Finding/Building Content Strategy
-
I'm looking for two things: 1. Some top notch articles on building out a content strategy for a blog (coupon blog is more relevant). 2. Tools that can help to determine target keywords to focus on (Most I've seen are where the keywords start with me, are their any that will help to predict which keywords are relevant for our blog & that would be great to target).
Any feedback/discussion on either is greatly appreciated!
-
Ok, I think I've got a good outline of what needs to be done. I guess I left out one thing in my question, is that I'm not going to be the one putting together the content. Do you have any suggestions on how to hire or train someone a good content author? Or any good services that I should look into?
-
Determine the basic core knowledge needed for success in your topic area.
Decide where you have writable expertise.
Do some keyword research to see what people are asking about.
Write where you can produce best-on-the-web content that will be valuable to visitors.
For me there is so many possible topics to write about I spend my time between... A) basic core knowledge needed in the topic area... and B) what is fun to write
"B" gets most of my time because I am more productive doing work that is fun.
-
Excellent thanks for the articles & tools. The Long Tail Pro does look a little spammy, it appears the owner hangs out with the 'Biz Opp' crowd which always scares me a bit.
I'll dig through the articles & see what I can find...thanks!
-
There are a ton of great resources with in the SEOmoz blog: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/content-and-blogging
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-increase-the-odds-of-your-content-going-viral-whiteboard-friday
-
Yes, I understand that approach, but that's basically sitting down with a blank piece of paper in front of me & guessing on that data.
What I'm looking for are more of a written out approach & how to get to your conclusions, but have valuable data in front of me (either my own from our analytics, or another tool that can help to guide us where opportunities lie). I'd like to have some information in front of me that helps me to better determine all 5 steps that you map out above. Does that make sense?
-
In my opinion, a content strategy should be based upon.....
-
what people in your topic area are searching for
-
what you think those people should know (beyond what they are looking for)
-
your ability to produce content for topics that overlap 1 and 2
-
what content is fun for you to create
-
what content is going to advance your business goals or make money
If nobody is searching for the stuff in your topic area then you might need a new project. If lots of people are searching but the content is hard to monetize then you might need a new project (unless you are doing this as a hobby).
The best situation when you have a convergence of 1, 3, 4 and 5.
-
-
I'm going to answer your second question first. I am a HUGE fan of www.longtailpro.com to come up with keyword ideas. You simply enter in 4 or 5 base keywords and it automatically generates thousands of other relevant keywords using the Google AdWords keyword tool. The best thing about LTP is that it also determines organic search volume and competitiveness as well as the SEOmoz API to determine keyword difficulty so you can uncover keywords with decent search volume and low competition to instantly rank well and start getting traffic from. I've praised LTP many times before in this forum but I feel like it still hasn't really caught on in the mainstream SEO community, probably because I think the webpage looks kinda spammy. But I promise it's legit so it's certainly worth checking out.
I also want to recommend checking out http://www.hittail.com/ which analyzes your current organic traffic and uncovers long tail keywords that you could rank higher for if you create more content to target a particular keyword.
Here are some content strategy resources I have found useful
http://overit.com/blog/content-strategy
http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/the-content-marketing-manifesto (the above article also links to this)
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2010/07/31/blog-content-strategy-101/
http://thecouponproject.com/2011/02/blogging-series-five-ideas-for-hooking-your-readers.html
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Very relevant (perhaps only) original content disappears/doing very bad on google search
Hi I know this is a general question and there multiple like it. I've read a lot over the years, but can't figure it out. 1. The site in question is https://www.glj.io which had the above problem for years. I've recently revamped it and ready to try again. 2. The specific page is this one which is a review for laptop model G3 3579 from Dell. It was posted about two weeks ago, and it's still the only in-depth review in English, it seems. However, beyond the first 1-3 days, it's been lowered in rank and finally disappeared. That happened with other articles as well, over the years. 3. When searching, for example, for "Dell G3 3579 Review", another post of mine shows up in the 1/2 places - just a general short one mentioning the "G3" (this one), instead the full in-depth review. That it make no sense. 4. Currently, the review itself doesn't show up at all, not at page 2/3 (which is bad anyway) Can anyone shed some light on the situation? or offer pro services for it? It's very frustrating, basically making all my efforts go down in the dunk.. Much appreciated!
