Unless you have a solid SEO content strategy, all of the content that you create for your website is just guesswork. The content might do an outstanding job of increasing your search engine rankings and driving customers to your site, or it might be completely useless. Developing a strategy that matches your overall online marketing goals is critical to making your content do real work for you and actually help you meet your SEO goals. It can also help you justify your SEO activities to other people in the organization without intimate knowledge of online marketing.

Three Parts of Every Great Content Strategy

1. Set your goals for your content campaign and the tactics you’ll use to reach them.

2. Show different types of content that are verifiably proven to be successful to use as models for future content development.

3. Convince others in the organization that content is about more than keywords and that it can serve as an education resource for customers.

Three Steps to Building Your Content Strategy

Step 1: Performing content inventory

The first step to take in building SEO content strategy is to do a content inventory of the items you currently have on your site. How long this takes will depend on the number of pages and items on your current site. However, it doesn’t need to be an arduous task. You can automate much of this process instead of having to manually hunt for content on a page-by-page basis.

Chances are that your site is build around a site map that breaks your pages out by categories. You can discover these content groups by using a site crawler like Screaming Frog. Once you do this, you can review your groups by applying some common sense. Ask if the groups share common expected visitor responses and are small enough that you can reasonably work with them.

Step 2: Gathering data

Once you’ve categorized your current content, you need to analyze how it is performing. There are many factors that are overly emphasized by some SEO experts such as total page views, time spent on a page and bounce rates. You’ll get a stronger sense about the performance and potential power of your content by looking at social factors such as:

• Number of Facebook Likes, shares and comments
• Posts about the content on other social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter
• Votes and +1s on social media sites such as Reddit and Google

You can also look at the pages themselves to see if it’s received reviews or comments from outside readers. Finally, you can use a range of analytical tools to track readers’ movements after reading a piece of content to see if they directly or indirectly lead to sales and conversions.

Language data is also an important piece of the puzzle. Track certain elements of each page on content such as:

• Total words per page
• Having paragraph, title and description tags
• The reading level and ease of the content through standards such as Flesch-Kincaid
• The overall usage of headings
• OGP (Facebook) and Twitter markups

Step 3: Evaluating your conclusions

Take a hard look at the data you’ve collected. You can usually find some interesting trends based on your data that will inform your overall SEO content strategy. You might discover that certain keywords in the title generate a high number of social media shares. Or that the length of an article is related to how popular it is. Use these trends to come up with a clear content strategy that leverages these stats in order to make it easier for people without SEO knowledge to know why you are approaching content in a certain way.

Website owners and operators typically believe that having more content on your site is better for SEO purposes, as it gives you more chances to use keywords and create valuable links. But this has changed recently as Google has instituted measures to make the quality of content as important and its quality and to punish websites that have spammy, low-quality content on their site. Having large amounts of low-quality content on your site actually serves as a negative ranking signal for Google and can lead to penalties with your search ranking.

An example of this is performing content curation on your website as an SEO tactic. This can mean creating pages with resources on a category related to your business or having a blog that posts links to relevant outside news articles. On the surface, this is a way to add content to your site and help your search ranking. But the truth is that it might not help you at all.

Google’s Matt Cutts recently answered a question relating to sites that curate content or post duplicate content. The gist was that only sites that are of the highest publishing quality will get a benefit from curating content. This means sites like the New York Times’ website that have a highly recognizable brand based on their content. It’s difficult to have something published in the New York Times and the content is curated by professional editors.

In fact, if you curate content using an algorithm or other automated process, Google might actually punish you. This is because this is essentially what Google does with their search engine results, only they likely do it better. Google sees automatically-generated curated content pages as inferior forms of competition and punishes them.

Most sites will fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. This means that while you might not get punished for having curated content on your site, you likely won’t see many benefits. This can change if you do some things to make your curated content stand out and create signals to Google about the quality of your pages. Getting commentary from experts in your field and using the rel=author tag will increase your credibility in the eyes of Google. If you can pull data from sources that are not available to Google or post content quicker than Google, you also will be seen as providing something of unique value through your curated content.

