How to Create a Good SEO Content Strategy for a Blog

After doing the content strategy for blogs from different companies and sectors I have realized that we really do not know how to make a good SEO content strategy.

If you look at your analytics, you will have realized that you do not stop and stop creating content and that there are really few articles that bring you visits and conversions.

It may even be that you have many visits on your blog but that they really do not convert anything.

We all like to look at Google Analytics and see how our number does not stop increasing, it comes to us with pride, right?

But this at the end of the day is a number that is useless if it is not accompanied by what is really important: conversions.

After all, the best content strategy for a blog is one that helps you achieve your business goals.

In addition, content creation is a slow process that requires a lot of time and effort, so it is essential to do things from the beginning.

What’s more, many people make excuses that it is very difficult to measure the content strategy of a blog.

Run away from people who tell you that, because also at the end of the post I’m going to show you how to measure the results.

Related: How to Create a Good SEO Content Strategy for a Blog

What is a content strategy for a blog?

Many people think that creating content only means writing articles to have more visits and that’s it.

This is a serious mistake and in my opinion, one of the big reasons why many people and businesses do not work blogging.

A common mistake many people make is thinking that a content strategy and an editorial calendar for a blog are the same.

If you are one of those who think that, let me tell you that you are wrong.

The editorial calendar is part of the strategy, but it is not the same.

Why you should plan the content strategy for a blog

There are many brands that decide to invest in advertising on social networks and not work on the blog content.

The reason is very simple.

With advertising, results are achieved in the short term and with content in the medium and long term.

But I’m going to give you 7 reasons why you should spend time planning content:

1. According to The Big Book of Facts & Statistics, 70% of consumers prefer to learn about a company through a post than through an advertisement.
2. Companies that have a blog have 55% more visits than those that do not (HubSpot).
3. 59% of consumers do some kind of research online before making a purchase decision (Google).
4. 95% of buyers buy content from at each stage of the buyer’s journey The Big Book of Facts & Statistics.
5. Blog posts are the most powerful type of B2B content for creating brand awareness (Content Marketing Institute).
6. 74% of B2B buyers share blog posts with their friends (Demand Gen).
7. 73% of consumers read blog posts and articles (HubSpot).

How to create a SEO content strategy for a blog step by step

Before we get into the subject, I would like to give you my opinion on this matter and I am sorry if I am insisting you too much.

We have been put in our heads that for a blog to work, we need to increase the visits of a blog in large numbers.

I really don’t think the amount is important. In fact, more than 90% of all web pages have zero traffic from Google (Ahrefs).

That is why it is so important to know what the most important elements of the strategy are.

So, we are going to see step by step all the phases when creating a content strategy for a blog:

1. Content Audit

Before starting to create an SEO content strategy, we must analyze the situation in which we find ourselves and the competition.

Actually, we could write an article just to explain how to do a content audit , but I’m going to tell you the basics where I would start:

• Organic evolution of our project and of the competition.
• Evolution of the link building strategy.
• Domain authority and pages.
• Pages with more and less traffic.
• Articles that get more subscribers.
• Best positioned pages and which ones are worse.
• Updatable content.
• Pages with higher and lower bounce rates.
• Optimization of titles and meta descriptions.
• CTR of the most important pages.
• Analysis of the indexing of the project.

2. Definition of objectives

Once we know what our starting position is, we have to define what we want to achieve.

Think that the strategy you design should always be oriented to achieve your goals, so think carefully about what you want to achieve.

Regardless, make sure they have a SMART structure.

Related: 21 Things to Become an SEO Expert

3. Analysis of the buyer person

In my opinion this is the step that can mark success or failure.

It is essential to know who our ideal client is or as it is often called in marketing, the buyer person.

What is the use of creating content if we are not really solving the doubts of the target audience?

And be careful, the normal thing is that if you have products that solve different needs, you have  different types of ideal client .

The problem is that usually a company’s resources are limited and it is very difficult to create content for all profiles.

The first thing I recommend is that you analyze your product portfolio and determine which are the most profitable for your business.

In this way, you will draw up a strategy based on which are your most profitable products or which ones you think are going to have the greatest growth.

Imagine that you have a photography business and that you offer three different types of services.

• Wedding photographer.
• Communion photographer.
• Pregnancy photographer.

But your resources are limited and where you are really getting more benefits in your wedding and communion services.

What you will do is focus on these two profiles and create content that responds to their needs (we will talk about this in point 5).

Do you see why it is so important to define and analyze your product portfolio and know who our ideal customer is?

Related: Top 5 Digital Marketing Jobs for Beginners in 2021

4. Keyword Research

One of the first steps is to do a keyword study of your project.

