Use Website Analytics in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

On content strategy, what I find most valuable about it is a few things. The first thing is that it really keeps you focused on SEO because when you have a content strategy, you have a plan. So it ensures that you’re intentional about what you’re creating. So rather than just creating downloads or creating writing blog posts, just based on ideas that come to you when inspiration strikes, you have something in place that says, “I need to write this piece at this time, and I need to write this piece at this time and I need to launch this freebie at this time”. Um, especially when it comes to creating continent, SEO for so many business owners, it’s such a foreign language, I’m in a different arena to be working in that I find it’s helpful to have a strategy. You just sort of keep you focused and help you put things together ahead of time. A content strategy is also valuable in terms of getting your SEO straight. So sort of doing the process, we talked about determining topics, doing the keyword research, turning those keywords into articles. I like doing that in three month intervals. So I update my content strategy every three months because it gives me the time to really think about the content that I’m creating and making sure that I’m putting content out there or updating my site in ways that are actually providing value both to my potential customers and clients and to my business and my website as a whole.

Well, a content strategy starts with doing that research, figuring out the topics, getting the key words but as you create a content strategy, you also want to be thinking about a few things: you want to be thinking about themes that might be related to specific holidays or events or, seasons. So seasonality, let’s say around the, around Christmas, um, around Thanksgiving, maybe you’re creating more content that’s holiday related versus in summer you’re creating content that summer related. This all is of course also needs to be relevant to your brand. So knowing which holidays and events, current events, that are related to your brand and pulling that into your strategy. And so you can also use that if you are sitting down to create a content strategy and you have no idea where to start, start with the season, start with the upcoming holiday, that sort of helps you narrow in what you want to be talking about. So when you pull all those pieces together, the final step of creating a content strategy is just putting it into a doc somewhere where it’s easy to access, easy to update. I just use a Google spreadsheet, you can use any spreadsheet and you want to include space for the keyword, the article title, the due date, holding yourself accountable with a due date, even if no one else knows about it is actually surprisingly effective. And then distribution another important part of your content strategy. So creating each piece of content, knowing where you’re going to, where you’re going to share it. So that depends on the audience for that piece of content, right? So maybe your email newsletter is really hyper focused on one sort of niche aspect of your business. Whereas your Facebook page is sort of more of a broad audience. So perhaps your just your distribution plan from one piece of content is for Facebook. You plan on sharing that with your Facebook audience and maybe your Instagram audience, but another piece of content is more specific and more hyper focused on this sort of niche topi, so your distribution plan for that is to put it into your email newsletter. For me, my audience is pretty specific so I know already where I’m going to share it and promote it. But if this is new to you, it’s just a good way to make sure that you’re keeping that hyper-focused lens because you don’t want to be creating content just to create it. You want to be creating content that is going to provide value to you and your customer. so remembering where you’re going to share it helps you remember who you’re writing it for and helps you stay really targeted and making sure that you’re creating content that actually matters.

So I like to revisit my content strategy pretty much every month. I like to just make sure that what I have planned is going to make sense for what is coming up, what’s happening. See if I want to change anything out based on what’s happened the month before. And if you set goals for your content, which I highly recommend, so maybe setting goals for how much traffic you’re going to get, how many blog posts you’re going to write. I like to set goals on a monthly basis. So then checking your goals alongside your content strategy and making sure that the next few months look really great and re upping, so re preparing for the next three months at that time. So I’d say once a month, just look at it, check in, make sure you feel good about where you’re at and then every three months do that whole process again. So starting with figuring out the topics, doing the keyword research, putting it in the doc and then executing over the course of those three months.