When most people think about how public relations tactics can help their SEO campaigns, the first thing that comes to mind is to write press release. While it’s true that well-crafted, keyword-rich and interactive news releases crafted by press release writing services can help your SEO and your marketing efforts, press releases are far from the only public relations tactics that can boost your search engine rankings.

Some of these tactics involve establishing your company as an authoritative brand within the space; others involve marketing efforts that also benefit others. All of these tactics can help you generate publicity and help with your SEO:

Make Charitable Contributions: Being a good corporate citizen serves several purposes. A donation to a worthy charity helps people in need and can be a tool for your own promotion. Work with the charity to promote your donation. You can get creative and come up with a charity angle that is unique and will attract media attention.

Hold Unique Contests: Running a contest like a scholarship essay competition or product giveaway serve several purposes. They can generate social media links to serve as social signals; they can provide drive brand awareness; and they can provide reasons for media stories that will also boost your SEO. Making the contests unique and interesting — such as a food eating contest — helps.

Be a Guest Contributor: Pitch the executives at your company as “guest contributors” to local, national and industry media outlets and blogs. If customers read intriguing content with their names attached to it, they will think of them — and your brand — as thought leaders in the field. You can use ghostwriters for the content if needed and attach a name later.

Serve as Guest Talent: Many industries have TV or radio shows specific to their market. Get your executives to appear on these shows. It will help your brand and create links from the shows’ websites that will boost your SEO.

Speak at Industry Events: Getting your executives in front of convention attendees is a great tool for increasing visibility and creating links. You can host your own event as well.

Google recently announced the launch of a new feature that places search results for “in-depth” articles of more than 2,000 words prominently on its Search Engine Results Page (SERP). It’s the logical next step of Google’s campaign to improve the overall quality of search results. Previous updates such as Panda had punished low-quality and off-topic content. Featuring in-depth articles highly on a results page serves as the reward for people such as SEO copywriting services which produce high-quality and relevant content.

In terms of SEO, the addition of in-depth articles has the potential to be a game-changer. With these articles receiving such a prominent place on Google’s SERP, it makes sense to put significant emphasis on creating this sort of content. Whether you plan on using outside article writing services like eVisible or creating the content yourself, it’s important to know the basics of how to create the right copy and specifically why evergreen content is so important for these in-depth articles.

What is Evergreen Content?

Much like its name implies, evergreen content are articles and blog posts that are always “fresh” and never get old. This means the content isn’t related to news stories that will change over time or become irrelevant. The ideal bit of evergreen content gives readers information that will as useful to them years later as it is when it is first published.

Why is this so important? By making this content relevant over a long period of time, you will be able to see the benefits of traffic and site rankings from it for months or even years to come. Finding the right topics is often one of the most important elements in creating great evergreen content.

You can use many of the same tools that you would use for your SEO research when planning your evergreen content. Keyword research tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner will give you an idea of the types of keywords that are being searched for over long stretches of time. You can augment this research by tracking your older posts using Google Analytics to see which topics perform the best or use Google Trend to identify hot topics that may be relevant over the long haul.

Best Topics for Evergreen Content

As you read articles on the Internet, you’ll notice certain types of articles come up again and again. This is because their formats lend themselves naturally to evergreen content. When you are looking at creating in-depth articles for SEO purposes, consider some of these story ideas:

• “Best” Lists (“Best Restaurants in New York”)
• Top 5 or Top 10 Lists ( “Top 10 Tourist Attractions in London”)
• “How To” Articles (“How to Fix a Leaky Faucet”)
• Beginner’s Guides (“Beginner’s Guide to SEO”)
• Funny/Worst Compilations (“Worst Band Names”)

Writing Your Evergreen Content

The first thing to do when writing your evergreen content is to understand your audience. If it’s a technical audience, you can use more complicated and advanced terms. From there, do your research and use that as the basis for the outline to your article. With more than 2,000 words to write, it’s easy for in-depth articles to lose focus without an outline.

