Creating and sticking to a content strategy is always much better than simply pumping out content and hoping that it does well.
There is a lot of factors you should consider when creating a content strategy, and in today’s article I will try and help you out with some tips and best practices for building a strong content and SEO strategy (Check also this: The Definitive Guide to SEO Strategy in 2020 from OutreachMama).
So, let’s start by taking a look at the first step in creating any content strategy.
Setting Goals
Are you trying to improve your site’s SEO rankings? Perhaps you want to boost your organic traffic, conversions, etc.? Regardless of what it is, your goal will be the backbone of your content strategy and all of your efforts should be directed towards reaching that goal.
This is rather simple and straightforward, but just reminding yourself and your team what exactly you’re trying to achieve can do wonders to keep everyone on track.
Also, the goals you set should be realistic. Something like “rank #1 in our niche by the end of next month” obviously sounds ridiculous. But a goal like “produce the most comprehensive guide on farming tomatoes”, for example, is pretty much perfect.
Know Your Audience
Brainvire believes that You can’t run a content strategy if you don’t know who to market your content to. So, you should know your audience’s demographic, their needs and wants. You can take advantage of a tool like Alexa to instantly reveal the demographic of any site’s audience.
Creating a user persona can also be quite beneficial. By “persona” I mean an imaginary person that combines all of the traits of your audience, what they are searching for, what types of content they prefer, and so on.
Treating your entire audience as a singular being makes it easier to produce content that would satisfy them since you’re looking at one human and not a thousand.
Stick to Your Niche
By that I mean avoid making generic content that can be found all across the web. Focus on your own niche and only produce content that is relevant to it and remember a simple rule: quality over quantity.
Let’s return to that guide on growing tomatoes for a bit. If you do something like that but in your own niche, you will be able to grab the majority of the traffic pie. Focusing on your niche and making content that’s better than everyone else’s is the way to go.
It might be tempting to write a few articles on general topics or something that belongs to other niches, but it’s usually not worth your time.
Set Milestones and Track Your Progress
Constantly monitoring your performance is essential to understanding whether your content strategy is working or not. You can use Google Analytics or any other tracking software to measure your SEO metrics.
By carefully examining the growth or decline of your metrics you will be able to tell exactly which types of content are performing the best and figure out the approach that works best for you.
Read Your Comments (And Reply to Them)
If you have comments disabled on your resource, you really should consider turning them back on. If you’re concerned about getting flooded by spammy comments, you can use a plugin like Akismet (if your site is running on WordPress) and it will filter out all of the unwanted messages.
Reading all of your feedback and interacting with your audience in comments, on Twitter, Facebook, etc. can provide you with a lot of valuable data. Do people like the content you make for them? Do they have any suggestions on what they feel is missing?
Also, interacting with your audience by replying to what they have to say helps you form stronger bonds with your users and potentially even provides you with link building opportunities (if the person you’re talking to is a blogger themselves).
So, there’s literally zero reasons for having your comments disabled.
Market Your Content
In order to do that effectively, you will need to know which channels (Facebook, Instagram, Google) your users prefer their content from and figure out the best time for posting.
Is the majority of your demographic early birds that enjoy scrolling their FB feed while sipping on a cup of coffee? Then posting in the morning would be a good decision.
Also, you should try and publish content regularly. It will both keep old users engaged and waiting for more and will bring in newcomers on a regular basis.
Create an editorial calendar to help you and your team manage your time more efficiently and try to follow your upload calendar as closely as possible.
Take a Look at What Your Competition Is Up to
Competitor analysis is a key step in improving any content strategy. By evaluating your competitors it will be much easier for you to understand the situation on your niche market and take according steps to take advantage of it.
SpyFu is an absolutely invaluable tool for competitor research.
Does your competition get most of their traffic from social media? Focus on generating more organic traffic.
Also, don’t pass up on awesome link building opportunities.
Here is a post by Linkio about the best backlink monitoring tools with which you will be able to find and take advantage of link building opportunities quickly and easily.
To Wrap It Up
Here were some of my tips and practices on how to build a profitable content strategy. I hope you found my information useful and good luck with all your content strategy efforts!