So you want to get your website to rank on Google. You’ve done your off-page and technical SEO homework, like optimizing your homepage and building links to it, but so far you’re not seeing the results you hoped for.
That’s because you’re missing a vital part of the SEO mix: content. This is what really helps drive traffic to your website and convert visitors.
But what exactly is it, and how do you go about creating it?
In this post we’ll look at:
- What SEO-driven content is.
- How to know which topics to create content for.
- How to plan an in-house content creation strategy.
- How to ensure your website is in good health and working for you.
Let’s dive in.
What is SEO-driven content?
SEO-driven content includes certain keywords, which means it’s “optimized” for SEO. The aim of creating SEO-driven content is to form topic clusters that drive a specific kind of traffic to your website.
Basically, it’s content that’s written in a way that answers specific search queries.
And to know what those queries are, you need to do keyword research.
Keyword research involves identifying all the different ways a potential buyer could be searching for something. Not only when they’re ready to buy, but before that. This tells you what content you need to create, and which terms to include, to answer their questions.
So, SEO-driven content is about capturing buyers’ attention and owning every part of their journey. That means creating an individual page of content for each stage or query.
In a nutshell, effective search can only happen when you have content already available on your site.
So how do you go about creating SEO-driven content?
A common dilemma people have when just starting out is knowing which topics to cover. We think this is actually a great problem to have because, once you start looking into it, your dilemma quickly becomes “How do I actually create all these content topic ideas I’ve discovered?”
Here’s what we do at Flying Cat to create SEO-driven B2B content.
- Start by interviewing your customers to find out all about their buying journey, what alternatives they were using before they switched to your product, how it helps their role, what alternatives they tried, etc. Send out surveys and set up calls to get solid quantitative data.
- Go online and scour industry review sites (for us they include G2, Capterra, and other SaaS review sites). You can also check social media, Slack communities, Reddit forums, etc. based on your initial keyword ideas. How are people describing this thing? What questions do they ask? What problems did they have and how did they solve them?
- You can also type your seed keyword into Google to get suggestions. Use tools like Google Custom Search, Google Also Asked, and Answer the Public to get variations and test out modifiers to reveal all the topics people care about related to that keyword.
Once you’ve done all that, your next challenge is to find time to create all that content.
There are two ways you can do this:
1. Create content in-house
If you have limited time and resources, you need to take a strategic approach to creating content. Think about which topics are going to have the fastest time to value. That’s going to be bottom-of-funnel stuff like product comparison pieces that target people in the “searching for best solution/decision/shopping around” phase. Here, you don’t have to convince them of the problem, only that you have the best solution.
After you exhaust those topics, go for keywords that are easiest to rank for. Avoid high-volume keywords, because those will take months before you see any impact. Go for topics as close to the buying stage as possible, or a little further out if they’re easier to rank for.
Often, if you put those keywords into a third-party search tool it’ll tell you there’s zero volume, but don’t let that worry you. If you’ve really thought about the topic, written a good piece, and optimized your content well, it’s sure to bring in traffic.
Next, address capacity issues. Often, particularly in startups, people don’t have the time or resources to publish more than a couple of posts a month. So how do you get noticed when your competitors are publishing 50 times per month?
Well, it’s all about having a process and finding a balance between quantity and quality:
- Start by looking at your goals, and reverse engineer things to work out where you want to get to based on your total addressable market, and what it’ll take to get there.
- Then, look at how long it’ll take you to achieve the results you want based on the resources and capacity you have to create and publish content.
Consistency is key here. If you can only publish twice per month, then just do that. But do it well.
Be systematic; have processes and document them, which will make life easier further down the line when you start scaling your content creation and/or hiring freelancers. Having repeatable processes streamlines production and allows you to increase quantity while maintaining quality.
Of course, you also have to do lots of other non-scalable, scrappy things, like social media. Bottom line, though, focus on the channels you can commit to and don’t spread yourself too thin.
2. Outsource to a content marketing agency
This is a big investment in time, money, and trust so, before you take the leap, run tests on your website to see whether it actually converts and is fit for purpose. It’s pointless spending all that time, money, and effort to get people to your website only to find it’s not converting for whatever reason.
Whether you’re outsourcing or creating content in-house, your website must be fast and mobile-friendly, especially if you have a lot of pages. Even if you have a bare-bones site but plan to scale, you need those best practices in place and to have all the boxes checked.
And whatever you do, don’t take the “easy” route to rank by accepting guest blog posts or links. This is never worth it. The quality of guest posts is usually so bad it will take more resources to edit them than to write your own.
Instead, focus on building relationships with people who have good websites, and use ethically acquired links to build your brand and drive PR. Work on your brand, too, as this has a huge influence on the success of SEO.
Want to create SEO-driven content that converts? Flying Cat Marketing clients achieve 5-20% MoM growth from high-quality, optimized content.Book a free consultation
Collaborate with other departments
Whether you’re working in-house or outsourcing, collaboration with other departments like sales, marketing, and customer success is key. For example, if you have access to paid ads or PPC data, you can download the search terms report, see what’s converting, and create organic pages to further boost revenue.
Think about how you can move customers down the pipeline with SEO before they even get to sales. Distribute content via paid social, if that’s part of your strategy, and track off-page signals, which also helps build your brand and generate searches.
The more people search for your brand, the more that supports the strength of your website through SEO.
Wrapping up
SEO isn’t an overnight thing. It takes time, effort, and consistency to start seeing results. But it’s entirely possible to improve your site’s ranking and start generating revenue by implementing consistent processes and genuinely thinking about how you can best serve your customers with content.
Do that, and you should start to see the benefits in increased website traffic and conversions.
Want to learn more effective keyword research and stacking techniques? Join Maeva’s online masterclass. Sign up here