Expert 7-step guide to create an SEO content strategy

With more AI-powered search results and frequent Google updates, search engine optimization (SEO) doesn’t look like it did a year ago, and the changes keep coming. To stay ahead in the ever-evolving search landscape, brands need a data-driven SEO content strategy.

With all these changes, you may wonder: Does SEO still matter? The short answer is yes. Every day, Google has over 8.5 billion searches, and the top results have an average 28% click-through rate.

Why is that valuable? Let’s say an at-home exercise company ranks number one for “home exercise bikes”, which gets 1,000 searches monthly. That translates to around 280 website visitors each month for one term. Websites can get thousands of monthly organic visitors, and the best part is that—unlike paid ads—they don’t pay for those clicks.

When done well, SEO helps brands:

Increase organic traffic and conversions
Cut paid advertising costs
Build brand credibility

That said, SEO is a long-term investment, typically taking three to six months to see results. Companies must start with a strong strategy to avoid losing time and money on the wrong one. But, what does that look like?

As a baseline, an effective SEO content strategy should include:

Technical SEO
Keyword research
Link building
Data and measurement

I’ve created SEO content strategies that have doubled and tripled traffic and conversions for brands within six months. In this guide, you’ll learn the exact steps I take to create data-centered content strategies that help businesses grow organically.

1. Run a technical site audit

Many brands jump straight to researching keywords and picking topics when building a content strategy.

However, this is like buying a car without looking under the hood. It may look great on the outside but has serious issues preventing it from running as it should and getting you where you need to go.

Website content strategies should start with a baseline technical SEO audit. Technical SEO is the process of assessing your website to identify technical issues.

It typically focuses on:

Improving site speed and user experience
Making it easier for search engines to crawl
Structuring your site so your expertise is clear

If your website has issues, no amount of high-quality content will move the needle. With tools like Semrush and Ahrefs, you can audit your website and identify technical issues that influence search engine rankings. ‍

However, keep in mind that these are only tools—they can’t fix the technical issues for you, and they aren’t always 100% accurate.

How to do a technical site audit on Semrush

To conduct a website audit in Semrush, go to Site Audit, input your website’s domain, and hit Start Audit.

Semrush will crawl your site and generate a report of the technical issues. Depending on the number of pages, it could take a few hours to complete. Some of the most common tech SEO issues include:

Broken links
Unminified CSS or JS
Duplicate content
Canonical tag errors

If most of those terms make your head spin, a technical SEO expert can assess your site, prioritize the most important technical issues, and resolve them for you.

2. Analyze historical data and set goals

Any good marketing strategy starts with data. To set goals, you need to first know where you’re starting and how far you can realistically go.

Before building an SEO content strategy, dive into your analytics—Google Analytics (GA4) and Search Console data.

Look at the following:

Monthly organic traffic for the last one to two years
Top traffic sources
Top keywords and pages
Conversion rates
Engagement rate (formerly bounce rate)
Top-performing pages and content
Top converting paid keywords (if applicable)

Analyzing this data will help you answer questions like:

How much content do you need to produce?
What types of content have historically performed well? Which didn’t?
How much growth can you realistically achieve in six months to a year?

3. Research your competitors

Competitor research helps brands identify where competitors are winning and reveal opportunities to beat them.

A competitor analysis answers questions like:

Do your competitors even have an SEO strategy? Some sites invest heavily to get paid traffic and don’t have many organic rankings. It’s common for e-commerce and newer sites.
What percentage of traffic is branded or non-branded? Branded traffic includes searches for the company name and misspellings. When a site has little to no non-branded traffic, it’s a good indicator that they don’t have an organic strategy.
Which keywords drive the most traffic to a competitor’s site? This can reveal which ones you need to improve to steal traffic away from competitors.
What’s a site’s authority score? Authority scores, also called domain ratings, range from zero to 100. The higher the score, the more likely a site is to rank at the top.
How many backlinks do they have? If a competitor’s site has thousands more high-quality backlinks than your site, content alone won’t move the mark. You’ll need a plan for distributing content.

To get started, generate a list of three to five main competitors. If you’re unsure who your biggest competitors are, ask yourself:

What brands do potential customers mention when deciding to buy your product?
Which sites rank in the top three results for your main keywords?

