Are you struggling to get noticed in the digital world? Creating a solid SEO content strategy is usually the first step to turning things around.
SEO (search engine optimization) boosts your website’s ranking with Google, making it easier for potential customers to find you online. It can even improve your organic CTR (click-through rate) by as much as 39.8%. This means that people will not only find your website easier, they’ll be more ready to convert which means more leads and, ultimately, sales.
However, the tactics for effective SEO content strategy evolve over time, so you have to make sure you know what’s working now. Whether you’re designing a new SEO strategy or updating your previous online marketing approach, we’ll walk you through everything your content marketing plan needs in the modern marketing landscape.
Key Elements of an SEO Content Strategy
First, let’s define what we mean when we talk about an SEO content strategy.
What is an SEO content strategy? It’s the combination of researching, creating, optimizing and publishing strategic content on your website with the intent to rank for higher on SERPS (search engine results pages) with those pages. SEO content strategy starts with auditing your current website, seeing what is or isn’t working, and then creating a plan to bring in more online traffic, leads and sales. The key elements of any good SEO content strategy include:
- SEO Site Audit
- Competitive Analysis
- In-depth Keyword Research
- SEO Content Creation
- On-Page Optimization
- Technical SEO
- High-Quality Link Building
- Monthly Reporting/Tracking
In this blog, we’ll cover each of the elements of a solid content strategy and how you can incorporate each of them into your digital marketing plan for 2025.
1. An SEO Site Audit
The first thing you should do when creating an SEO content strategy is analyze the current performance of your website. How many pages are on your site? How many of those pages are ranking for keywords? How many of those keywords are actually bringing in traffic? Without understanding how your site is currently performing on the search results, it’s hard to create a substantial plan getting you to the next level.
Overall Site Performance
Whenever we do a site content audit for clients, we first look at the overall performance of the site. Namely, how many keywords does it rank for overall? How much traffic is the site bringing in on a month-to-month basis? Here’s a quick list of what we try to glean from the website as a whole:
- Age of site: Is it brand new? Did you just migrate it to a new domain? Has it been around for years? The age of your site, and it’s history of ranking, can tell you a lot about how it might perform going forward. For instance, if the site is brand new and it’s not ranking, then it could potentially be due to not having been on Google’s radar for long enough, not having enough content on the site, etc. If your site has been around for years and has historically never ranked (but has content on the site), there may be some bigger issues (typically technical, or having to do with how your site is built) that may be the real issue instead of just not having created enough content or done enough SEO.
- Site Structure: What is the hierarchy of the site? Does it highlight it’s main products/services/locations on the website? Is there any sort of structure on the site showing the most important pages on the site with additional subpages to support them? Does it give Google enough context as to what this company does and where it does business?
- Domain Authority Score: Depending on the SEO research tool you use, this will be displayed differently, but ultimately it’s giving you a score of 1-100 (1 being the worst, 100 being the best) of how dominant/authoritative your site is in the eyes of Google. A low domain authority score could be the reason why Google doesn’t take your site seriously, and would need to be remedied.
- # of pages: Does the site not have very much content to begin with? Typically, sites with only a few pages rank for fewer keywords.
- Total monthly keywords: The number of keywords on your site can be drilled down even further into keywords in the top 3, top 10, (those ranking high enough to actually get traffic) etc., but for this exercise, just knowing the total number of keywords on your site can give you an idea of your current organic profile. Does Google trust your site enough to rank it consistently for keywords or not? What types of keywords are you generally winning? Are you only winning branded keywords that have to do with your company name, or are you winning the types of terms people would actually type in to find a company like yours?
- Total monthly traffic: This metric is related to monthly keywords, but also becomes the basis for all SEO content campaign efforts and tracking going forward.
- Total backlinks: Does the site have very many backlinks coming back to it from other sites? If you have a lot of pretty good content on your site but few backlinks, that might be the missing piece to boost your site in the rankings.
Performing Pages VS Opportunity Pages
The next thing we like to separate in our SEO content audit is the performing pages from what we call “opportunity pages”. We traditionally define performing pages on your site as ones that have keywords ranking in the top 10 and are bringing in traffic. These are pretty easy to identify, because they’ll come up at the top of all of your reporting from either keyword research tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs, or Google Analytics. But, you may not realize that these pages are also your best candidates for link building! We’ll cover this more in-depth below, but knowing which pages these are as well as what keywords are currently ranking on these pages is an important step in creating an effective SEO content strategy.
