Content creation is one of the most important elements of SEO marketing. But the word “content” is extremely common today — so what is “content creation” in the context of search engine optimization? When we talk about content at Demandwell, we’re using the content creation meaning that defines it as any and all of the written copy on your web pages — everything from product descriptions to blog posts to FAQs or whatever other kinds of written words appear on your website.
Obviously, all of this content must come from somewhere, which leads us to the content creation process. This is the process of planning and actually writing the content that appears on your web pages. While it may seem like a simple process at first glance, the most successful content creation examples utilize very carefully organized and streamlined content creation workflows.
The importance of the content creation process is well-established. You can find countless resources online, like content creation process PDFs and ebooks that share tips on how to develop an effective workflow for content creation.
The main objective behind an SEO content strategy is to attract organic traffic to your web pages through search engines — primarily Google Search. In order for your SEO content strategy to work, you need to create content for your pages that Google Search’s page ranking algorithm will display near the top of the list of results when your target audience searches words or phrases that relate to your business. By producing a rich array of content based on the main topics related to your products and services, you can attract potential customers who are already searching for solutions to the problems you solve.
Establishing a streamlined, scalable content production process is a pressing issue for content marketers at many organizations. Publishing SEO content that gets results takes time and effort. The more efficient your content workflow, the faster you can increase your business’s volume of organic search traffic. Producing content entirely by hand is certainly possible, but it’s not a very efficient method, and it isn’t very scalable. Content production software like Demandwell can equip marketers with the tools they need to automate parts of the content production workflow and streamline the process from end to end, which can speed up the process and make it much more scalable.
Content Creation Plan
One of the first things that need to be addressed in any guide on content creation for beginners is the difference between “quality content” and “performance content.” A successful SEO content strategy needs to implement both of these kinds of content. Each one plays an important role in supporting the other and your business’s content marketing strategy as a whole.
Quality Content
Quality content is the type of content most marketers are attempting to write already if they haven’t yet implemented an SEO content creation plan. The goal of quality content is typically to provide a unique, informative take on a subject that’s interesting or useful to your business’s target audience. Quality content is usually outbound, meaning it needs to be delivered to your audience or advertised to them in some way — they are not likely to specifically seek it out on their own or stumble across it organically. While quality content is crucial for providing value to your audience and building credibility for your brand, it will usually perform rather poorly in search engine rankings and do very little to further your inbound marketing objectives.
Performance Content
Performance content is written for the express purpose of meeting the demand for information that already exists in search engines. Performance content is based on keyword research, which reveals to marketers which words or phrases people are frequently typing into search engines. Marketers can focus on certain topics that are relevant to the business’s solutions and identify which keywords related to those topics represent the highest demand potential. Then, by writing content that utilizes those keywords and similar keywords, marketers can attract that existing demand to their business’s web pages.
The fact that “performance content” is distinct from “quality content” according to content creation guidelines does not mean that performance content should be low-effort. Performance content is simply more heavily optimized for SEO, and the topics your performance content covers will be more heavily influenced by the kind of content for which your target audience is searching. In most of the best content creation examples, performance content is still well-written and generally provides helpful information to readers.
How To Start Content Creation
When you first start planning your content creation strategy, it can be difficult to know how to begin. There are countless content creation tips floating around the internet, and if you try to take them all into account at once, you’ll probably end up getting nowhere. Before you even start formulating your content creation ideas for specific pieces of content, the best way to get started is with keyword research.
An effective content management process happens one step at a time. This might sound obvious, but it’s very easy to dive right into writing content and forget to base it on sound keyword research. One of the surest ways to tank an inbound content marketing strategy is to spend all your time and resources writing content that absolutely no one is searching for in the first place.
So that’s the wrong way to approach content creation — now let’s talk about how to start content creation the right way. The best first step is to implement an effective keyword research process to identify the topics and keywords around which you should be producing content. However, without the proper tools, keyword research can get overwhelming fast. The best way to approach the keyword research process is to use software tools like Demandwell to automate keyword generation. Demandwell can generate and sort keyword lists in just 45-90 seconds, and our SEO experts can help you turn those keywords into performance content that ranks.
Content Creation Skills
In order to implement an SEO content strategy plan that gets results, you also need a team of marketers with the necessary content creation skills to produce effective content. Content creation platforms can automate a great deal of the work involved with planning and creating content, but human input is still required. Usually, the most successful content marketing strategies are streamlined using software but still powered by human minds.
One of the most important skills for content marketing is understanding how to do efficient keyword research. Here are a few tips for improving your keyword research abilities:
- Consider search intent. When you’re researching keywords, it’s very important to take the searcher’s intent into account. Some of the most helpful signals to look for are pain modifiers, which indicate the searcher has a problem they don’t yet know how to solve, solutioning terms, which indicate the searcher knows how to solve their problem and is currently comparing solutions, and industry modifiers, which indicate the searcher’s intended use case.
- Search volume isn’t as straightforward as it seems. It’s natural to assume the best keywords to target with your content are the keywords that are searched most frequently. However, this isn’t necessarily the case. It’s worth noting that the keywords with the highest search volumes will also have the most competition for the top rankings. In many cases, it may be better to target keywords with a moderate amount of traffic because these keywords will still be relevant to many searches but will also have significantly less content to beat.
- Don’t forget your business goals. Even though it’s important to target the keywords people are frequently searching for, remember to always keep your content aligned with your business’s objectives. Just because a keyword relates to your product or service doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right keyword to attract your intended audience.
Content Creation Strategy
Some of the best content strategy examples incorporate a combination of performance content and quality content. This type of content creation strategy ensures that you have both content that attracts organic leads from search engines and content that delivers unique value once you’ve gained prospects’ attention.
Demandwell helps B2B SaaS companies develop successful content marketing strategy examples. Demandwell’s iterative philosophy of content creation relies upon a combination of automation and human expertise to streamline a business’s content creation processes. By evaluating and learning from each previous batch of published performance content, SaaS businesses can continually improve their outcomes in the organic search channel.
Content Workflow
In summary, the first step of an effective content strategy template is usually keyword research. Keyword research is foundational to effective content creation. Websites that feature content based on sound keyword research are typically more likely to attract higher volumes of organic traffic.
Demandwell’s automated content workflow can help marketers produce SEO content more efficiently and scale their content strategies much more successfully. Marketers can also benefit from the expertise of Demandwell’s content marketing consultants. Your content marketing workflow should be one component of your broader SEO strategy and, ultimately, one piece of your whole content marketing strategy framework.