One mistake many bloggers make is to start writing content by writing.

It is essential to have previously carried out keyword research that takes into account the products and / or services of your business and your target audience .

In addition, you will also have to analyze the level of competition for each of those keywords to see if you are going to be able to attack it now or you have to come up with a more long-term plan.

If you notice, it has a Keyword Difficulty that tells us how many links we would need to position ourselves in the TOP 10 of Google.

But I recommend that you also analyze:

• The authority of each of the results.
• The number of links.
• The number of linking domains and their authority.

5. Design of the content strategy of a company

When planning content, it is essential to know the different phases that a person goes through from the moment they meet us until they finish buying.

This is what is known as the buyer’s journey.

Usually the buyer’s journey has the following steps:

Namely:

• Sometimes people do not have to know that we have a problem.
• Then we realize and recognize it.
• We get informed and find the cause and how to solve it.
• They know that our solution is an alternative to their problems.
• They realize that we are the best solution to their problems.
• They finally end up buying.

Knowing these phases we will be able to align the strategy with the sales funnel and in turn with the objectives.

So that you can see it more clearly, we are going to see it in the form of a conversion funnel .

These are the classic stages of a funnel and the key is to create content for each of these stages.

Also, if the concepts TOFU, MOFU and BOFU sound familiar to you surely you are more familiar with what I just told you.

Related: Top 100+ Free Search Engine Submission Sites List 2021

5. Types of content

To make it even clearer for you, I have also made a summary of each type of content so that you can see for which phase they can work best.

I hope that now if the bases are clearer when it comes to making a content strategy for a blog, because now we are going to the dissemination part.

6. Promotion phase

There is no use creating the best type of content if no one is going to see it later, right?

One of the first things I asked myself when I started my blogging journey was:

And now, where can I promote my blog?

A common mistake is to think that the only way to disseminate our post is through social networks, but there are many more ways.

Let’s see some of them.

Guest Blogging

If you want to position an article in Google and even more so if it is a keyword with competition, you will need to plan a linkbulding strategy.

And in this other things one of these actions can be to write guest articles on other blogs.

But is any blog useful?

Of course not.

The first step I would do would be to analyze the link profile of the top 10 results (something you can easily do with Ahrefs)

Once you have it you could analyze:

• How many domains link the content.
• How many dofollow links you have.
• What is the authority of each domain.
• From what type of articles they link to.

And in this way you could get an idea of ​​what types of blogs would be interesting to write guest articles.

Paid Linkbuilding

What do you not want or do not have enough time to guest blog?

Nothing happens, you can always buy links  through different platforms.

Of course, do not buy links left and right as if it were a market.

Social Media

Of course, social networks are the perfect channel to promote your content.

What I recommend is that you analyze the Facebook groups where your target audience is and determine in which ones they allow you to spread your content.

I also recommend that you create alliances with people in your sector to try to share your articles on social networks.

Social Ads (SMM)

The social network advertising another great alternative, especially if you want to get to strangers.

I recommend (whenever you can) allocate part of your budget to promote your articles.

Think that every time the organic reach of social networks is less, so we will have to resort to payment options if we want to amplify our impact.

7. Measurement of SEO content strategy

Big mistakes that we do not know if our blog is being profitable is because we are not measuring correctly.

Depending on what your objectives are and the stage in which your potential client is, you will have to define some KPIs in marketing or others.

But it is often difficult for us to measure whether our content is helping us to get subscribers and which ones are working better.

But don’t worry because I’m going to tell you how to measure and know the content that converts the most.

The first thing you should have done is configure your goals in Google Analytics.

In ” Metric groups” you must add the objective that you have configured, in my case Subscription.

While in the section  “Breakdowns of dimensions” you will have to select ” Stage prior to the objective ” and the one you have configured.

Mistakes when making a content strategy for a blog

The most common mistake when designing a content strategy that I see and that I have also made has to do with creating lead magnets.

In large part that happens because we tend to do the process in reverse.

I explain.

We usually write articles and then do any type of lead magnet to start getting subscribers.

But this is a mistake, because most likely you are not designing your strategy based on your products or services.

Look at the following graphic as the process is totally the other way around.

The first thing you have to be clear about is what you want to sell and then put ourselves in the position of our target audience.

That is, how can we educate you so that you later decide to buy our product.

For this we must create a Lead Magnet that allows you to go from point A to point B.

And once we are clear that is when we will design content related to our products and downloadable resources.

If you are going to write the first thing that comes to your head and create any type of lead magnet, do not expect that later people will buy for the love of art.