A Tried-and-Tested Template for Crafting Your SEO Content Strategy

Your content is part of your brand identity. It should support your organization’s mission and business goals. Everything you write about—on your website, social media platforms, blogs, and other marketing materials—becomes what people think about your organization. That’s why you need to have a clear brand voice and brand strategy before creating your content creation and search engine optimization (SEO) goals.

Once your brand voice is well-defined, it’s time to dive into the content marketing strategy process. Whether you’re developing an entire content strategy or just writing an individual piece of content for your website, this process will help you decide whether that content is worth your time to produce.

Below, we’ll dive into how to create the right content for the right audiences and how to choose topics that will give you a realistic chance of building meaningful organic search engine traffic. Here’s how to develop an effective, targeted, and strategically practical SEO content strategy.

Step 1: Start With Keyword Research to Uncover the Best Topics and to Understand Your Audience’s Search Intent

Do you know why people are searching for your priority keywords and thought leadership topics online? Curiosity? To find options? To see reviews? Write a term paper? Make a purchase? To create your best content, you need to uncover the search intent behind the right keywords and topics, focusing on those that align most closely with your business goals.

The easiest way to reveal search intent is to simply put your own search terms and topic ideas into the Google search bar, or use other free tools like KWFinder or Ubersuggest. What results do you get? Are you seeing your competitors? Are you seeing your brand anywhere? Review the results to ensure the existing content aligns with your planned publication, and assess whether your website can realistically compete with the organizations already ranking on the first page. You’re on the right track if you can envision producing similar, yet higher-quality content, compared to what’s already available for your top keywords and topics. If not, you may need to reconsider your topic to ensure it aligns more closely with your business goals.

Step 2: Your Domain Authority vs. Your Competition

Once you uncover your audience’s search intent and choose your priority topics, it’s time to use data to determine what is realistic for your brand to create quality content on. This is where pro tools, such as Ahrefs, Semrush, and BuzzSumo, come in handy.

Let’s take a look at an example. The Thirty Percent Coalition sought to rank for keywords related to the topic of board diversity. First, using Ahrefs, we examined their current Domain Rating (DR), which is an authority score (ranging from 1 to 100) for the overall website. We compared it to the DR of other websites that build content focused on similar keywords. Domain rating is calculated by looking at several factors, including the number and age of backlinks to the website, the quality of those links, and the relevance of the links. The higher the domain rating, the more likely Google is to rank a website’s optimized web pages higher in its search results.

Thirty Percent’s website, with a DR of 51, ranked between the lowest and highest DR competitor websites for their priority keywords, indicating that creating effective content around this topic would be worthwhile.

We were also able to identify the long-tail keyword “how to increase board diversity” as the best opportunity. This was due to its incredibly low difficulty, realistic search volume, and ideal match with the target audience that Thirty Percent was looking to reach. Other keywords had higher search volume, but they were too competitive to use for their initial organic content effort. If their first effort to rank new content is successful, they will be ready to go after the shorter, more competitive keywords that could deliver even more traffic.

Tools like Ahrefs help you quickly understand competitiveness using DR to evaluate what search engine ranking positions are realistic.

Step 3: Create Long-form, Comprehensive Content Written for Humans That Meets Search Marketing Best Practices

You’ve found a topic that aligns with your business goals and the search intent of a key target audience. Now it’s time to write new content or improve existing content to give your website a chance to rank and attract qualified searchers. Using the professional SEO tool Clearscope, you can easily create or enhance content that will move your website up in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Clearscope uses AI and machine learning to process data scraped from Google’s results pages through IBM Watson and Google Knowledge Graph to quickly identify and easily communicate all the relevant subtopics and related keywords and phrases that need to be added to your content to be truly comprehensive and authoritative.

Humans prefer to find easy-to-navigate, comprehensive landing pages that thoroughly cover their search topic. Still, it must also be easy to scan so users can quickly locate the most relevant sections they need. Google favors this kind of content, which has caused a trend of longer content ranking higher (high-ranking content now surpasses 2,000 words for many topics). Our approach, combined with Clearscope, enables clients to create great content that is both engaging for human readers and optimized for on-page SEO, covering both the main topic and numerous related, long-tail topics.

Step 4: Track Results and KPIs to Perfect Your Strategy

To measure success, set up robust analytics tracking. A platform like Google Analytics 4 (GA4) gives you detailed insights into user behavior, conversions, and performance metrics for each page.

Use GA4 to track key performance indicators (KPIs), including organic traffic, time on page, and conversion rates. Compare performance across formats and channels, and refine your approach using data-driven takeaways. For example, high bounce rates may indicate your content isn’t addressing user intent effectively, while clear increases in time spent on page could signal high engagement.

For long-term success, plan your content topics using an editorial calendar. Schedule when you’ll optimize, update, or expand existing content to ensure it remains competitive over time. This is especially important for Google’s algorithms and trending topics.

Start Creating SEO-optimized Engaging Content

SEO content strategy isn’t just about ranking higher; it’s about aligning your brand message with your audience’s needs. By using tools, you can strategically create content that connects, engages, and converts. Leverage keyword research, address pain points, track your KPIs, and don’t forget to optimize continuously.

Whether you’re stepping into digital marketing for the first time or refining an established strategy, creating high-quality, human-centric content is non-negotiable if you want lasting results. Stay ahead of trends, follow best SEO practices, and start building content that truly matters.

Ready to create the best type of content to turn your brand into the thought leader of your industry? Let us help you with all your copywriting and content needs.

FAQs About SEO Content Strategy

Does content strategy help SEO?

Absolutely! A cohesive content strategy ensures that your topics align with your audience’s queries, business goals, and search intent. This improves ranking potential, drives traffic, and boosts conversions.

How do you define the “voice” of a content strategy?

The voice of a content strategy reflects your brand’s identity and values. It should resonate with your target audience’s personas and address their pain points, goals, and objectives using consistent language and tone across all formats. First, keep your audience in mind by building fleshed-out personas based on real-life case studies and pain points. If you’re still unsure of your voice, research a few brands that stand out to you and explore their website, editorial, and social messaging. How would you describe each voice, and how can your brand benefit from a similar (or different) approach? Once you have a better understanding of who you are, create a brand style guide to help you practice consistency across all channels.

What is the most important part of content strategy?

While all parts are vital, understanding your audience’s needs and search intent is foundational to effective marketing. Tailored keyword selection and crafting content that aligns with this intent will often have the most significant impact.