How To Create an SEO Data-Driven Content Strategy

Content strategy is a hugely important part of the SEO process. Quite often it’s not given the level of attention it deserves, but done right it can be a significant driver of organic revenue and customer acquisition.

To create an SEO data-driven content strategy that works, we need to understand what good content looks like. To do that we need to look at data and conduct research. It sounds time-consuming and expensive, which might put many businesses off. But actually, you can create an SEO data-driven content strategy in just 3 steps. 

How to create an SEO data-driven content strategy from Kevin Gibbons

Thanks to Illiya for help with the presentation slide design.

The Value of Content for SEO 

When we talk about SEO, we used to work on the principle that creating content was about making it work for Google. That meant content that was littered with keywords, known as keyword stuffing, and didn’t necessarily provide any value to its readers. As long as it was on topic, it ranked. 

But now it’s about creating content for people. Content needs to answer questions, provide content, be accurate, and add value. It should still have the essence of keywords, but you can’t just take a keyword and hire a copywriter on the cheap anymore. It’s all about quality – creating quality content that is accurate and adds real value. And that doesn’t come cheap, you need to invest in it.

Why Invest in Your Content

Creating content needs investment to make an impact. But when it comes to it being part of an SEO strategy, it feels like the content is under-rated and under-invested.

It seems like SEOs and marketers are aware of the value of content. If you look at our LinkedIn poll of where people see the best results from their efforts, we can see that 50% of us get the best results from content rather than technical SEO or digital PR. But this isn’t reflected when we think about where our businesses spend their marketing budgets.

We need to address this problem of under-investment in content for SEO because the benefits are endless. Even without any extra search traffic, the pay-off of additional content could be significant. Creating content can drive better user metrics, more clicks, and can also support the traffic you drive from your other marketing channels like social media and email. But if you can level up and create high-quality content that provides better information than your competitors and attract better user metrics, the benefits are even greater. Your content will be more likely to outrank your competitors in the SERPs, giving you the potential to gain additional impressions, increased clicks, and ultimately more conversions. That is without considering the benefit your content can have on your other SEO efforts, like generating backlinks.

So investing in the right quality of content should pay for itself several times over. But we still see that most of SEO spend goes on fixing technical aspects of a website (page speed, structured data, etc.) or on link acquisition and PR to improve authority and brand reputation. But why are we consistently overlooking the importance of having a strong content strategy and delivery plan?