Advanced SEO Content Marketing Strategies For Rapid Growth

Posted 13-06-2022 by Helen

If you’re looking to grow your SEO visibility, traffic and revenue as quickly as possible then you’ll need to optimise every page of your content. The major challenge, however, is optimising every page of your content - especially when you have a whole team of people working on your site with different goals, skills, responsibilities and opinions.

So with hundreds if not thousands, or even tens of thousands of pages to wade through and so many conflicting views, how do you approach best practice SEO for all those existing pages and every new page?

From honing advanced SEO content marketing strategies from more than 100,000 hours of SEO and generating millions in revenue, our approach would be to follow our 3 step multi-award winning ThoughtShift Digital Marketing Strategy Methodology and start with the data:

1: Advanced SEO Content Marketing Data Insight

To get the advanced SEO content marketing data insight, we first need to start with understanding what is the current situation, challenges and goals:

How many existing pages does your site have indexed in Google?

You can try entering your domain into Google prefixed with site: e.g. search for “site:yourdomain.com” to get the number.

What is the number of existing indexed pages that require advanced content optimisation?

If you’ve not done any advanced content optimisation, the answer is all of them. Although, you’ll need to prioritise the approach in the strategy depending on your available resources and the types of pages you have.

What type of pages are already indexed?

If you have an ecommerce website your page types are going to include:

• Home page
• Category pages
• Product pages
• Blog pages
• Information pages – your About, Delivery and buying guides pages for example
• Services pages – Non ecommerce pages for corporates or bespoke orders that require contacting you by phone or email and could result in a large order that wouldn’t be measured through the ecommerce revenue on the website for example

Non ecommerce websites will typically have all the page types ecommerce sites have except category and product pages. 

What volume of new content are you planning on adding in the upcoming months and what type of content is this?

For example, are you already writing 4 new blog posts a month.

What resources do you have available to optimise the existing content, create new content and make new content live on the website?

For example, does your content writing team currently consist of all of the following people and what percentage of their role can be dedicated to the content cause or how many hours per month can they spare or as a one off… or is it just you and the resource you have available:

• Digital/Ecommerce/Marketing Directors
• Marketing Manager
• Brand Manager
• Digital Marketing Manager
• Social Media Manager
• Email/CRM Manager
• Copywriter
• Photographer
• Videographer
• Influencers
• Guest Bloggers
• Web Agency
• SEO Agency
• Social Media Agency
• PR Agency
• Paid Media Agency
• CRO Agency
• Affiliate Marketing Agency
• International Counterparts
• Non-Marketing In-House Experts – with writing skills that have resource to write content with guidance

Where are you now with your SEO and Content Marketing?

What monthly and annual visibility, traffic and revenue (or enquiry generation for non-ecommerce sites) from organic media sources including SEO, Social Media, Referral and Direct have been achieved so far according to Google Analytics and Google Search Console data.

What are the landing pages proven to generate the most revenue from organic search and what are the keywords that these pages are ranking for organically that are driving traffic to these pages?

What are the landing pages proven to generate the most revenue from paid search and what are the search queries and target keywords that these pages are driving traffic to these pages from?

What keywords are generating the most organic search impressions and what pages are already ranking within the top 20 positions and therefore need to be protected if on page 1 already and increased if not yet at number 1?

What organic reach does your content have across social media and how much traffic are social media channels driving to the site?

What percentage of your traffic and revenue is coming via the Direct channel and does the trend show that the volume of traffic and revenue is increasing following the recent changes to cookie laws and browser privacy settings?

What are the keyword gaps and variations that you don’t currently rank within the top 100 search results that you could apply to your site and what are the monthly search volumes for your market?

What are the realistic goals for your SEO and Content Marketing and when do want to achieve them by?

Growing your website’s organic reach, traffic and new customer acquisition takes time, although depends on where you are now.

If you’re already achieving one million in annual ecommerce SEO revenue, then gaining an additional million in ecommerce SEO revenue is going to happen considerably faster than a site that has got less than 1,000 visits per month currently.

If your ecommerce conversion rate is at around 2% and your average order is £50 then you’ll need an average of 83,333 monthly sessions from SEO and Content Marketing to deliver £1 Million in revenue.

Of course if your conversion rate or average order is higher then you’ll need less traffic to achieve your goal.

