supposed to is my monitoring it’s effectiveness. Continue to use Google analytics, customer feedback and social metrics to determine what has worked and what hasn’t. This process will be a continued effort, but very worthwhile.

 

Conclusion

Stick to these vital suggestions for ensuring success in your editorial SEO campaign. Keep the content optimized and eventually, both search engines, as well as readers, will notice you. Employ great writers and SEM experts to win the SEO game and stay ahead of the competitors.