For example, a competitor analysis for the website builder Webflow would look at Wix and Squarespace.

How to do a competitor analysis in Semrush

Once you have your list, run a competitor analysis. To do this in Semrush, go to Domain Overview and input each competitor’s site. You’ll get a range of information on each one. (If you have a paid plan, go to Compare Domains and compare data from up to four competitors at once.)

Copy the information below from the Domain Overview page.

Company name
Website URL
Authority score (or domain rating)
Monthly organic traffic
Organic backlinks
Branded / Non-branded traffic %
Top five to seven non-branded organic keywords
Top five pages
Main takeaways

For keywords and pages, scroll to the section “Top keywords” or go to “Organic Research” and view the “Positions” and “Pages” tab.

Note: When pulling top keywords, don’t pull the branded ones. They reveal more about brand awareness than organic strategy.

Organic competitor analysis example

When complete, it should look something like this organic competitor analysis template and example.

Once you have the competitor data, pull out the three to five main takeaways. These will form the beginning of your strategy.

4. Conduct keyword research

At this point, you should have a rough outline of your SEO goals. You may also have identified content opportunities based on competitor research.

Now, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty of keyword research to verify which topics are worth pursuing.

There are many approaches and tools to conduct keyword research. I prefer to use a mix, gather a large list of keyword options, and narrow them down to a list of the most valuable 10 to 15. (If you’re doing an SEO sprint or have a large site, then your initial list will have more.)

Here are a few methods you can use to find valuable keywords:

Look at current rankings

Use Semrush to identify the keywords that you currently rank for on the first and second pages of Google. Starting keyword research here helps you identify low-hanging fruit—it’s often easier to improve existing rankings than start from scratch.

In Semrush, you can do this by putting your website into “Organic Research”, and going to “Organic Keywords”, and “Positions”. Here’s an example of the plant website The Sill’s top keywords.

Next, use the filters below to find the best keyword opportunities:

Position: If you have a large list of keywords, filter between 3-20. For a small site, expand it up to position 40 or 60.
Volume: Ideally, you want keywords with at least 300 or more monthly searches. Going after keywords with high volumes can mean more traffic, but make sure the words are relevant and within reach.
Keyword difficulty (KD): Typically, you’ll filter for keywords under 65 KD, unless you have a site with an authority score over 70. Keyword difficulty measures how hard it is to rank for a keyword. The higher the number, the harder it is.
Non-branded: Go to the “Advanced Filters” and exclude branded terms like your company name.

Once your filters are set, export the list to Google Sheets or Excel.

Now, you’ll have a list of keywords that you rank for, but not in the top spots. In other words, these are opportunities for re-optimization. You’ll usually need to refresh content to improve the current position.

Get inspiration from competitor rankings

A competitor analysis gives a high-level overview of the tactics other companies are using. Doing keyword research on your competitors goes a step further.

Semrush’s Keyword Gap gives you the exact keywords and pages that drive traffic to a website. Looking at the keywords competitors use gives you ideas for topics and types of content to use in your strategy.

Plus, if you outrank competitors for key terms, you’ll gain more traffic to your site and perhaps steal some away from them.

To do this in Semrush, follow these steps:

Go to the “Keyword Gap Tool”
Input your website
Add a competitor website
Hit compare

You can add up to three, but it’s best to examine one at a time. The tool’s data isn’t as useful and it tends to miss keywords when you add more.

The results will look like this:

The keyword overlap shows how many ranking organic keywords Wix and Webflow share.

Scrolling down, you’ll see a complete list of keywords for each site. You may get a huge list of words with many that are irrelevant.

To narrow the list down to the most valuable opportunities, use the same filters as you do when looking at current rankings, with one main adjustment.

Position: Include position one up to 60. Your competitor is likely ranking at the top for key terms, and you want to identify those.

Once you set filters, look at the “Weak” and “Missing” tabs.

Weak: These are keywords that your competitors are ranking higher for than you. Use this list to identify existing content to optimize.
Missing: These are keywords that you don’t rank for at all, but your competitors do. Use this list to identify new content opportunities.