Search demand is another key consideration. Maximising the number of pages that can be optimised before a seasonal peak such as Christmas will have the biggest impact.

Although there are many other external PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental) and competitor forces at work and post-lockdown year on year search behaviour is going to be very different for online brands where customers now have the choice to buy instore again.

2: Advanced SEO Content Marketing Strategy

Once you’ve gathered all your current situation and performance insights, it’s time to formulate a plan for approaching your Advanced SEO Content Marketing Strategy.

Onsite Content Optimisation Strategy

Prioritise your Onsite Content Optimisation Strategy of your existing content by page type that is going to yield the most revenue growth.

For each page type, determine the target keyword strategy for each of the current key optimisable content elements such as navigation, meta data, main content headers, body content, images, videos and internal links.

Remember search engines rank pages not websites so the aim is to target one main keyword (or search query made up of several words) per page and not to target another page for that same exact keyword. That same page can then be optimised for similar keywords and variations. However if another page is using an exact match target keyword mentioned within the content then that keyword should link to the other page. That in turn will avoid duplicate content and help the page being linked to, to rank for it’s target keyword.

You can learn more about the impact of duplicate content and how to avoid over-optimisation, in our Onsite SEO Case Study.

Home Page

For all websites, your home page contains the most authority because it is at the top of your architecture. Optimising your home page content will have the biggest impact. Although proceed with extreme caution in making changes to your home page if it is already performing well as you could inadvertently de-optimise the page by switching in a new keyword in place of one that is already ranking on page one of Google and sending you lots of traffic and revenue.

Category and Services Pages

Your category, services and information pages are the second highest in your site architecture and represent customers who are at the consideration stage of the buying journey. Search volumes for keywords you’d want to target for these pages are typically highest after your home page target keywords. Services and information pages are likely to already address a very specific audience with a selling offer or information that helps people to buy so optimising these pages next will deliver the biggest impact as fast as possible.

Product Pages

For ecommerce websites, product pages are a lower priority to optimise after the category pages and that’s because by optimising the category pages which already link to your product pages you will improve the optimisation of every product page.

That being said your product pages present the biggest opportunity to drive revenue through advanced SEO optimisation on a page by page basis. That’s because product pages are at the end of the buying funnel and may likely target lower search volume keywords, however product pages will likely have the highest conversion rates of any of your page content. Many ecommerce sites only need a handful of organic search visits per product page to get a sale and multiply that by all of your optimised product pages and that’s how collectively your product pages can deliver significant SEO revenue over time.

Create a strategy that sets expectations for your product pages to be optimised after all your category and services pages have been optimised.

If you have tens of thousands of product pages, approaching optimisation one page at a time may mean tens of thousands of hours of manual work which your team or budget just cannot fit in realistically. If that’s the case, then prioritise your top selling product pages and then the product gaps that you’d like to grow next.

Alternatively allocate yourself or your team a block of time per month for product page optimisation and start working your way through systematically through your product categories – categories positioned to the left of your navigation will carry more authority through to the product pages being linked to as they are first in the list compared to categories at the right-hand side of your menu which will be listed last.

If you have web development resources at your disposal then you may be able to apply product page optimisation at a template level to thousands of pages in one go through a one off development project. For example adding categories, sub categories, colours or sizes keywords, delivery information or reviews via dynamic rules to place the content automatically on to the placement of the page content or meta data that you want.

Existing Blog Pages

Blog pages are brilliant at driving visibility and traffic, however it’s important to keep in mind that blog pages are all about telling and not designed for selling. Yes you want to link through to your wonderfully optimised category pages and product pages from your blog post if you refer to them and you’re not already linking to them but that shouldn’t be the only consideration for an existing blog.

The most important strategy you can employ for existing blog pages is to not change the URL. Redirecting URLs creates extra server resources and potentially slows down your website impacting your SEO, so if you can choose the URL you want first time that’s ideal. If you haven’t, don’t worry and don’t go trying to shoe-horn in a keyword to an existing blog post. It’s much easier to just create a brand new blog on the keyword subject gap you’ve identified in the next phase of the strategy.

Optimising all your existing blog pages page by page is not typically worth doing and is the lowest priority activity in our Advanced SEO Content Marketing Strategy. You can use your data insights to pick out the choicest existing blogs that are already your top landing pages by traffic and revenue generation and add internal links to these as the priority.

