5 Things to Consider When Taking a Content-First Approach For SEO

1. Who Are You Writing For?

By identifying your target audience and tailoring your content to them, you will see improved results from your content. In order to create content that is interesting to your audience you need to understand who they are. Be specific, not every piece of content you put out needs to be for every segment of your customer base.

Creating personas for your target audience is a great way to start with identifying who you are writing for. Analyzing the different parts of your customer base and dividing them by demographics, interests, skills etc. allows you to understand who it is that is engaging with the content you are making.

Now that you know who you are creating the content for, it’s time to figure out what they want to know. A content-first strategy relies on the idea that the content is valuable to the reader. Identify the problem you solve with your business and use your content to show the people reading how you can provide a solution for them in a meaningful way.

The personas mentioned can be used as a jumping off point for determining what to create. Look at what the different groups within your target market want and what they find valuable about your solution.

By creating content that people want to see you will start observing improved SEO results by having them stay on your sight for longer and sharing the link with others. These results, in tandem with the technical aspects of your site, will boost your SEO performance and see you race up the results page ahead of your competition.

Looking at what your competitors are doing and seeing what works for them is an important part of developing your own strategy. If you are lacking behind your competition, try and see what types of content they are putting out that is succeeding for them and apply it to your own company. This can also be a good opportunity to see if their approach has any weaknesses or areas for improvement that you might be able to take advantage of. Looking within your own industry at competitors is a good place to start, but you can also look elsewhere and see what successful companies are doing to set themselves apart.

You shouldn’t copy exactly what your competition is doing but instead use it as an inspiration for what you can create in the future. If they are uploading blogs that give advice relevant to their industry, then you can do the same. It is important that you don’t copy the exact same topics they use every time. Avoid copying their every move instead use it as inspiration to identify techniques and incorporating that to help you get one step ahead.

Just like with any other approach to SEO, it is important to have a consistent schedule of when your content will be released. But since you are focusing on quality, it will be difficult to keep up the same quantity that you were able to output before. You will want to create a schedule or calendar to ensure that there is a steady flow of content released. Having a lower overall output of new content is OK, if what is being put out is higher quality than what you were making before.

One of the most important factors that a piece of quality content will be judged by is accuracy. If the information presented is not correct, then it will seem disingenuous and therefore lower quality. Do thorough research into the topics that you are creating content around. You don’t need to become an expert on the topic, but you should know enough to feel confident in creating and sharing content related to the topic. You will be creating content that is relevant to your business and industry, so none of what you are writing should be entirely new to you.

It is also important to proofread everything you post to ensure there are no spelling or grammar errors. These mistakes lead to an unprofessional feel and lowers the trustworthiness of the content. Take time to go over everything a few times before it gets posted to ensure its all up to scratch.

A content first approach to SEO can yield impressive results for your business. With the focus being on the actual content of what is posted, you have a high chance of surviving any changes to search engine algorithms. By creating meaningful content that people are interested in seeing, you can create a future proof content strategy that doesn’t need to be micromanaged to chase trends for its success. By asking who is reading your content and identifying what they want to know, you can create content that people will want to engage with. By looking at what others in the space are doing and learning from their successes and failures you can improve your own content without needing to learn through you own trial and error tests. Posting continently and with a high level of accuracy and presentation will give you a leg up in the never-ending battle for result page supremacy.

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