Guiding your content with organic SEO marketing (and repurposed furniture)
You have a business. Let’s say that business sells custom repurposed furniture. Your dining tables are beautiful, your reupholstered chairs lovingly hand-crafted – and no one has ever heard of you. Your first thought might be to hire a Columbus online marketing firm to build a website, and you’d be right. But once your site is live, how do you climb in the search engine optimization (SEO) game without breaking the bank in pay-per-click advertising? The answer is a compelling and dynamic blog.
Blogs are often underused, under-appreciated and all too frequently abandoned. Many bloggers start with good intentions, only to be overwhelmed by the thought of squeezing out content weekly or daily. Your number one defense against losing steam or losing track is a powerful blog editorial calendar to set goals, track progress and efficiently create valuable content. Here’s how to build your own.
1. Determine high level goals
Before you write a word, you’ll need to set high-level goals. Everyone wants page views, but where are you specifically driving traffic? Do you sell a product and are looking for conversions? Are you trying to build brand loyalty or become an authority in your field? Having high-level goals from the get-go will help you objectively evaluate results and give you a baseline for measuring success. Your goals will help act as a compass, continually keeping your content focused and meaningful.
2. Conduct keyword research
Any effective blog editorial calendar, whether it’s internal or part of a Columbus SEO agency’s overall strategy, incorporates hard-hitting keywords. That means once your objectives are in place, you should use tools like Moz or Google Adwords to focus your blog posts on researched keywords and phrases.
Keywords serve several critical functions: boosting search engine optimization (SEO), providing an umbrella for your topics and creating metrics to measure the success of your high-level goals. Having real numbers behind your content will show what’s working and help direct future posts.
If your business sells custom repurposed furniture, simple research will turn up related terms your potential customers are searching for like ‘modern home furnishing,’ ‘solid wood furniture’ and ‘interior designing.’ A little investigating could reveal a whole slew of keywords and endless blogging opportunities you might never have considered.
3. Establish topics centered around your themes and keywords
Having keywords in place will naturally steer you toward general topics to blog about. Your furniture business could plan weekly posts based on themes like decorating trends, reworking salvaged materials and DIY projects. Not only will posts like these boost your SEO with keyword-centric content, but they’re also a huge value-add for your audience while also helping cement you as an authority in your market.
4. Brainstorm post ideas
It’s time for a gut check. If you’re currently blogging for your brand, how often are the posts about you and how often are they useful for your audience? One key to building brand loyalty through content is value-add. When you begin brainstorming initial story ideas, ask yourself if you’re just tooting your own horn, or if the content truly inspires, empowers or otherwise excites your audience.
Using your initial themes and keywords as a springboard, list several possible posts for each. Let’s go back to our repurposed furniture business. If you want to start a Monday series on DIY projects, you might make a list of potential case studies to transform into step-by-step guides (plus, Google loves a good list). Or if one of your keywords is “shabby chic furniture,” which has an average monthly search of 942,900, you might write an interior decorating post detailing how to incorporate the trend into your home without it looking like a bohemian paradise.
5. Solidify your master calendar
Armed with your topics and keywords, the final step is solidifying a master calendar. Having a clear blueprint is even more critical when there are multiple people blogging and supervisors who need to approve content.
Create a collaborative Excel or Google spreadsheet with columns for topic, author, keyword to target, publish date and possible reference links. Not only will a master calendar keep you on course, but it will also keep your team focused on the same goals.
The payoff
After about a month of consistent blogging, you’ll be able to dive into your analytics to see what’s working and what’s not. Staying on top of your Google Analytics will let you know which blog posts your audience is reading the most, time on site, how they got there and other data that will help you optimize your content.
Content may be king, but it’s up to you to lead your brand’s kingdom. By taking a good look at your analytics each month, you’ll be able to continuously refocus your keywords and post topics in order to give your audience exactly what they’re craving – personalized, valuable content.
If your blog needs an overhaul, it’s time to look for a Columbus SEO agency that can give you the guidance and copywriting expertise your brand craves. Give the Cement Marketing team a call at 614-564-9216 or email daniella@cementmarketing.com.