Creating Content for your Keywords
Now that you have chosen your keywords, the next step is to create the actual content. But how do you ensure that you are creating the best content for your audience?
In today's episode of Search Engine Optimization Tips and Tricks, Tim gives you his personal strategy for deciding what type of content he creates for his keywords.
What to Listen For
01:40 - Tips on analyzing the current top 10 search results
03:13 - Tips on comparing to SEMrush
04:11 - Reasons to do this
Transcript
What type of content should you create for your keywords?
Welcome back to another episode of Search Engine Optimization Tips and Tricks. My name is Tim Jennings and I’m the VP of People and Technology at Soulheart- a digital marketing agency that partners with companies and organizations that are making a positive impact on the world. On today’s episode I want to talk about what type of content you should be creating for your keywords in order for search engines to show YOU in the search results page.
I want to start by saying that you should have a general idea on what you want to produce and you should already have done your keyword-research. If you haven’t, I would suggest going back and listening to my last episode where I give you the top 3 keyword-research tools that I use in order to decide exactly what search terms, otherwise known as keywords, that I’m going to target with my content.
Once you know your keywords, you need to plan out the type of content you are going to produce for those keywords. Knowing what type of content is needed gives you a big advantage over your competitors. The search engine algorithms are smart and are going decide what they think the user is wanting to fulfill their search inquiry. You can’t just assume a written blog post is what search engines are going to show. Sometimes, most users who search for the chosen keyword prefer a video, or an infographic, or some other type of content like audio. And then there are occasions where a combination of multiple types are desired.
The first thing I do when deciding what type of content I need to create is I go to google and simply search for the keyword I have decided on. The first 10 results will give you some great insight into what types of content google is rewarding right now. Then you go through the results one-by-one and take notes on the type of content you see from each page. I like to do this in a spreadsheet or a google sheet. In the first column I enter the url, in the second column I enter the type of content that that url has, making sure to mention everything I see (text, video, images, infographics, audio, etc), in the 3rd column I enter the word count for the page, in the 4th column I input any other notes I deem as important. That can include any patterns you see on the page, if the page has a bunch of headlines and subheadings, if the page has an faq or a table of contents, etc.). I do that for all 10 of the first 10 results.
You should start to see a pattern of things that the majority, if not all, of websites have in common. That gives you insight into the thought process of the algorithm.
After I have my spreadsheet completed, I then go into SEMrush and run a content gap analysis. SEMrush will run an analysis on the top results and give you some feedback and insights.
Then after that analysis is done I download it and compare what SEMrush provided against what I determined. Oftentimes, especially if you’re new at SEO, SEMrush will find things that you missed and you can then go back and add it to your spreadsheet. You may also find things that SEMrush didn’t pick up on. I find patterns are something that I can spot that the tool can’t. There’s always going to be limitations to tools, that’s why I start with my own observations. That doesn’t mean the tools are worthless. They show me things all the time that I would have missed if it weren’t for their reports.
Because algorithms are always changing and improving, oftentimes, you’ll find different urls may have different forms of content. I’m going to cover why I think this is a great discovery in a moment so please, don’t let that frustrate you!
But before I move on, I feel like it’s necessary to point out that we aren’t doing this research to simply copy what is already out there. I can’t tell you how many times I have talked to people about their content plans and found they were simply going to do what everyone else is already doing. Researching your competition is essential but if you’re just going to do what has already been done, what’s the point? You aren’t going to convince the search engines that somehow your content is more relevant than what their algorithms have already deemed as the best of the best.
Instead, what you need to do is take the information you gathered during your research and come up with a game plan on how you can produce BETTER and MORE RELEVANT content than your competitors that better fulfills the searchers intent. That’s why earlier I mentioned that when you see multiple formats like one site being text heavy, another having videos, and a different site had audio or infographics, you can’t let that frustrate you. This is actually a GOOD THING! That tells me that the algorithm hasn’t decided exactly what they think the searcher wants. So I’m going to create content with multiple content types that my competitors are doing individually. That makes my content more valuable because it is more advanced and complete in the eyes of search engines.
Once You’ve done all that, you now have the data you need to decide what type of content to produce. It’s time to get to work creating.
As always, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that if this sounds like a headache or you just don’t have the time to do a proper content strategy, pass it off to an expert. When I tell you that this is what I LOVE to do, I mean every word of that. Shoot me an email and let’s chat about how me and my team at Soulheart can partner with you to take your company or organization to the next level. You can email at tim@soulheart.co or check out our website soulheart.co
Have a great day everyone!
So what?
Creating relevant content for your audience is how you grow as an organization. Not only does the topic need to be interesting, but the content type itself needs to fit your audience.
If this seems overwhelming, Soulheart is here to help. Our team of experts, like Tim, love to create and execute content strategies.
Let’s keep in touch.
