Content remains one of the key principles to succeeding in getting good search rankings in Search Engines.
Many people misunderstand this and create content for the sake of having more content. Unfortunately that is not going to get you very far.
For the purpose of this article, we will only be looking at how Content, specifically how “content planning with key-phrases” adds to SEO success, and won’t be talking about the other hundreds of influencers to success.
Content & Key-phrase Planning as Part of a SEO Campaign
Every SEO campaign should be combined with a good content strategy.
Content strategies should be created against the following criteria:
- Client industry
- Client business goals
- Target audience
- Keyword search demand (for their target audience)
- Content expanders/amplifiers – we won’t discuss this in this article.
The second-last point is where I see many companies stumble.
Content Planning Based on Search Demand
Any SEO worth their salt understands this most basic principle: In order to gain a) more targeted traffic for the client AND b) fulfil the client business objectives we work with key-phrase demand.
Now, key-phrase demand HAS to be within the parameters of the defined, and allocated key-phrases for the client. (We do that as step 1 in ANY SEO foundation campaign). Using these key-phrases we then, on a monthly basis, check key-phrase performance on SERP (Search Engine Results Page) against real-time key-phrase demand (how many people are searching on that phrase) over a predefined time – usually the last month.
Where Companies Get This Wrong
Where I see things go very wrong, quite frequently, is where content creators use ANY closely-relevant, or worse, trending term to create articles. Usually these content creators are not working alongside their SEO team counterparts, or don’t have one to work with, or worse, are taking instruction directly from the client.
The result is that maybe you got lucky and using a trending term got you some traffic, but did it answer your business goals? Did you get more sign-ups, or sell more products? I didn’t think so.
Let’s not even start on badly written content that is much ado about nothing, or worse, AI generated…
If your team is producing a lot of content and you’re not seeing your bottom line improve, get in touch with us to analyse and improve your content plan.