Keyword Research | | glj0 -
Which is more important - exact match on two pages with slightly similar content or completely unique content but no exact match?
I want to rank for two terms - one is the abbreviation and one is the actual phrase (think UX and user experience). Is it better to create two separate pages to benefit from the exact match keyword (given that the content is 51% unique) or should I work both the acronym and the phrase into one page? If I made the two pages, I could get in a lot more longtail keywords, however it's my belief that I should make one really robust page to ensure all possible link equity and user signals aren't split. Is this a valid argument or does the power of exact match keywords override the need for user signals?
Keyword Research | | DigitalMarketingSEO0 -
Do references to neighborhoods and local attractions in body copy provide any benefit to geographic rankings for the city in which those neighborhoods/attractions exist?
A few years ago, some SEOs encouraged the mentioning of local points of interest in the copy of a page to improve localized rankings for the city in question. The argument was that a page mentioning "Wrigley Field" (in a natural-seeming manner) would be more likely to be ranked for "Chicago" searches. A similar argument promoted the use of maps (assuming they have a meaningful purpose) because of the neighborhoods, streets, etc mentioned on the map. Was this ever actually a benefit, and if so is it still?
Keyword Research | | Mjesse2 -
Strategy for product content page development.
I have a project to work on product and landing pages for a website with 5000+ SKU's. I am looking to hire a content writer to do this but I want a strategy in place to develop these pages. I have googled a bit and they mostly talk about the body of the page. I am looking for best practices for the entire page, Title, H1, Meta and body. Any good tutorials for this type of project anyone can recommend? Anyone with experience doing this type of project? Thanks, Mark
Keyword Research | | mcg11030 -
How to do proper keyword research to content URL-mapping?
Hi to all, If you can share your ideas on how to do a proper setup, it would be great. Cheers
Keyword Research | | joel.cortez0 -
What to do with mismatched blog content?
I've maintained a blog on my website https://www.reich-consulting.net/ for quite a few years for my side business, which recently became my full-time gig. Since 2003 I worked as at IT Specialist at a technical school and I blogged about everything from tech support and IT issues to web design and development. Now I'm a full-time web developer. I get a lots of traffic from some of these blog posts, but it doesn't seem to be useful traffic. For example someone whose searching for a solution to a super-specific windows error (one of my most popular posts) isn't going to be interested in hiring me for web development. Furthermore I have a concern that these pages might be doing a disservice to the primary message of the website, which is small business website design and web marketing. When I look at my top search terms in Google Search Console, these random terms from old blog entries are the top 30 terms... website design-related content doesn't even rate. Any thoughts? Should I keep that content? Remove and 301 redirect it? Figure out a creative way to use it to my advantage?
Keyword Research | | reichconsulting0 -
Does anyone know of a good keyword identification tool to be used on a particular piece of content?
I'm hoping for a tool that would extract keyword possibilities from an article, run them through a keyword popularity tool such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner and present ranked results (including number of monthly searches) to the writer. That would enable the writer to choose relevant popular keywords (especially phrases) in the web headline, page title and text. Does anyone know of such a tool? I'm considering having one built in-house if nothing already exists. How it might work Ideally, this might be a browser add-on. The user would highlight the story or blog text, and click on the browser add-on button to start the tool. Using something like viewer.opencalais, the text would plug into a keyword extraction tool and automatically run the results. In the next step the extracted terms would automatically plug into the Google AdWords Keyword Planner and run the results for “Keyword Ideas.” I think this can be done via the AdWords API: https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/reference/v201402/TrafficEstimatorService?hl=fr The user would then be presented with a series of ranked keyword possibilities based on relevance and popularity. Why it’s useful This would make it far more efficient for busy journalists (or anyone) to write effective web headlines.
Keyword Research | | TampaBayTimes0 -
What's the best keyword tool for discovering regional/metropolitan area keywords?
Generally I use the Google Keyword Tool for my keyword research, but given the fact that the data is either country specific or global, I was wondering what others use for regional/dma-specific keyword discovery. Regional traffic is very important to my site, so I'm hoping to find a tool that I can use to find keywords germane to my audience.
Keyword Research | | BostonWright0