In this post, we’ll explore a series of tips on how to make SEO a priority. We will also discuss how to scale your SEO strategy. Lastly, we will talk about various issues that impact your SEO goals and KPIs. Ready? Let’s go!
An SEO content strategy can quickly become complex for SEO professionals who manage enterprise websites. Large-scale websites have thousands to millions of pages, whereas small to mid-size organization websites typically have a few hundred pages at most. Enterprise organizations typically have content writers spanning across multiple departments for different websites, website sections, and subdomains. This is why it’s so important to ensure that everyone is on the same page when it’s time to scale your SEO content strategy.
How to Align Your SEO Content Strategy
Enterprise organizations rely on SEO more and more to ensure that they rank towards the top of the SERPs. This requires a collaborative effort between SEO professionals and content writers in order to successfully execute their content marketing strategy. Furthermore, both groups need to work together throughout each stage of the publication process – from research & planning to the final publication of the content, and beyond. However, some organizations fail to bridge the gap between the SEO and content teams.
Here are 14 tips on how to avoid this issue and successfully sync up your content strategists, writers, and SEO team.
1.) Include the SEO Team When Dishing Out Writing Assignments
Your SEO team will likely have to optimize your content if you fail to include your SEO professionals when handing out writing assignments. This prevents your writers from incorporating relevant keywords with high search volume when crafting their content. That being said, include your SEO team early on so your writers can produce more effective content.
2.) Ensure that Your SEO Team is Aware of Writing Assignments
Regardless of how you schedule your content, you need to keep your SEO team in the loop. Doing so helps keep your SEO strategy on track.
3.) Provide Keyword Research to Content Teams
It’s critical that your SEO team provides your content team with their keyword research once the topics and abstracts are added to your content calendar or project management system. Doing so provides your content team with relevant keywords, which help them write holistic and effective SEO content. It also allows them to pick and choose the keywords they want to incorporate so that their content aligns with your SEO strategy.
Providing your content team with keyword research also prevents keywords on your product pages from also being keywords within the copy. After all, nobody wants keyword cannibalization!
Lastly, it ensures that relevant keywords with high search volume and accurate user intent are applied.
4.) Have Your Content Team Send Copy to SEO Team for Review
This sort of relationship between your writers and SEO teams encourages above-average copy and ensures that the copy includes relevant keywords.
5.) Encourage Other Teams to Incorporate SEO
Incorporating SEO in projects that use systems or platforms other than the brand’s domain is a great way to scale your SEO content strategy. An excellent example is event sites. However, you always want to make sure that your SEO team is included in the planning stages for these projects.
6.) Include a Link Gap Analysis with Your Keyword Research
You’ll want to provide your content team with some insight regarding the degree of competition for your target keywords. Doing so will help your writers know whether or not to target highly competitive keywords. You shouldn’t exclude highly competitive keywords, but your writers should have a general idea of what the competition looks like. This allows both teams to decide whether they want to invest in link building on a case-by-case basis.
7.) Provide Management with Keyword Research When They Create Omnichannel Campaigns
It is challenging for SEO teams to identify relevant keywords with genuine search volume when using language unique to your organization. When faced with this type of challenge, you should draft long-form content with keywords that focus on user pain points and have a decent amount of search volume.
It is wise to link these assets internally into campaign content to help overcome the language that is unique to your organization. You should also map out content by topic and keywords in a spreadsheet. Doing so helps you create internal links that mirror the user’s journey and help develop domain authority.
8.) Provide Feedback on How Competitive Keywords Are and What Budget is Needed for Linkbuilding
Full transparency here is critical when you’re looking to scale your SEO content strategy. This sort of information can prevent unrealistic expectations in terms of ranking for certain keywords due to inadequate funding for link building.
9.) When Creating Omnichannel Campaigns, Provide Management with Keyword Research Regarding Keywords with Relevant Search Volume
It is challenging for SEO teams to find keywords with adequate search volume when using organizational terms. You should try to incorporate long-form content with keywords that focus on user pain points and have a decent chunk of search volume. It is also wise to link these assets internally to the campaign content. Doing so will help overcome your use of language that is unique to your organization. You will also want to map out your content by topics and keywords in a spreadsheet. This allows you to more effectively link your content internally to the user’s journey. It also helps improve your overall link authority.
10.) Consider the Earlier Stages of the Buyer Journey When Writing Content
This is especially true when writing content for B2C websites with longer sales cycles.
Copy that speaks to your user’s pain points will likely resonate with them. This will help your company make the “short list” and show up on the list of vendors your potential clients are vetting to fulfill their needs. When all is said and done, make sure that your content is on point and hits home!
11.) Ensure a Connection Between Keywords and the Stages of the Buyer’s Journey
It’s critical that you don’t mix up the needs of your audience and Google. Keyword intent throughout your copy is essential to have it show up on the SERPs, so don’t overlook it.
12.) Include All the Core Keyword Types
Make sure you incorporate non-branded keywords, focus keywords, supporting keywords (sub-topics), related keywords, and question queries in your evergreen copy. You also want to make sure you include your keywords in your H-tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) and then use them in your copy too.
13.) Ensure that Your Content Ranks for Both Branded & Non-Branded Keywords
You can make sure that your content accomplishes both goals when your SEO team provides keyword research to your writers before they work their magic.
14.) Use a Product-Led SEO Content Strategy
You’ll want to make sure that you include audience feedback and user intent as you develop an SEO content strategy that focuses on the needs of your audience. Furthermore, a product-led SEO strategy will likely give you an edge over your competition.
How to Scale Your Content Strategy to Hit Your SEO Goals
In order to scale the optimization of content across enterprise websites, the SEO team needs to have a clear idea of the impact that their white hat on-page optimizations.
Standard SEO best practices are a great place to start when optimizing your content. It is critical that you A/B test your optimizations across large sets of content when you work to scale your SEO strategy. In an ideal world, your SEO A/B test will statistically prove whether the SEO best practices provide an organic lift.
Knowing which optimizations provide a positive lift in organic traffic via A/B testing provides you with the means to scale your SEO strategies across large sections of your website and inch closer to achieving those goals.
It’s vital that you understand that the SEO world isn’t one size fits all. You can run the same tests on different sites and produce varying results. This highlights the individualized nature of the industry and is definitely something to keep an eye on.
When all is said and done, SEO split testing is crucial for your SEO strategy. We can no longer blindly follow SEO best practices with keywords and user intent with the current state of the SEO landscape.
How Does SEO A/B Testing Help Scale Your Content Strategy?
A/B testing provides organizations with the means to validate the impact of a proposed SEO optimization technique.
This allows SEO teams to adjust when test results are negative or that do not bring about a positive change. Furthermore, A/B testing is the ideal route to tinker with your SEO strategy until you achieve positive SEO test results.
Your SEO team can then request your development team to make specific changes that you know will provide a positive organic traffic lift.
Now you can scale your SEO optimizations given the statistically backed results you achieve via A/B testing.