More than anything else, you need to make sure that your content is truly evergreen and that it’s is uniquely valuable. If it’s information that people can get somewhere else, it won’t be as valuable. Even if it’s on a topic that’s been written about before, put your own spin on it. This will increase the chances that it is shared by readers, increasing overall clicks while also sending valuable social signals to Google about the quality of the piece.

Online content writing is a mixture of artistry and hard-nosed realism. You want to write content that is engaging, intelligent and answers questions that website visitors might have. At the same time, you are writing this content for a reason: you want to gain and retain website visitors and eventually turn them into customers. You also want to help your search engine ranking if possible by using proper SEO tactics in your writing.

Simply put, there are a lot of factors to consider. However, you don’t have to sacrifice quality for usefulness when it comes to online writing. Use the same approaches that providers of content writing services use when they approach creating online copy and you’ll have website content that is ready to be used as conversion bait.

Write About the Benefits of Your Products: Contrary to popular belief, visitors don’t land on your website because they are looking for a solution to their problem. They know that the type of service you provide will help them to solve their problem; they want to know if your particular solution is better than the competition. Instead, promote the benefits of using your product or service – especially when compared to the competition

Use Testimonials to Sell Your Benefits:  Customer testimonials have the power to make an immediate connect with a website visitor. If they see that someone who is “just like them” is enthusiastic about the benefits they received by using your product or service, they are far more likely to be convinced than if they simply are reading sales copy.

Images and Videos Have More Power Than Written Text: It might be rough for a content writer to admit, but pictures and videos can lead to substantially higher conversion rates than pages that are solely text-driven. Images can show customers using your product, compare your product to the competition or be infographics that show valuable data a customer might use to make a purchasing decision. Similarly, video can be used to highlight customer stories and draw the viewer closer to your product. An ideal page would integrate video, pictures and text to tell one seamless story.

Don’t Force a Commitment: You might think that the phrases “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” would mean the same thing when used on an eCommerce site’s button. However, testing has shown that potential customers react to the two phrases in much different ways. Telling a customer to “Buy Now” forces them to consider the act of adding something to their cart as a firm commitment, and often keeps them from following through. Instead, use softer language to encourage customers to build their cart before making a final purchasing decision.

Keep Your Web Pages Simple and Well Thought Out: Nothing hurts conversion rates more than a cluttered web design that obscures the overall message that you want to visitor to have about your products or services. It’s important to keep in mind that simplicity is the key when it comes to web design. You need to determine what the most important impression that you want visitors to have about each page and design it to this.

Often, cluttered web pages happen because the designer don’t have a clear concept of the overall flow of the website; this leads to trying to cram as much information into every page as possible. Putting the time into mapping out each page of the site and what should go on it will alleviate many of these issues.

When it comes to content creation, finding the right balance of information and effective marketing of your business is difficult. One of the driving factors of your content is to get customers, but the best way to do this is to present them with intriguing and useful content that will help them in their business lives. eVisible has years of experience with content marketing services and we’ve learned some of the most common mistakes that businesses make when they create their own content.

Here’s what to avoid when it comes to your own SEO copywriting or any content written by an outside agency:

Unreadable content: When it comes to online content, writing that is crisp, focused and to the point always has the best chance of catching — and holding — the reader’s attention. You want to avoid run-on sentences or using “purple prose.” One way to avoid this is by using the Content Readability score provider offered by eVisible. It will give you an idea of how easily the average reader can process your content.

Diminishing returns: Many content creation campaigns start out with a bang, as companies are brimming with information they want to share with their customers. But in many cases, the quality of the writing quickly declines as the well of immediate story ideas runs dry. Combat this by thinking of questions your customers might be asking, reviewing your competition for story ideas and adding a personal touch to your writing.

