Content is information, and the chances that you are the first person writing about your chosen topic is close to zero. Demand for content is surging, and with information being literally at tip of our fingers, there is an excess supply.
The excess supply of information at this age makes it more challenging to get noticed and produce profitable results.
In order to get profitable results as a content writer, in whatever capacity you are writing, you need a system that will lead to predictable results so that your content can stand out from the rest.
Bloggers, freelance writers, or people who do any type of content writing should keep reading this article as we walk you through a framework that will help you engage your audience, drive consistent traffic, and ultimately drive consistent traffic, and hopefully revenue.
Whether you are writing for a client or for your own website, you should have two objectives for you content.
The content should drive traffic to the website you are writing for;
The content should engage those beautiful people so that they will turn into customers or be pushed further down the sales funnel.
With these two objectives in mind, let us go through our framework about “Content Writing for SEO“
Write about Topics People Are Searching For
Most people like to write about topics that excite them, and while that is okay, these posts often have a short shelf life. Publishing content without having the topics people are searching for in mind, while promoting the post to social media and email list to amplify the content, will only result in a huge spike in the first few days. However, soon after the traffic will fade fast.
In other words post created without the topics people are searching for in mind will create the textbook “spike of hope and flat-line of nope”.
When you create content around the topics that people are searching for, then you will get the opposite effect of that. You will get free, passive, and consistent traffic that usually grows over time, even without ads and promotion
To find topics worth creating content on, you will need a keyword research tool to identify search demand, and understand the traffic potential of the topic.
The traffic potential of a topic is the total amount of monthly search traffic you could get if you were to rank high for that query.
Let us say we have a website on DIY home improvement tutorials. To find keywords to target I’ll go to a keyword explorer and search for some keywords broadly related to the topic, like “home improvement” “living room” and “kitchen”
Next, I will go to the report and see where the search demand is highest. You will know this from their search volumes. To find the traffic potential of the topic, hit the SERP button and look at the Traffic Column.
Some Keyword research tools include Ahrefs, Wordstream, WordTracker, and keyword.io
Assess the Type of Content Google Wants You to Create
Google’s job is to deliver the most relevant results for any given query. To be honest, Google does a pretty good Job at this.
Naturally, if you want to rank for your target topic, you will need to know the type of content Google will rank for that query. That is called search intent. Search intent tells us about what searchers are looking for when they key in a query.
The easiest way to do this is to search for the query you want to rank for and look at the top-ranking results. The three things you are looking for are:
Content type, which can be blog posts, products pages, and category pages, or landing pages, content format (this can be how-to guides), step-by-step tutorials, list posts, opinion editorials, reviews, Comparisons, and the last one, is content angle.
Content Angle is basically the unique selling point of the top-ranking pages. So, looking at the top 10 results for the query “how to paint kitchen cabinets” will bring pages that are blog posts. This signposts to the suggestion that blog posts are the content type you should use too.
As for the format, the top two ranking pages are “How-Tos”, which will be step-by-step tutorials. For content angle, there is no definitive angle to use.
From our experience, matching content type and format are critical to ranking at the top of Google, but angle is not as important unless there is a clear theme among the top-ranking pages.
Create a Data-Driven Outline
Content is like a puzzle. There are a lot of different pieces, and it is tough to assemble without some kind of framework. Outlines are like the edge pieces of the puzzle. They help to form the base and all you need to do is fill in the missing pieces.
They also help make sure you are including all critical points worth communicating on the topic. From an SEO perspective, it can help you satisfy the algorithm and the audience.
The way Google determines a page’s placement in the search results is algorithmic. This means that you cannot pay to rank at the top of Google, and your friend that works there cannot move your website to the top.
Google’s technology is able to understand words and the content they are in. The more contexts you give to search engines, the better your chances of ranking high.
The easiest way to find critical talking points is to look at some of the top-ranking pages, and see if there are similar subtopics.