By the end of this process you’ll have two lists:

Existing content you can refresh to improve current rankings
New content ideas

Again, you can export to Sheets or Excel or create a keyword list within Semrush to add opportunities manually.

Combine audience and keyword data

One of the biggest mistakes brands make when creating content strategies is that they assume they know what audiences want. This leads to more assumptions about which keywords people search for and which pieces of content to create.

A strong SEO content strategy doesn’t solely focus on keyword data. It includes audience data too.

You need to understand your target audience before brainstorming content ideas. If you don’t, you’ll create content that might get traffic but doesn’t convert, and it’s because you aren’t reaching or engaging your target audience.

Audience data helps you understand what customers want, but where do brands get it from? Some ways to collect audience data include:

Sales and customer service teams
Customer interviews
Online surveys
CRM records
Online reviews

The most effective content strategies I’ve created have been because I had a good relationship with the sales and customer service teams. Instead of operating in siloes, we would share information.

Asking sales teams questions like the ones below helps reveal keywords and content opportunities:

What pain points or challenges do customers frequently mention?
Which features or services do they talk about most often?
Why did they choose your service over competitors?
What hesitations do customers have and how do you overcome them?

The idea is to take these responses, pull potential content topics, and cross-check them with keyword data.

5. Prioritize high-intent, valuable topics

After following the previous steps, you should have an abundant list of potential topics. Now, it’s time to narrow your list and identify the most high-intent keywords that not only boost organic traffic but also conversions.

General SEO advice will tell you that a good keyword has a high monthly search volume (at least 300) and low keyword difficulty. It’s true, but you need to go further.

To choose the most valuable topics for your content strategy, go through the initial keyword list and answer this question for each term:

Is it relevant to what your business does?
Can you reasonably rank for it in the next three months?
Is it a common pain point for your audience and your product or service helps address it?

If the answer is yes to all of the above questions, then it’s a strong keyword to go after. To focus even more on conversion-friendly searches, also ask:

What is the search intent? Is the person searching the term close to the buying stage?

6. Determine the types of content you need

Successful SEO content strategies are much more than blogs. SEO content includes:

Landing pages
Product/service pages
Comparison pages (company 1 vs. company 2)
Quizzes
Videos
Glossaries
Calculators and other interactive tools

Choosing the right type of content ensures that you match search intent, which is arguably the most important ranking factor.

One way to select the best content type is simply to put your keyword into Google search. See what format top-ranking pages use—are they landing pages, videos, blogs, or something else?

Also, consider the customer funnel stage. For example, someone searching for head terms like “house plants” or “hiking shoes” is looking to buy. Therefore, you should have a landing page or product page for that term instead of a blog.

Long-tail keywords like “how much water to give plants” or “how to care for a monstera” are better for a blog or video. Searchers are at the top of the funnel. They’re researching and asking questions, but aren’t in the buying stages yet.

This is the approach that The Sill takes for SEO. It optimizes product collection pages with keywords like “live plants” and “house plants”.

Then, it creates blogs that answer questions—while also internally linking to product pages mentioned throughout the content.

As a result, the plant company gains significant, ready-to-buy organic traffic through SEO-optimized pages and website infrastructure.

7. Create expert-level content

Following this guide will help you build a strong SEO content strategy grounded in data. It should include keywords and various content types, from landing pages to blogs.

However, even the best-laid plans can falter if you don’t put the same level of effort into executing them. You probably know you need high-quality content to rank, but what does that mean?

High-quality SEO content does the following:

Breaks up text blocks into short paragraphs and bulleted lists.
Includes original visuals (not stock photos).
Follows proper heading structure (H2, H3, etc.).
Uses short, easy-to-read sentences under 25 words.
Is easy to navigate, with a table of contents.

Besides those general guidelines, high-performing content highlights the author’s expertise.

To set yourself apart from AI and stand out in search results, you need to create content that follows the E-E-A-T model. It stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. The expertise and experience part is more important than ever because it’s what AI misses.

Think about your experience and how to leverage it to provide value to your website visitors. Instead of general advice, which AI provides, get into the specifics. Share a video tutorial on how to use your product or write a how-to guide that helps your customers solve a pain point. The most successful SEO content strategy is one that is data-driven and showcases the value you offer customers.

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