If you’re a very advanced SEO then to further increase reach for a keyword you already have page 1 visibility for you can add a keyword into a blog post heading, title tag (within your meta data), the blog page sub headers and body content. Although do proceed with extreme caution as adding a keyword could de-optimise the existing rankings so hence, unless you’re really confident in doing this and fixing any negative impacts caused it might be best to avoid changing existing blog post titles.

Onsite Content Creation Strategy

If you have a large scale website and a big team of contributing writers, you will likely need to brief out your new content before you’ve optimised your existing content.

New Blog Pages Strategy

The main advantage of a blog page is that it can target topics that are much broader than your category, services, information and product pages. Looking at your target audiences and target keyword gaps leftover from your Onsite Content Optimisation Strategy are both great priorities to start your blog strategy plans with. If you find yourself out of target direction, it’s time to dip back into previous keyword research or run some new research with the latest data.

What you never want to do is target a buying keyword within your blog post title or URL as that will create a conflict with your selling pages and can potentially cut off your SEO revenue overnight if a blog page starts outranking an established category or product page.

You can also change your blog post title and content after publication, although to provide a good user experience you ideally want your URL and title to remain very similar.

If you have a team of contributors writing content for your blog, do save time and keep blog optimisation methods simple. The first priority should be to recommend the blog title for a main target keyword with matching URL and meta data. Depending on the search volumes of the main target keyword topics in your content plans this may be sufficient.

As a general guide, if the blog page title proposed will contain a main target keyword that has a monthly search volume of 10-99 searches per month or below then no advanced optimisation would be required and your resources are better spent elsewhere.

For advanced SEO content optimisation advice on a page by page basis, typically for new blog pages with main target keyword search volumes of 100s-1000s or more per month and if you have the resources, then there are two strategies you can choose to pursue:

• Provide advanced SEO optimisation guidelines for your writers to follow so they can incorporate the advanced optimisation techniques into their drafts
• Optimise each blog page after the draft stage on a page by page basis

New Category, Services & Information Pages Strategy

Adding these important selling pages are critical for growth. The pages required will be identified from new product development, marketing and business strategies. Along with keyword and audience gaps such as:

• Seasonal pages such as Black Friday
• Gift pages
• New sub category pages
• Buying guides and advice pages
• New services pages
• Competitor gap insights
• Audience targeting gaps

Authority SEO Content Strategy

Google and other search engines rank millions of web pages that contain the search query in order of authority.

So once you’ve exhausted every potential way of optimising your onsite content you will also need a plan for increasing your authority.

Internal Link Strategy

Funnelling your existing authority through the careful placement of your internal links is key for advanced SEO success. Every link out on a page shares the authority across all the pages being linked to. So fewer carefully placed links are more powerful in spreading the authority through your site.

Your home page should typically link to your top category pages and best selling products.

Your category, services or information pages should link to your product pages or calls to action pages such as your Contact or Register pages.

Your product pages shouldn’t link anywhere, all you want your visitors to do at that point is buy – don’t distract them!

Your blog pages should link when relevant to other blog posts, your selling pages such as product, category, services and information pages and external sites such as partner sites.

External Link Strategy

Increasing your links from external sites is how you can build up your domain authority so all your pages rank higher in the organic search results.

By creating link worthy and shareable content, you can get your audience to share your pages through social media and email, building brand awareness and inbound links on your behalf.

Creating competitions, special offers, promotions, guides, case studies, reports, videos, photography and programmes is another great way to attract links.

Researching and outreaching to relevant audiences such as partners, bloggers and influencers or running PR campaigns with unique offers and news is a strategy that requires the most resources. So whilst the wins for SEO gained from securing the third party coverage can be the greatest, the cost may be too much at this stage and therefore the lowest priority depending on your current situation and existing relationships that you can leverage.

3: Advanced SEO Content Marketing Performance Impact

So now you’ve planned out your SEO content marketing strategy, it’s finally time to get tactical and make an impact in your performance as soon as you implement your optimisations live on your website.

With our ultimate advanced SEO content marketing checklist you can use this for every single page of content on your site to ensure you’ve included your main target keyword in all the right places:

Advanced SEO Content Marketing Checklist

Free Advanced SEO Strategy Consultation

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