Semalt: How To Prepare An SEO-CM (SEO + Content Marketing) Strategy That Will Help You Attract Valuable Traffic And Increase Sales



Content marketing is an essential part of your digital marketing strategy. However, you cannot create content and expect good results without a proper SEO strategy. One of the forms of an effective shop and product promotion is a blog. Millions of how-to posts are published on the internet every day, so in order to compete with them, your content should stand out. This is where the SEO-CM strategy comes into play.

How SEO and content work together

Imagine that you run a cosmetics store and any woman could be your target customer. Suppose one is looking for a Mother's Day gift and wondering what cosmetic to choose and where to buy it. Where do you think she will be looking for clues? She will probably use a search engine: she will enter a keyword and open one of the first results, where she will find the answer to her questions.

This is where SEO works. Positioning activities are performed so that the content reaches the potential customer. When you prepare the keyword-focused content your customers are looking for, you improve your brand visibility in the search engine, improve website traffic and increase your sales in the store. If you've been creating your content haphazardly so far and hoped to get some of it high in search results, it's time to make some changes. You need an SEO-CM strategy tailored to your business.

How to create a marketing strategy step by step to achieve the synergy of SEO and content marketing


1. Define your goals

Start with the end in mind. Ask yourself, "What do I really want to achieve?" Do you want to increase sales in the shop? Or are you making money from advertising and would like to increase traffic to your website?

If you are mainly trying to increase your product sales, you should focus on making your product pages attractive. In addition, these pages should contain relevant information and be optimised for search and conversion.

If your website operates as an advertising model and its goal is to attract new readers through search engines, you should focus on creating a large quantity of content that responds to the needs of users.

2. Conduct your competition analysis

Adapting your business to the realities of the ever-changing competition is important in SEO-CM strategy both in domestic and foreign markets. Market analysis is an important part of any strategy.

Tips for conducting such an analysis

Use the Dedicated SEO Dashboard tool - with it, you can examine for what and how many keywords the competition is ranking in the organic search results. Furthermore, you can compare this with the number of keywords you are visible for and write related articles on your blog, thus reducing the distance between you and the competition.



This tool also has features through which you can prepare an analysis of your blog in terms of the most important indicators and compare this data with your potential competitors. This kind of statement will surely answer the question of how far you are from your competitors. Especially if the second column is about your website and the remaining columns show data from competitors' websites.

3. Know your audience



All kinds of surveys or analytical software will help you better understand and understand the needs of your target group. Consider developing personas, and then adjust your strategy and communication activities to their expectations.

If your product or service is aimed at teenagers, you can focus on articles with less text and more graphics or videos. It is also worth making sure that your website is optimized for mobile devices.

4. Think about what makes your brand different



You need to figure out what makes your brand truly unique. After analyzing the competition, you will be smarter about the solutions used by them.

If you intend to appear on the grocery market, and your competitors, for example, name their stores as animals, you can go one step further. Consider whether it is not worth choosing the name of the king of animals, that is, a lion, for a new brand. This will allow you to stand out from the competition.

5. Audit the current content

It's easy to build a blog from scratch when you schedule your articles according to a previously prepared SEO-CM strategy. The situation is slightly different in the case of websites where materials were created without a previously prepared plan. In such a situation, it will be necessary to audit the current content. Thanks to it, you can verify, among others, its value or the occurrence of the phenomenon of cannibalization (a situation where, from the level of one website, Google sees two URLs corresponding to one query).

6. Analyze the keywords

The purpose of the content on the website should be to attract and engage users. To achieve this goal, you should know their needs. According to a study by Databox.com, as many as 66% of experts believe that keyword analysis is very important in developing new content ideas. There are many proven tools that will support you in such an analysis. For example, the Dedicated SEO Dashboard is a very powerful tool for such a task.



With this tool, you can check whether a given keyword is gaining or losing popularity recently.

If you select keywords for future articles, also pay attention to the difficulty of the term (this is a measure of how difficult it is to rank first in organic search results).

7. Make sure you have an appropriate taxonomy

Taxonomy is the ordering of information. A blog is used to categorize posts by common topics or attributes that are found in related articles. There are two commonly used types of taxonomy:

Remember

A strong taxonomy creates relationships between posts and makes it easier for users to find the information that is most relevant to them. An important element in the process of creating taxonomy on a blog is the detection of possible targeting of the same keywords to two or more types of subpages (product categories, tags, blog categories). This can lower the rank of key phrases and have a negative impact on sales.

8. Create an editorial calendar

Once you know who you will be targeting and for what purpose, you can create your own editorial calendar. It is a content publication schedule that organizes your work and informs you when you are obliged to publish new materials and what type of content it should be. Thanks to this solution, you will consistently stick to the previously prepared strategy and avoid the problem of developing a concept at the last minute.

9. Use the synergy of content marketing and SEO



If you're about to optimize your website content, take care of the following:

How to measure the effects of the actions?

There is no sense in carrying out activities without effective measurement of their effects. By using tools such as the Dedicated SEO Dashboard or Google Search Console, you can check the position of key phrases. Using these tools, you can monitor the visibility of the website for phrases appearing in the top 100, top 50, top 10 or top 3 search results. In addition, you can check whether the actions taken result in increased traffic and revenue.

Summary

Creating an effective SEO-CM strategy is not easy and takes time. Nevertheless, it is a game worth the candle. A carefully prepared strategy will allow you to attract valuable traffic to your website and increase the sale of your products and services. Good luck!

If you need to learn more about the subject of SEO and website promotion, we invite you to visit our Semalt blog.