How To Create An Effective Blog Content Strategy

9 Mar

Blogging plays a crucial part in a long-term, well-developed SEO strategy. Blogging not only allows you to share relevant and valuable information with your audience, but it also gives you the unique opportunity to target any questions or key topics your readers might be typing into the Google search bar. When done correctly, it’s a simple, yet effective way to boost your ranking on search engine results pages.

A well-thought-out blogging strategy can help you attract new visitors to your website, and may even encourage them to buy your product or service.

Want to craft the perfect blogging strategy, but unsure where to start? Here are our top tips to get you started.

1. Establish your target audience

Before you start writing, you need to understand your audience. Who will read your blogs? What does your usual customer look like? Attracting readers isn’t enough - you need to attract those who will want to buy from you.

A persona exercise is a great first step - think about the different kinds of people who might purchase your products or services, what their goals and fears are, and how your product or service can help them. Creating a short description of your ideal customer will allow you to tailor your blogs to them, meaning they’ll be more inclined you buy from you.

2. Showcase your unique selling points

The key to a great blogging strategy is understanding what sets you apart from your competitors - and utilising it! Without a unique angle, your content could fade into the masses. Search Engines (and readers) value unique content - keep this in mind when planning your blog posts! What unique knowledge can you share in a blog that will benefit your audience? Use it to stand out from the crowd.

3. Define your goals

Before you pick up a pen and start writing, note down your goals. What do you want to achieve by sharing blog content? This will depend on your business, but some common goals include…

Expanding your audience
Driving conversions
Educating or supporting readers
Building trust and expertise.

Considering your goals will help shape your blog topic ideas and help you choose what sort of call-to-action statements to include throughout each piece.

4. Create a content plan

So you’ve established who you’re targeting and why. The next important question to consider is… how?

Get together with your team to create your very own content plan. This is a simple yet effective way to delegate content to different members of your team, plan blog content in advance and ensure that deadlines are met.

Here are a few things you should include:

The blog topic
Any research notes or inspiration to guide the writer
Keywords to target along with the search volume (more on this later)
Details as to who is responsible for writing, editing and uploading the content
When the blog needs to be submitted for proofreading and publishing (e.g. a first draft and a final draft)
Any photos or media you might want to include

Creating a simple plan like this, which all of your team can access, will give you a solid foundation to get your blog up and running.

5. Research your keywords

Once you’ve put together a content plan, it’s time to fill it with your ideas! The first step? A thorough keyword search.

Writing about topics with little organic search volume is unlikely to attract readers to your site - you need to find demand for a topic and create valuable and unique content that will satisfy that need.

It’s a good idea to target longer-tail keywords - these are longer phrases, that are less regularly ‘googled’ but have clearer intent behind the search. For example, imagine you’re a business that sells headphones and you want to write a blog about the different headphones you sell.

You should target searches that are looking for specific answers and are less competitive (i.e. less likely to be used by similar brands). For example, searches like ‘best headphones for classical music’ or ‘best wireless headphones for music production’. You can then create a post that targets that specific query.

Another great way to gain some keyword inspiration is to look at what people are actively googling. To do this, type something related to your field into the Google search bar and then check the ‘People also ask’ box. This will show you a handful of related questions that you can use to build blog topics around.

6. Competitor analysis

As well as brainstorming your own ideas, you can always take inspiration from your competitor’s content. You can do this by taking a look at the search engine results pages for any topics you would like to write about. You can establish what topics are performing well and what you could do to put your own unique spin on them.

7. Structure your digital content

The structure of your digital content is just as important as the content itself - here are some points you need to consider.

Where will you place your blog content on your website?
Are your blogs going to cover a variety of topics? If so, you’ll need to implement a tagging structure, so users can easily navigate between topics and find the answers they’re looking for.
Your URL architecture: it’s best to keep your blog content in a ‘blog’ or ‘news’ subfolder, linked to the main hub. This sends a strong signal to search engines as to where your content sits and makes it easier for users to find your blog content.
Use internal links within your blogs: These are a must. You should ensure all of your pages have at least one internal link pointing towards them - if not, they’re unlikely to be discovered by potential customers.

8. Get writing!

Once you’ve worked your way through the above stages and have prepared your very own content schedule, you’re good to go! Throughout your blogs, remember to link back to any relevant pages on your website - for example, if you’re looking for help with your SEO, be sure to check out our SEO packages!

Happy writing! If you have any questions about building your blog content strategy, get in touch by filling in this short form, or dropping us an email at hello@theunderdogagency.co.uk. We’ll be there to walk you through the next steps of your digital marketing journey.

Guest User