Opportunity pages, on the other hand, are the oft forgotten pages on your site. We define opportunity pages as the pages on your site ranking for multiple keywords (typically 5 to 10 or more) but none high enough that they’re actually bringing in traffic. In fact, most small businesses don’t even consider these pages when creating an SEO strategy because they’re not super easy to identify. If pages aren’t bringing in traffic or ranking for your top keywords that you’re tracking, you’ll likely pass over them. But this is a huge mistake! Opportunity pages are ones where Google has awarded them ranking, but they just need some work to really perform. This might come in the form of on-page SEO through an SEO content refresh, or they might also be candidates for strategic link building.
2. Competitor Website Analysis
What’s that saying? You don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the friend next to you? SEO is a non-stop race, so it’s not really about “winning” but more about continually beating out your competition. In order to develop a successful SEO content strategy, you need to know how fast your competitors are running online.
Similarly to how you ran an SEO site audit on your own website, you’d want to do a competitor analysis by doing an abbreviated version of this site content audit for your competitors. Quickly creating a graph showing your site in relation to your competitors as far as domain authority, keywords ranking, total monthly traffic and total backlinks is a nice snapshot to help you develop a plan of action to close any gaps you find.
Competitive Keyword Opportunities
Using tools like SEMrush, you can also quickly analyze your top competitors to see your biggest keyword opportunities (or keywords that are related to all of you that your competitors aren’t currently ranking for). These keywords represent potential quick wins and opportunities for deeper content creation.
How Many Competitors Should You Analyze?
There is no hard and fast rule as to how many competitors you should look into when creating your SEO content strategy, but a good rule of thumb is to at least pick 3. Also, if you’re in an industry that’s a little immature when it comes to SEO and online marketing, try to find some related companies that are winning keywords you would like to win, so you have some good sites to emulate when it comes to creating your SEO content strategy.
Research and Analysis for Topics and Keywords
Almost all good SEO content strategies start with finding the right keywords and topics for your site.
Explore Google’s Suggestions and Filters From Searches
Start with your head keyword. This is the primary word or two people use to find companies like yours. Type it into the search bar and see what results pop up to get a feel for your competition and what users want.
Before you finish typing or press “Search,” Google generates additional suggestions. These give you valuable insights into what potential customers are searching for. For example, if you type in “running shoes,” Google may suggest:
- “Running shoes [your city]”
- “Running shoes for women”
- “Running shoes for flat feet”
- “Running shoes on sale”
- “Running shoes near me”
Google recognizes that these are common long-tail keywords shoe buyers use. Long-tail keywords are variations longer than three words that provide more specific searches. You’ll find these to be vital to your SEO content strategy.
Additionally, if you enter just “running shoes,” filters to refine results appear in small bubbles under the search bar. You’ll find similar options to the suggestions and even more, like “For Athletics,” “Under $35,” “Get it fast,” and “Breathable.”
Then, look at the “People Also Ask” section to find the most common questions users want answers to. Use these as ideas for content topics or headings.
Analyze Your Competition’s Content
Search engine results pages (SERPs) show you the top-ranked content for your primary keyword. Take note of the types of content that rank high, like videos, articles, or product pages. It gives you a good understanding of what Google places high value on for that word or phrase.
Especially when researching those niche long-tail keywords, take a look at your top-ranking competitor’s websites to see which other keywords they use. Also, scan their articles to learn how they structure their content and what they use as backlinks.
This gives you an idea of how you need to structure articles for your SEO content strategy. You can also pick up on weaknesses that you can capitalize on to create better content that meets your target audience’s needs.
Use SEO Tools for Deeper Research
There’s only so much you’re going to find on your own with a manual search. Plus, that gets time-consuming and inefficient. Start using SEO software to find topics, information on your competition, and long-tail keywords more quickly.
We’re fans of Semrush here at BKA Content. With it, you can audit your site, research appropriate topics and keywords, and get insights into site traffic.
If you’re not ready to invest in an advanced tool like that, you can start with Google Keyword Planner, which is free. Just start finding ways to automate your process sooner rather than later because your competitors who are ranking are, and you’ll need that to keep up.