Content marketing relies on search engine optimized (SEO) content to increase brand awareness, drive leads through the sales funnel, and convert sales. To create an SEO content marketing plan, you need to define your audience, set goals, and research keywords and competitors. Next, identify content for each stage of the sales funnel, set up a publishing calendar, publish the content, then measure your results and improve your efforts.

1. Define your audience

Defining one or more target audiences is an essential foundational step when creating an SEO content marketing plan. Your target audience’s industry, interests, pain points, and purchasing behavior will determine what type of content is produced and published. It will also drive keyword research efforts and contribute to your content’s overall SEO strategy.

One way to define various detailed target audiences is to create customer personas, also known as buyer personas or customer profiles, based on different ideal customer types.

2. Set measurable goals for your SEO content marketing plan

Set specific, measurable goals for what you want to achieve with your content marketing strategy. In turn, these goals will inform the strategy on the type and amount of published content needed to achieve these goals. To be measurable, make sure each goal specifies the growth or production required over a period of time.

Some examples of content marketing goals:

(1) Increase network traffic to small business websites

(2) Generate potential customers by submitting web forms online

(3) Increase sales (online or offline)

(4) Up-sell or cross-sell

(5) Increase your email marketing contact list

(6) Improve customer loyalty

(7) Increase the frequency of repeat customers

(8) Expand the brand’s influence online

(9) Use Google to improve domain name authority

(10) Improve online search rankings

(11) Get backlinks from high-quality websites

3. Research keywords and competitor content

Keywords, or SEO keywords, are specific words or phrases you plan to use in your content. In other words, when someone searches online using these keywords, you want your website to rank high in the search engine results pages (SERPs). This is crucial if you want to drive organic traffic to your website, landing pages, YouTube videos, social media pages, and other online marketing content.

There are usually two types of SEO keywords, short-tail keywords (broad) and long-tail keywords (more specific):

(1) Short-tail keywords: One- or two-word general search queries (such as “content marketing”). These keywords usually have high search volume but are also widely used online, so they have high keyword difficulty and are difficult to rank for.

(2) Long-tail keywords: may consist of three to five or even more words (for example, “How to do content marketing for small businesses”). Long-tail keywords are generally easier to rank for, but have lower monthly search volume than broad (short) keywords.

To research your competitors, start by making a list of your top five competitors and study their websites. You can analyze the content and ranking of your site or competitor sites, compare domain to domain, and even see what types of paid ads they are running on Google.

You should also visit the websites of your top five competitors to see what kind of content they are producing and how often they publish new content. Browse their content and see what they are doing to drive web traffic and generate conversions.

Evaluating your competitors’ websites will also show how they stand out in terms of their online content. In turn, you can refine your SEO content marketing strategy to focus on your business strengths, points of differentiation, and most compelling value propositions.

4. Plan content for each stage of the sales funnel

Implement a content marketing strategy that includes creating different content for different stages of the customer journey or buying process, with the goal of helping prospects move to the next stage, rather than trying to cram it all in at once. This helps ensure you don’t overwhelm your prospects with information they’re not ready to receive.

5. Create a content publishing calendar

When first implementing an SEO content marketing plan, start with a manageable timeline. Many companies start publishing a search-optimized blog post per week and then help drive web traffic by sharing links to the content on social media and email marketing newsletters. Other sites publish multiple pieces of content per week, and some even publish several articles per day.

You can use a spreadsheet to create your first content publishing calendar. It can be as simple as having a few columns for expiration or release date, title, keywords, and target customer persona.

6. Publish and distribute content

Now that the plan is in place, put your SEO content marketing plan into action and start publishing and distributing content. There are three basic types of content distribution: owned, earned, and paid. You can control some aspects of content distribution, but not all. For example, placement and promotion of owned and paid distribution types are at your own discretion.

(1) Own content

Owned content exists on websites, social media pages, email marketing newsletters, and more. These are typically blog posts, pages created to explain services or products, and posts created for social media marketing.

(2) Obtained content

Earned content can be customer reviews, but it can also be “earned” when content is shared by anyone outside the company. You can also benefit from reviews people leave about your products or services on your website, as well as feedback on Amazon, Yelp, Facebook, and other review sites.

(3) Paid content

Paid content refers to paying to drive web traffic back to content. For example, you can create Google ads in the form of text or retargeting display ads, social media ads, banner ads on various web or digital publications, or get sponsored content created by influencers to increase your brand awareness , website traffic or sales.

7. Measure results and refine strategies

Progress against the goals set for your overall inbound content marketing strategy should be measured regularly. Additionally, you can measure the success of each piece of content such as Google rankings, page views, conversion rates to leads and sales, web form submissions, and more.

Some basic tools needed to measure results are free to use: Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Google Analytics provides insights into website visitor demographics, conversions (such as web form submissions), and more. Google Search Console allows tracking website rankings for each targeted keyword and measuring the search click-through rate (CTR) of the content.

When you measure the success of your content marketing, you will also uncover opportunities to go back and improve existing content, as well as ways to improve the type and quality of your content in the future. Once you find the right combination of tools and resources, you should see your content rank higher on search engines and users click on your site more.

Content marketing is essential if you want to drive organic traffic to your website through online searches, email marketing, and social media. It supports every stage of the buying cycle, from building awareness and trust to nurturing leads and closing deals. Do your due diligence, research what your competitors are doing, and find search-worthy keywords relevant to your business to start developing a content marketing strategy.