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Almost everyone knows what SEO is these days, and almost every professional brand has at least a basic content strategy to rank for relevant keywords and attract organic attention. However, the more these competing brands fill the internet, the harder it becomes to stand out.
Gone are the days when keyword stuffing and writing consistent blogs once a week was enough to get your website noticed. If you want to achieve high SERP rankings and attract the right audiences to your content in a digital environment where everyone is producing content like there is no tomorrow, you need to find a way to make your content stand out from the rest.
This isn't necessarily as difficult as it sounds. To improve your SEO content strategy, you don't have to devote your entire budget to producing Spielberg-quality videos or going viral on TikTok. Rather, to get your content noticed in a crowded marketplace, you need to learn how to make what you're doing a little more targeted, contextual, and data-driven.
To illustrate, here are some examples of the qualities that separate a simple SEO content strategy that stays on top of things from a more advanced and sophisticated form that can produce much more meaningful results. If you would like to learn more about how you can further develop your own strategy, you are welcome to join us Discover our SEO services.
Keyword targeting
Simple: Target only primary keywords
In a basic SEO content strategy, the main focus is on targeting primary, high-volume keywords. This approach often involves identifying a few generic keywords related to the company or industry and creating content optimized around those terms.
What makes this strategy ineffective is the fact that it ignores user intent and fails to capture the diversity of search queries. By only targeting the broadest, highest-level keywords, you have no way of getting your content associated with users who are looking for something specific.
In our SEO content guide, we share an example of how this approach can fall short. Marketing with intention:
“For a very long time, pure keyword volume determined search engine optimization. This way of thinking has become deeply rooted over the years to the point where a B2B campaign will target a keyword like “What is digital transformation?”, assuming it gets very high search volume and it does relevant to your technical solution. Both technically true! Unfortunately, it is an impossibly contested term as it is relevant to every technical solution.”
Advanced: Topic clusters and intent-driven long tails
An advanced strategic approach to keyword targeting requires more nuance. Instead of just targeting primary keywords, emphasize building thematic clusters to provide broad, focused coverage.
In practice, this could take the form of a sort of hub-and-spoke, with high-volume topics at the center and longer keywords or variations branching off from them. This intent-driven content can explore different facets of the topic through the lens of your buyer’s journey.
Matching search intent is one of the most important opportunities you can take advantage of Capture relevant search traffic.
Content quality
Basic: Low coverage and focus on robots
A basic SEO content strategy emphasizes quantity over quality. The content tends to provide superficial coverage of topics and lacks in-depth research and insights. The main goal may be to reach a certain word count or number of blog posts per month, without necessarily adding significant value to the reader.
Content is often created with the sole purpose of fulfilling what you think the search engine robots are looking for. Maybe a robot even wrote it! This can create a mismatch between what you've created and what users find valuable.
Not all content is valuable! If your website is cluttered with low-quality pages, it risks negatively impacting your overall search authority and visibility.
Advanced: Comprehensive reporting for people
In contrast, a progressive content strategy prioritizes quality over quantity. Rather than aiming for a specific word count, the content is carefully researched and comprehensive in its topic coverage, regardless of overall length. This builds on the concept of topic clusters: By writing thoroughly and clearly on each subtopic within a cluster, content strategists ensure they fully address each topic and provide valuable information to their audience.
Even advanced SEO content is written primarily for people. In the light of Google's 2022 Helpful Content UpdateIf your content is helpful to the person reading it, it is more likely to rank well. Ironically, the best way to provide search engines with the content they want right now is to focus fewer on what they want – and prioritize your actual audience instead.
Strategic direction
Fundamental: Content and SEO silos
A basic content strategy often involves treating SEO and content creation as separate entities with minimal collaboration. The content creation process may rely more on intuition and whim than data-driven SEO insights. This is often due to a lack of coordination between the teams responsible for SEO and content, or a lack of resources for both.
In other cases, companies may have an underperforming strategy because they treat SEO submissions as a one-time task, focusing on on-page optimization and neglecting the broader strategic direction of other marketing activities.
Advanced: Strategic, holistic integration
A progressive strategy prioritizes integrating the work of the SEO and content teams into a holistic, always-on marketing approach. Data-driven SEO insights are incorporated into content strategy from the start, ensuring content is not only optimized for search engines, but also aligned with broader business goals and audience needs.
A mature SEO content strategy involves SEO and content teams working closely together and sharing data, insights, and goals. Content creation is based on a comprehensive understanding of target audiences, keyword research and overarching marketing strategies. Content serves as a valuable asset in supporting different phases of the customer journey.
Because the internet never stops, and the same goes for a top-notch SEO content strategy. Analytics and reporting for these two functions should be intertwined so that SEO insights can continually inform content planning, optimization, and decision-making.
Are you ready to develop an advanced SEO content strategy? Discover everything you need to know in our guide, Building an SEO strategy in 2024.
About the author
Harry is one of TopRank Marketing's content strategists and a professional digital content specialist since 2016. During this time, he has honed his content writing skills and worked closely with SEO and SEM experts to improve his understanding of how to most effectively create high-end-quality content that ranks both in search engines and in perform well on social media. Harry is passionate about creating content that reflects well the voice of his customers and provides truly relevant, insightful information that is helpful and entertaining for his clients' customers to read. When Harry isn't writing content, he's usually reading it or watching movies. He watches a lot of films.
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
