Website Content - Chicks in Business

Content creation is a pillar of a successful SEO strategy. It’s also important because it’s one of the few elements of your SEO strategy you have direct control over.

With proper strategy and insight, it can be a fun, illuminating process for you and your team. But if you’re new to content creation, try our guide below

Start with Keyword Research

One of the first things you should do when starting any SEO campaign is your keyword research. Good keyword research helps you discover the terms, phrases, and questions that are important to your users and your business goals.

Keyword research is your best first step for creating effective content that ranks with ease and drives traffic.

There’s no one way to conduct keyword research. You can research your competitors’ content or even search for keyword gaps in the market. Whatever your methods, keep track of your potential keywords in a spreadsheet or with a keyword research tool.

Define Your Conversion Goals (What’s Your Point?)

Before you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), think about your end game. Do you want to spread the word about your brand, gain more customers, participate in industry conversation, or get more leads?

In order for content to be successful, you have to define who the guide is for and what you want it to do. You also need to figure out a way to measure those goals, whether you’re counting number of leads, newsletter sign-ups, social shares, or website traffic.

Ask yourself:

Why am I even writing this?
Who is this for?
What would I define as a success? How will I measure it?

Pick a Relevant Topic

Before you start writing, you’ll need to pick a topic. Don’t just pick what you want to write about. The topic you choose should correlate with your goals. If you’re trying to attract leads, your content will be different than if you’re trying to retain existing customers.

Here are some things to think about:

Keywords: What are people searching for? What are the most popular search terms?
Existing analytics: Do you already have content on your website (maybe on your blog) that is performing particularly well? Why not turn that blog post into a full-length guide?
Target audience: If the content doesn’t resonate with prospective and current customers, what’s the point? When I wrote my company’s last guide, I used results from a customer survey we sent out to choose the subject.
Competition: What else is out there? Have your competitors already published guides on the same subject? If you’re not sure you can produce a better one, consider choosing a different topic.

Analyze Your Competition

Now you have your keywords and a few ideas great ideas for content. For more inspiration, you can peek in on your competitor’s content to spot any opportunities.

Competitor research is also a great way to ensure that your content remains original and engaging. Avoid penalization from Google and earn your users’ trust by creating content that reflects your brand.

Writing the Content

Now you can use your keywords and topic ideas to create your content. If you work with writers, you can add the information you’ve gathered to a content brief.

If you’re creating your own content, good to write some yourself, so you get a feel for writing, and see how you can use all the keyword research you’ve done.

Identify Your User’s Search Intent

Search intent, is defined as the purpose of a user’s search. Writing content that satisfies search intent signals to users and search engines alike that your content is relevant.

Your target keywords can tell you a lot about your user’s search intent. Review each keyword to determine if they satisfy one of the four common types of search intent:

Navigational intent: When a user wants to navigate to a certain website, they’ll likely add branded keywords in their search (e.g. “Subaru website.”) You likely wouldn’t target these keywords with content.
Informational intent: If a user wants more information on a topic, they might ask questions or use keywords that indicate they’re looking for help (e.g. “What is a good car?”) Service these keywords with informative content, like videos, lists, or tutorials. Create actionable content that answers your readers’ questions.
Commercial Investigation intent: Once your user decides they want to purchase a product or service, they’ll likely perform a search to compare their options (“Subaru vs Nissan.”) Target these keywords with comparison articles, reviews, and product guides.
Transactional Intent: These keywords or phrases signal that a user is ready to buy (e.g. “Buy Subaru Forester.”) They’re now searching for the best value proposition. Target these keywords with strong, SEO-friendly content that highlights your unique selling proposition (USP.) You can also serve this intent with product pages and reviews.

Determine Your Target Audience

Your target audience is the demographics that are most likely to use your products or services and relate most to your brand voice. Consider writing for both your current and future customers.

To better define your target audience:

Understand your audience demographics, including their ages, gender, location, and interests.
Tap into your social media analytics. Many platforms provide their own analytics features that offer better insights into who engages with your profile.

Understanding your target audience will determine the tone of your content. Your tone should reflect your brand’s voice and appeal to your readers. Is your brand’s tone of voice formal, technical, friendly, or casual?

Cite Sources

Opinion pieces have their place in the content world, but cold hard facts tend to resonate with readers. Data and statistics lend weight and credibility to your authority, increasing readers’ trust in you and your content.

Where possible, back up your claims with facts and stats from credible sources throughout your posts. You can also publish fact sheets—a type of post that’s especially appealing to readers who love to read small, digestible pieces of information all in one place.

Fact posts are also more shareable, as you can make each individual stat Tweetable or ready to share on Facebook.

