Step 1: What content should be on the website?
First, take a look at your keyword analysis, or at the very least, carry out this basic analysis yourself. Keyword analysis will tell you what people are searching for and how they are searching for it. It will also reveal the problems people are trying to solve in relation to your business.
Then, write blog posts that address these issues. This way, you’ll become not just a seller, but also a trusted source of information. If the blog is useful, people will share it with one another. And once it has a larger readership, you can get in touch with an online magazine and offer your articles and expertise. Not only will this boost your brand, but you’ll also gain valuable backlinks.
PREPARE A KEYWORD ANALYSIS FOR ME
A keyword analysis also provides you with the vocabulary you should use when speaking to customers. We encountered this issue with a major manufacturer of kitchen appliances.
The company, which sells exclusive „cooker hoods“, insisted on calling the product a „steam extractor“ (instead of a „cooker hood“) to protect its brand and maintain an impression of uniqueness. Based on our keyword analysis, we discovered that the phrase „steam extractor“ is searched for far less frequently, meaning the company was missing out on potential customers.
To resolve the situation, we created a series of landing pages for the client that targeted the keyword “cooker hood”, even though the site menu only uses the term “steam extractor”. And it is precisely these kinds of terminology issues that this blog will help you resolve.
Relevant content with keywords and backlinks will boost your organic search results. Running a blog therefore pays off in the long run.
Step 2: What content do you already have on your website?
Take a step back and look at the content you already have on your site. In other words – carry out a content audit.
Create a clear table, for example, containing the article title, a brief description, meta tags and the keywords the text targets. Do these target keywords match your keyword analysis? Does the chosen language suit your target audience? Is the content useful? If you answered ‘yes’ three times, congratulations. If not, start by editing your existing content and only then develop new content.
Step 3: Create a content strategy and editorial plan
Now that you know what content you need and what you have, you know what belongs on the blog. Prepare at least a simple editorial plan. To start with, an Excel spreadsheet with the following details will suffice:
- Headline
- Lead
- Meta tags
- Keyword
- When and where the article should be published (blog, social media, etc.)
You can gradually expand your editorial plan to include further details, such as the persona you wish to target, the desired reader response (submit an enquiry, comment on the article, like it on Facebook) and so on.
Target each article at a single search query. You can find information online about how many times a keyword should appear in the text. That is nonsense. Always write your text so that it reads well to users. That is the most important criterion for search engines.
Also focus on the so-called ‘long tail’. These are key phrases with more than three words, which, although searched for by few people, have a high conversion rate. They are phrases containing concrete and very specific queries – ‘how to build a house for 1 million’, ‘red Nike running shoes’ and the like.
Throughout the summer, we’ll be publishing articles on how to create and manage a blog. Keep an eye on our updates and create a successful blog for your business over the summer.