Not involving the customers: The best corporate blogs and other online marketing campaigns feel like a conversation between a company and its customers. You can encourage your customers to get active and involved to keep it from feeling like you are simply spitting marketing copy at them. Have them submit pictures of them with your product at famous tourist attractions or unusual sites. Invite customers to write guest posts explaining new or interesting ways they’ve used your product or service. Make sure you make it clear to customers that you own the content they submit to you in order to avoid any legal headaches down the road.

Starting an SEO campaign from scratch can seem like a daunting task. This is especially true in the “new world” of search engine rankings. Algorithm changes such as Google’s Panda and Penguin have changed many of the basic SEO fundamentals. It’s no longer acceptable to create as much content as possible – no matter the quality – or use manipulative links to get clicks. Search engines such as Google are looking for high-quality content and links that get people to stay on a site – and that’s only part of the equation.

If you are launching your SEO campaign, the best bet is to work with professional search engine marketing specialist such as eVisible that can craft an effective campaign and implement the tactics. However, there are many steps that you can take yourself to get your SEO campaign off the ground. Here are five steps that any small business internet marketing professional can do to get immediate SEO traction:

Start a Pay Per Click campaign. While you will want to do keyword research to give you guidance on which keywords to target, you can also do your own testing on a small scale. By investing in small test runs of ads using different keywords, you can see which ones generate clicks and which ones generate more sales – which is always the most important thing.

Build links. You can do this by researching the web pages which have links that are ranking near the top of Internet searches for your targeted keyword. By creating and using a simple email template, you can easily and quickly reach out to hundreds of website owners and start building high-quality links.

Create a Facebook fan page. Facebook fan pages are about more than just increasing your social media presence. They are also an effective tool for SEO purposes in their own right. After all, many Facebook fan pages will come up within the first page of Google and other search engine results.

Get active on Twitter. Just like a Facebook fan page, official Twitter accounts also can rank very highly on Internet searches. And like with Facebook, it’s important to make your Twitter profile as active, complete and dynamic as possible to send the right social signals.

Write great content. If you are an expert in your industry, you can use this knowledge to boost your SEO by writing powerful content. Think about how you can address problems your customers might have and how you can write to grab their attention.

It wasn’t that long ago that quantity was the king when it came to creative content writing. The general feeling was that search engines only tracked the sheer volume of SEO-driven content that a site was producing – regardless of the quality of the writing. This led to an explosion of online content, much of which was lacking in quality or in informative substance.

Eventually, this became a kind of online scourge, as web searchers would frequently have to fight through page after page of “spam” content in order to find useful links. Users were upset, and eventually Internet search engines listened. Updates to search engine algorithms such as Google Panda were implemented specifically to place an emphasis on the quality of the writing. Specifically, content marketing services and individual companies were forced to consider if their content would be considered both useful and relevant to someone searching online.

In today’s search engine world, content can mean a lot more than just words. Infographics, FAQ sections, videos and social media content are all important parts that can add up to powerful SEO content. It’s important to analyze what your competitors are doing to determine the gaps in your content strategy. Here are three steps that you can take during this process:

• Visit a site such as SEMrush (https://www.semrush.com) to determine useful information about the URLs of your competition. Focus on individual rankings for major search terms rather than overall search traffic or sheer volume of ranking keywords. Take a look at the URLs beyond the homepage to see which ones rank highly and what type of content they have.
• Next, go to OpenSiteExplorer (https://www.opensiteexplorer.org) to see the top destination links for your competitors’ high ranking URLs. Find out which supporting content pages are getting a high amount of links back to them.  These pages typically have content that resonates with users and they want to share with others.
• Finally, visit MutualMind (https://www.mutualmind.com) to assess the social landscape. You can use this site to determine which social media sites are the best fit for the type of content that your competitors – and you – are likely to produce. You are looking for content that other people will want to share and become evangelists for.