Content Marketing SEO Strategy – Part 1 Keyword Research

This is part of a 5 part series on our content marketing SEO strategy.
Part 1 – Keyword Research
Part 2 – Blogging
Part 3 – Social Media
Part 4 – Landing Pages
Part 5 – Content Optimization

We think a good SEO strategy is one that revolves around one thing and one thing only. Content. Yes, at ConvertWithContent, content is our best friend. We eat, sleep, dream content. Why? Because we know it works.

With a solid content marketing strategy in place you also have a good SEO strategy in place. In case you need a refresher crash course on SEO, you can read this article here.

The one thing you need to know about getting good SEO results and higher rankings is the power of acquiring links. In order to rank higher you need more sites linking back to your site. You might be asking yourself, “If back links are so important, why is she preaching content and not telling me to go out and buy back links?” Buying back links is an old-school ineffective and harmful strategy. Yes, you want links. But you want REAL, ORGANIC and AUTHENTIC links. Creating content is the best way to get them.

What does a content marketing SEO strategy entail?

Ready to say good bye to old-school thinking about SEO and into the modern world? Here’s what you need to know about your new content marketing strategy.

Keyword Research

Ask yourself this, “In an ideal world, my website would come up #1 for what keywords?” Now write that down. This is the start of your research. Now, the keywords you wrote are probably not the best keywords for your exact business. But it’s a start. Your keywords should be those that are competitive enough to give you good traffic, but also have an opportunity for your business. If you own a car detail company in Louisville, trying to rank for “car detail” nationally isn’t actually the best strategy. While yes, it will bring you a ton of traffic, a lot of it won’t be the right traffic. The right traffic turns into buyers and customers. The wrong traffic turns into a big fat nothing.

You want to think about short tail and long tail keywords. Short tail keywords are very competitive. They are competitive because they can be found on many different websites. So to rank highly for those specific keywords you need to compete with millions of websites that also use that keyword phrase as well. Keywords like “credit repair”, “women’s clothing”, and “DUI attorney” are short tail keywords.

If you take a look at these short tail keywords, you’ll see that the exact keyword phrase is featured on a lot of different sites.

“Credit repair” shows up on 3 million sites on Bing and 6.3 million on Google.

“Women’s clothing” shows up on 13.5 million sites on Bing and 38.7 million sites on Google.

“DUI Attorney” shows up on 600,000 sites on Bing and 624,000 sites on Google.

If you want to rank #1 for any of these keywords you have to beat out a lot of other websites.

Long tail keywords on the other hand are less competitive. They have lower search volume but they are easier to rank for and can bring you better niche traffic. Besides the competitiveness, they also allow you to create content that is so super targeted towards that exact keyword. “Do I need a credit repair company” is a keyword phrase that would bring you someone who is looking for a company like yours if you are in the credit repair business.

I think it is best to find those short tail keywords and turn them into long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are going to be easier to rank for and will give you that really good traffic that converts. The easiest way to find relevant long term keywords is to look at Google’s suggestions and related searches.

Credit Repair

Once you start to get a hang of it, you’ll want to come up with at least 25 keywords that you want to start ranking for. The more you can come up with, the better off you will be. Go ahead, aim for one hundred. 🙂

Now that you have your keywords all squared it’s time to create your content strategy around those keywords.

This is part of a 5 part series on our content marketing SEO strategy.
Part 1 – Keyword Research
Part 2 – Blogging
Part 3 – Social Media
Part 4 – Landing Pages
Part 5 – Content Optimization