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
-
How to find the best keywords for a new blog?
Hey everyone,
Keyword Research | | ionatr
I have started a new blog and I am not finding the ways to find the best and rankable keywords for it.
Can anybody tell me how to find it?0 -
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 -
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 -
Blog - SEO Better? MyCompany.com/blog or marketing.MyCompany.com/blog? Percent difference?
We started blogging aggressively 3 months ago to bolster our organic search. We are building a new website and wonder if hosting our blog directly on our site is better than marketing.mycompnay.com? Is MyComanpany.com/blog a better choice - what percentage of SEO value would it be? We are building a new WordPress website. Our blog is currently hosted on a subdomain with HubSpot software. WILL OUR SEO BE SIGNIFICANTLY MORE EFFECTIVE HOST THE WEBSITE DIRECTLY OUR DOT COM? It won't be as convenient with HS tool but we want the best possible SEO.
Keyword Research | | Joseph.Lusso0 -
Is content really king?
I have a good sized website with lots of pages. Many pages are designed around specific keywords and for the most part, they rank well. I have many pages packed with good content that don't rank well, but the keywords are related to those pages that score well. Are the under performing pages contributing to the good performing pages and/or to the overall benefit of the website because of the additional content? In short, if i remove under performing pages, will it affect good performing pages and the overall performance of the website?
Keyword Research | | KrisIrr0 -
How Do You Find the Total Search Volume for an Industry?
Currently my company is working on trying to find the total search volume (read: search potential) for our industry, but aren't sure how best to go about it. Obviously GWT data and Keyword Planner data came to mind, but those are not all encompassing (at least we don't think they are) -- GWT only has data for terms you rank for and the Keyword Planner only gives you volume if you already know the queries. Is there some quick and easy way to go about finding this that we haven't thought of? One thing to note is that our business is nationwide, meaning that all our terms will have a geo-identifier associated with them for each location i.e. [city] + search term -- this just makes things even more complicated. Any advice on to approach would be much appreciated!
Keyword Research | | sparefoot0 -
Selecting Key words for my SEO strategy
Hey team! I fell like this could sound very silly but... How can I find out which would be the best new keywords to focus my SEO effots on? How do I know which keywords I should be trying to rank for? Thank you!
Keyword Research | | StoryScout1 -
Hit by Panda, what's the quickest way to remove content
One of our client's sites got hit by panda/penguin. after careful investigation we found that the site had 6,900 pages indexed out of which about 300 are actual pages (pages with quality content and add value to the user). Needless to say we had to remove all those pages. Most of the thin pages were on the blog section of the site so we removed the WP which was on www.mysite.com/blog/. My question is how can i speed up the process for Google to realize that i have taken all those this pages down. i have fetched the homepage and all linked pages via "Fetch as Google Bot" on WMT. is there anything else i can do to speed this up???
Keyword Research | | 858-SEO0