Make it Newsworthy

The best content is often current and newsworthy. Instead of shooting in the dark, hoping your content ideas will stick, do some research. Identify trending topics within your niche as well as in broader media and pop culture.

Then look for connections.

Ask yourself how different current events are relevant to your industry or niche. Sometimes the connection will be direct and obvious, other times you may have to get creative. But don’t let a loose connection deter you—it often leads to an original idea and more intriguing content for your readers.

People want to know how events will affect them in different ways. By relating your content to current events and trending issues, you make your content relevant and relatable to your audience.

Structure Your Content

A good content structure makes it easy for users and web crawlers to scan your content and determine its relevancy. There’s no one-fits-all approach to structuring your content, especially if you’re working with different formats. But here are a few SEO-friendly tips to consider:

Start with a compelling headline: You want to entice your readers to click through to your content. You should include your keywords here so it’s clear what your content’s about.
Attract attention with a good intro: The first paragraph should grab the reader’s attention and keep them on the page. If it’s not clear that your content is relevant to their keywords or search intent, they’re much more likely to click away from your page, which could increase your bounce rate. Explain quickly and clearly what your reader can expect, and include your target keywords where necessary.
Break paragraphs up: Breaking paragraphs up into smaller, easier-to-read sections helps the reader scan through your content quickly.
Include headings and subheadings: Headings and subheadings can also guide a reader through your content. Include them in a Table of Contents and include jump links to allow them to skip to the section most relevant to them. Your headings and subheadings should Include your target keywords.
Language: Don’t stuff keywords. Write in a natural format and with average language.

Optimize Everything

By now it should go without saying that you need to optimize all your Web content. However, don’t make the mistake of optimizing your site merely for the search engines.

While this is an important factor of optimization, if you aren’t taking into account the actual users, your efforts will be largely wasted. As you optimize your content, make sure it is also user-friendly.

How?

Include targeted keywords in your copy, titles, meta-descriptions, and tags
Add calls to action after every blog post and promotional content
Use high-quality images with optimized alt descriptions
Craft winning headlines and engaging content
Post content regularly
Design intuitive (read: user-friendly) site navigation
Decrease page loading time

Let’s talk about that last point for a moment.

According to Econsultancy, a whopping 40% of users will abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. That means you have, realistically, fractions of seconds just to convince users to look at your site—let alone stick around and engage with it.

Include Mobile Interface

According to Margin Media, 52%of users said they would be less likely to engage with a company if the mobile experience on their site was bad. And 48% said that if they arrive on a site that isn’t working well on mobile, they take it as an indication that the business doesn’t care.

Clearly, mobile optimization is crucial if you want your website to stand out.

There are various ways to accommodate a mobile design, including responsive design or a separate mobile version of your site. Econsultancy found that 62% of companies that designed a website specifically for mobile had increased sales.

Various plugins are also available through WordPress, such as WPtouch Pro, which optimize your blog for mobile devices. Depending on your budget and needs, determine which option is best for you.

Position Tracking

After you have published your content you can use the Position Tracking tool to monitor your performance for your target keywords over time. You’ll need to monitor your positions for a few months; it’ll take more than one article to see results.

Set reminders to revisit your positions. The tool automates much of the process, so you can focus on tracking your losses or gains:

Position tracking can indicate if you need to refresh your content, improve your web page’s metadata, or address other elements of your content strategy. If you’re losing out on top positions or not ranking at all, consistent position tracking can alert you early.

Use the tool to track:

Multiple geographic locations in a single project
Multiple devices (desktop or mobile)
Pages with the most or least amount of traffic
Your share of voice
Your top keywords
Won or lost keywords

Get All Hands on Deck for Promotion

Your content is nothing if no one reads it, so make sure you get your social media and PR teams on deck.

Social media and email marketing

Each time you release a guide, plan a corresponding social media strategy. Decide how many times you’ll share your long-form content in each network. Try different copy as well as different times of day.

If you have the budget, consider a sponsored Facebook or sponsored Tweet campaign. Integrate your guide into an email marketing campaign so that your guide goes out to existing customers and subscribers.

Contests and Giveaways

Consider holding a contest or giveaway in conjunction with the release. If people are on your social media pages or website buzzing, they’re bound to catch a glimpse of the guide while they’re around. Make sure all contests and giveaways are relevant and connected.

Connect with influencers and do some outreach

If you feature influencers and companies within your guide, be sure to reach out to them and let them know. Depending on your relationship, you can ask them to share it or simply ask them to read it.

I’ve had success when I’ve thanked an influencer for their expertise and provided a link—they’ve shared the content without me having to ask.

Final Thoughts

Having great content on your website is arguably the most critical part of SEO and one of the more significant drivers of traffic to your site. People want to consume good content, and if you have it, more people will come.