When it comes to content strategy, we immediately associate this term with content marketing.
Although these words are often used as synonyms, they are actually different: a strategy could also be established for non-marketing content.
Today’s topic is about the intersection of the yellow and blue bubbles, namely the content marketing strategy.
Content Marketing Strategy
Users have needs that can be met through the consumption of one or more goods or services. The job of a good SEO specialist is to overcome this need and intercept potential buyers through search engines.
At this very delicate stage, it is necessary to meet the needs of users and define the target, that is:
- your goals;
- reference market;
- addressed audience;
- style and tone of voice.
From a SEO point of view, these three points can be translated in:
- the “topics” for which we want to compete;
- who are our competitors;
- who we talk to (gender, age, and search intent);
- what kind of language we want to use.
Target analysis and market segmentation
Segmentation allows you to identify your main target that populate a specific market.
To better understand it, we’ll need to deepen two counterintuitive aspects that characterize it:
- Hypersegmentation – it consists in dividing the market into extremely small segments and to get to know the users so well that you can offer them an almost customized product and/or service;
- Countersegmentation – in this second case, the market is considered homogeneous and undifferentiated, thus offering a “standard” service.
To do this, you need to ask yourself a great number of questions, for example:
- Which subjects occupy the market I am addressing?
- Why did they choose that market?
- Which marketing channels influence them?
Understanding the target
A segment, for it to be relevant, has to meet the following four requirements:
- It must be measurable: how many subjects make up the segment (i.e.: the number of users that search the term “images” on a monthly basis is 1.000.000);
- relevant: the number of users who may benefit from the service must be such as to justify the economic and organizational effort of the company;
- profitable: the company must be able to make profit from these subjects;
- accessible: the company must be able to be found (like SEO) from the target.
Tools to use
Identifying the target and segmenting the market is a task to carry out during strategic planning (before embarking on content marketing actions).
If this process is not considered, it is necessary to adopt it as corrective action.
You can divide this activity into six macro areas of intervention:
- Active user analysis (Google Analytics, Google Search Console) when the project has already launched;
- Competitor analysis (Searchmetrics, Google, Screaming Frog, Google AdWords, etc.);
- Keyword analysis (Searchmetrics, Google Suggest, Google AdWords, etc.)
- Structure definition (information architecture);
- SEO architecture definition (Title, description, H1, etc.)
- Perfromance analysis (Google Analytics, Google Search Console).
Search Intent and SEO strategy
After having identified the reference target you’ll need to intercept the user queries using the so called “Search Intent”.
This activity is usually divided into four classes:
- Navigational Queries;
- Informational Queries;
- Commercial Investigation Queries;
- Transactionl Queries.
SEO strategy identification
In the light of what was said in the “Search Intent” section, the goals pursued through the SEO business are several and depend mainly on:
- the market, based on competitors and target audience;
- the user, in relation to their search intent;
- the website we intend to optimize and the topics covered;
- the type of website (editorial, e-commerce, news, etc.).
Monitoring your competitors does not mean to copy their strategies but to understand what content Google considers relevant in their headlines.
As we have seen, we need to take into account different aspects if we want to conquer the SERP that we are interested in. Nothing can be left to chance; our goal is to “subdue the enemy without fighting” and thus to overcome it simply by better responding to the needs of those seeking a common product or service.