Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an ever-changing discipline that requires continued activity and effort in order for businesses to remain at its forefront. With over 3.8 million searches happening on Google per minute worldwide, businesses who need to gain and maintain competitive advantage above others need to ensure that SEO remains a digital marketing priority.

To centre SEO appropriately, it is critical that an SEO content strategy is put together and followed.

Why is SEO Important for Businesses Online?

Whether or not a business sells its products or services digitally is no longer a consideration when it comes to having an online presence – because no matter how an organisation operates, consumers will expect to be able to find information about them on the internet.

This means that even if a business’ web presence is minimal, it needs to have one, and such presence needs to include relevant details for their customer base. Never have marketplaces worldwide been so crowded, so in order to maintain (if not grow) an audience, all businesses must ensure they appear in the appropriate place digitally.

‘Googling’ is now a colloquial verb and consumers of all ages defer to looking for information they need online rather than through manual means. With some 5.6 billion searches happening every day on Google alone, search engines are now very much the data source of choice – and if businesses aren’t there, they will surely lose out to their competitors who are.

What is an SEO Content Strategy?

A key part of SEO is to produce and publish content online that is relevant to a brand’s products and services, appropriate and helpful for their audience and shareable for onward promotion. This usually includes the creation of blogs, press releases, infographics, data sheets, videos and other content for user consumption.

An SEO content strategy provides a coherent plan for businesses to follow with their content creation. This action plan can be used to ensure content is appropriate, regular and of a quality high enough for onward sharing and publication as an organic marketing tool.

Why an SEO Content Strategy is So Important

Working to a thorough SEO content strategy holds many benefits:

Free Search Rankings
Organic search, search result placements that have not been paid for, is heavily influenced by a website’s content and so a comprehensive SEO content strategy helps promote ranking success. While businesses can choose to pay for placements, organic search results are considered more powerful and are more likely to receive click-throughs and genuine conversions.

Guaranteed Quality Content
A proper SEO content strategy will allow a business to ensure that they are producing relevant, regular, high-quality content that is appropriate for their audience. Continued monitoring of content performance will allow for further content production two-fold: where there is a gap or shortfall in information available, and the re-purpose of content where it is already found to be useful and successful for its audience.

Maintained Relevancy
It is, unfortunately, quite common for businesses to begin to focus on SEO and get swept away in content creation that is only broadly related to their brand and not niched enough to be considered helpful by the target audience or segment, therefore resulting in a waste of time and resource for little tangible result. Following a comprehensive SEO content strategy helps ensure that all SEO activity is directly targeted and ‘on-message’ for the optimum chance of success.

The Main Elements of an SEO Content Strategy

A thorough SEO Content Strategy will comprise of several elements. These include:

Relevant Keywords
It is important for businesses to properly research which search terms their potential and existing customers are using in order to look up relevant products, services and brands. Once completed, keyword research will provide a list of targeted terms for each pillar of the business, and content can be crafted around these, giving users a higher chance of arriving on the business’s webpage for the term.

Matching Search Intent
It’s important to create content that matches the intent of the search being placed. For example, content to match a search query beginning ‘what is’ should be definitive and informational, content to match a search query ending ‘buy now’ should deliver basic purchase decisions and on-page transaction functionality, and content to match a search query including ‘inspiration’ should deliver ideas and musings.

On-page SEO Activity Enacted
While content may be king, it isn’t the only aspect of SEO that needs to be considered. On-page SEO elements such as meta tags, accessibility tools, URLs and descriptions, all need to be optimised to further reinforce the website’s relevancy and authority to the search engine algorithms that will judge its ranking.

Varied Content Production
Many businesses choose to add a blog section to their website, write up some articles based around key search terms, and never take any further action. However, in order to remain current in search engine rankings throughout an ever-changing digital landscape, content should be produced in different ways (for example; blogs, infographics, videos, audio files) and should be re-purposed, re-jigged and re-used for evergreen topics and the optimisation on onward sharing.

Get Support with Your SEO Content Strategy

Woya Digital are experts in crafting SEO Content Strategies, action plans and detailed analyses for businesses of all types and sizes. Get in touch today and let’s collaborate on researching into the best and most appropriate course of action to meet and exceed the needs of your target audience; boosting your competitive advantage, conversion rates and bottom line.