By Harry Mackin

Just about everyone knows what SEO is these days, and nearly every professional brand has at least a basic content strategy in place to rank for relevant keywords and attract organic attention. The more crowded the internet becomes with these competing brands, however, the more difficult it has become to stand out.

Gone are the days when keyword stuffing and writing consistent blogs once a week were enough to get your website noticed. If you want to earn high SERP rankings and drive the right audiences to your content in a digital environment where everybody’s churning out content like there’s no tomorrow, you’re going to have to find a way for your content to rise above the rest.

That isn’t necessarily as difficult as it may sound. Leveling up your SEO content strategy won’t require you to devote your entire budget to producing Spielberg-quality videos or going viral on TikTok. Instead, getting your content noticed in a crowded market is mostly about learning how to make what you’re doing right now a little more targeted, contextually relevant, and informed by data. 

To demonstrate, here are some examples of the qualities that differentiate a basic, keep-the-lights-on SEO content strategy from a more advanced and sophisticated form capable of driving much more powerful results. If you’d like to learn more about elevating your own strategy, we welcome you to explore our SEO services.

Keyword targeting

Basic: Targeting primary keywords only

In a basic SEO content strategy, the primary focus is on targeting high-volume primary keywords. This approach often involves identifying a few generic keywords related to the business or industry and creating content optimized around those terms. 

What makes this strategy ineffective is how it overlooks user intent and fails to capture the diversity of search queries. By targeting only the broadest, highest-level keywords, you have no way to connect your content with users who are searching for something specific. 

We share an example of how this approach can fall short in our SEO content guide, Marketing with Intent: 

“For a very long time, raw keyword volume ruled SEO. This mindset became ingrained over the years, to the point where a B2B campaign will target a keyword like ‘what is digital transformation’ on the premise that it receives very high search volume and is relevant to their tech solution. Both technically true! Unfortunately, it’s an impossibly competitive term because it’s relevant to every tech solution.”

Advanced: Topical clusters and intent-driven long-tails

An advanced strategic approach for targeting keywords involves more nuance. Instead of solely targeting primary keywords, emphasize building topical clusters to deliver a breadth of focused coverage. 

In practice, this might take shape as a hub-and-spoke of sorts, with high-volume topics at the center and longer-tail keywords or variations branching out from it. This intent-driven content can explore different facets of …read more

Source:: Top Rank Blog

Author: Aaron