Last week we talked about keyword research so this week we’re going to talk about how you use that research to plan out your content. I’ve seen a lot of articles on how to do keyword research, but very often these cut off before it comes to planning your content strategy and actually writing. So this is how you take all that planning and move onto writing content which is optimised for search engines.
Section your Keywords
During the research stage you probably had keywords which are very similar and are about the same topic. If you haven’t already, start grouping the keywords now before content planning so you can see which topics have more keywords, which have less. This will allow you to either research more if needed or help you choose which topics to focus on or which topics will help you create multiple pieces of content.
Rank your Keywords and Sections
Now your sections are clear, you can go through and apply a rank for multiple reasons which will depict how to prioritise each section and keyword. I recommend getting a spreadsheet and ranking from 1-10 for each value and the spreadsheet can be used to add each value and show you the highest and lowest priority more easily. However you can do this differently if it better fits your style of working.
The first value to rank a keyword is how relevant is it to your current topic/niche on your website? Unless your blog strategy is to expand to other topics, a beauty brand keyword wouldn’t be as relevant to a recipe blog as a food item for example. This is a subjective value as it depends on what you think is relevant, as well as your own goals.
The second value is the authority your blog has, and then the authority that those already on page 1 have. For example, a book title keyword would usually have high authority sites like Amazon, Waterstones and Goodreads in it’s first page. So for your keyword sections you should check out who you’re competing with for space, and whether you would have a higher, lower, or similar authority. You would rank higher for this value if the competing pages are lower or similar authority like other blog posts.
Then last and the more quantitive ranking is the volume of searches for that keyword. You can use a free tool like Search Volume or Google Trends. To rank on the same 1-10 scale you would need to enter the search volumes and split numbers into for example, 0-200 = 1, 200-1000 = 2 etc, but this is depending on the numbers shown for your specific keywords.
Which Sections Rank Higher and Lower?
Now that you’ve ranked your keywords and sections compared to your actual blog, you can pick out which topics and/or specific keywords rank higher and lower. This will attribute to the priority you give them when planning content, with high priority content being a larger focus but lower also being involved every so often.
You should plan content for both high and low priority keywords because you never know when a lower ranking keyword may increase in volume, have a higher click-through rate or even just rank easier than your high priorities.
Plan your Editorial Calendar
Based on your keywords and your sections, look at your future month (or two!) and plan our what content you want to include and when. Your editorial calendar should be realistic on timings for you writing the content, but the more you post the more keywords you may rank for as you’ve wrote the content already – it’s a balancing act.
When choosing which content to write, think about your higher priorities as well as your lower priorities. If you’re posting 3 times a week, potentially make one of those posts a lower priority to hit an audience you may not realise you have. The other two should be focused on higher priorities. When creating your editorial calendar, either create notes on the calendar or somewhere you can remember and write down all the keywords you want to include in that post.
Write Your First Post
Now you have an editorial calendar to work towards, you can start writing your first blog post. Make sure you include your keywords and phrases within the body of the content, but also follow your SEO checklist for other elements of on-page SEO. Using your keyword research you should also choose your highest priority within a post as that’s the keyword you’ll probably want to use for your title for example.
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