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Creating content for SEO is one of the best ways to improve your website’s rankings in search engines. So if you’re looking to improve SEO for your business or blog – this article is for you.

As I’m sure you know, people use search engines such as Google and Bing to find answers to their queries. And those search engines return the best websites they can find in the results.

So, matching your content to relevant queries is the best way to get your content found and increase the value of your website.

SEO Is About More Than Just The Content

If your content is great, it will be shared more (which we definitely want). Plus, more shares often also means more links from other sites, called backlinks. These backlinks are an important factor in your SEO results.

It works like this. Search engines analyse the links to your site to determine whether they’re trustworthy and relevant. If they are, then your own website’s authority can increase. This can mean a higher place in the search results for you. Awesome!

Now, remember that you want to invest in great content that gets quality traffic and links, rather than focusing on the number of links. Because all links are not created equal. It’s all about the value of those links.

And when you combine this with how your content is structured and where keywords appear, you might even notice your number of leads increasing. Bonus!

But before any of that can happen, let’s talk about choosing topics to write about that will help improve your site’s SEO.

Here are some ideas to get you started.

Put Your Audience At The Heart

Your content needs to work for you to bring in the right traffic to your website.

Therefore, start choosing SEO-friendly topics by putting your audience at the heart of your planning. Establishing who your audience is, is the core part of content creation. After all, they’re the reason you’re writing in the first place.

If you don’t have customer personas already, consider developing them. They provide you with a good sense of:

  • who your target audience is
  • what their needs and wants are
  • and what they want to see and hear from you.

Your audience’s searches reflect their wants and needs. So getting a good feel for who they are will help you understand the sort of content they’re looking for to answer their questions and problems.

Because the more content you create that resonates with your audience, the more likely you are to drive traffic to your site (and maybe even convert them into customers!).

Define Your Topics

Okay. Now you know your audience. And you know what content performs well on your site. It’s time to build this out.

There are plenty of tools to help you come up with content topics, such as

These tools will search the web to help you find ideas for relevant topics. Each one offers something slightly different. But they can all be used to find relevant topics and help you produce great content.

Use these tips to help you choose what to focus on:

  • Find popular topics being shared on social media and receiving large volumes of traffic. There is obviously interest here. Can you write about something similar?
  • Your topics should be useful and relevant to your audience and still link to your business in some way. Content should reflect your knowledge and expertise while answering queries.
  • If your content is useful but doesn’t have any connection to your business, then you can definitely expect a higher bounce rate. Visitors will leave if they don’t find useful content other than the one piece.

Once you have a good amount of content published, consider creating a content hub where visitors can find a range of blog posts per topic. A well-fleshed out content hub focused on your content with the right keywords and topics is a great way to drive traffic to your website and improve SEO for your business.

Check Out The Competition

Browse your competitors’ content to understand what works for them.

  • Are they ranking for any keywords? If so, which ones?
  • Do they get good engagement on their content?
  • What gaps do you see in their content that you can fill?

You want to figure out what is making them successful. And you also want to see what has failed or received poor engagement. Could you shape it differently or write it in a different way to take advantage of this content gap?

Find out what the main conversations and hot topics are, and start plugging them into your content plan.

Keyword Research

Keywords are a central part of search engine optimisation because they tell search engines what your content is about. So finding the right ones is a major key to success.

This is where those personas we talked about earlier can help. Once you know who your audience is, identify the keywords they when looking for content similar to yours. Tools such as Google Keyword Planner, which is free to use, can help you identify potential keywords.

Just plug in the keywords or search terms you know your audience uses and the planner will pull up similar keywords. It’ll also show the number of searches per month and how high the competition is.

The best keywords have high search volumes and low competition, and will also be relevant to your business. It’s a balancing act.

Make a list of all the potential keywords you could use, focusing on the long-tail keywords. Long-tail searches containing three or more words are much more specific than generic ones (plus, there is usually less competition).

That’s why it’s easier to rank for long-tail keywords than generic ones. It’s also easier to find your audience by writing highly targeted content that answers a specific query your ideal customer is asking.

In some highly saturated niches – or those with big-name brands – it’s getting harder and harder to rank organically for keywords. When you’re up against companies with big budgets, their content can dominate the search results.

But don’t be disheartened: get yourself a niche, find your market, and start planning your content using those targeted keywords. The more great quality content you create around those keywords, the higher and higher you will climb in the search results.

Review Existing Content

If you already have content driving traffic to your site and you use Google Analytics (which you definitely should!), you can see exactly which content on your site gets the most activity.

Check out your most viewed content and see if it’s still relevant for you. Or does your old content need to be updated to bring it in line with your current positioning?

Analytics let you dive deeply into the data to see how your content is performing. You can find information on:

  • Pageviews
  • Unique views
  • Bounce rates
  • Time spent on page
  • Drop off rate

This data is important to your content planning!

Build a picture of how the content works on your site and start creating lists of topic ideas inspired by your current content. What questions are still unanswered around those topics? Can you dive more deeply into the topic? Or is there a related topic that needs to be covered?

For more on using analytics to drive your content plan, check out this detailed article we wrote on the topic.

Develop A Content Plan To Improve SEO

With all of these tips, you can develop a content marketing plan and improve SEO results for your business or blog. Take a little time to form this information into an actual plan (and not just a big collection of notes!).

Focus on creating a strategic SEO topic plan that will increase your rankings in search engines. But remember that SEO is not an overnight-results kind of thing. Plan for the long-term with well-researched, comprehensive content that’s designed to attract YOUR specific ideal customers.

Over time, it all adds up to improved search rankings and more traffic to your website. Not to mention more leads and sales!

Putting It All Together

We know. Doing all the research, keeping track of all the stats – it can get overwhelming quickly. But we’ve got something for that! Check out our Complete Content Marketing Toolkit, which makes it easy to collect all of this information, create your content plan, and track the results.

Get all the details about the Toolkit right here.

Or, if you’d rather just hand this off to someone else, we can help with that, too. Get our SEO experts working for you and see what your website can achieve for you while you focus on your clients and customers.  Book a strategy call to get started.

 

Note: This post may contain affiliate links which means if you click through and make a purchase, we may receive a small thank you commission at no additional cost to you. Please visit our Terms of Use to read our full affiliate disclosure.