Content Strategy: A Complete Guide to Getting Organic Traffic

Without a content strategy, you’re simply creating content aimlessly and hoping it drives traffic and revenue. How sad?

There’s enormous competition already. More than 250,000 new websites are launched daily, and 3.7+ million videos are uploaded daily to YouTube. You can’t afford to make assumptions or just create content because you know it could benefit your business. You need a blueprint or map!

To ensure your content pages rank on Google organic results, I’ll show you how to create a strategy to guide your brand's content creation and simplify the path to organic visibility.

What is Content Strategy?

By addressing specific topics (not keywords), providing answers to questions, and maintaining a consistent schedule, content strategy improves search engine visibility, enhances a brand's online presence, and drives more organic traffic for sustainable growth.

Factors that Affect Content Strategy and SEO (Table Chart)

The table below shows the 6 key factors that affect content strategy and their impact on organic visibility + ease of implementation.

How to Create a Content Strategy to Drive Organic Traffic and Revenue

Here’s the exact blueprint we use at Blackbook Digital to create content that drives leads and revenue for our business:

1. Create a Buyer Persona

Your ideal customers are real humans with emotions of pain, happiness, and fear. As such, you need to understand their pain points at a personal level. Building buyer personas involves diving deep into their demographics, behaviors, and preferences. This template might be helpful:

To illustrate even better, let’s go through the steps of creating a Buyer Persona for a SaaS Company helping fitness coaches. To successfully cater to fitness coaches, the SaaS company must craft a precise buyer persona like so:  

Step #1: Collect Data from Existing Customers

Start by gathering information from your current user base. GlobalPatron provides several effective data collection methods -- make sure you choose which method is best for your industry. 

Focus on demographics such as age, location, and their specific niche within fitness coaching, like personal trainers, yoga instructors, or nutritionists.

Step #2: Conduct Surveys and Interviews

Engage your existing and potential customers through surveys and one-on-one interviews. Inquire about their pain points, objectives, and the unique challenges they face in their fitness coaching endeavors. 

This insight will inform your content creation and software improvement in the future. 

Step #3: Analyze Your Competitors

Study competitors in the fitness coaching software market. Understand the kind of clients they attract and the solutions they offer. This analysis will reveal common needs and preferences among your target audience.

Step #4: Create Detailed Buyer Personas

Based on the gathered data, craft detailed buyer personas. For instance, "Mimi Green, the Yoga Instructor." Describe Green's age, income, marital status, location, fitness niche, daily challenges, and goals. Dive deep into her lifestyle and pain points.

Source

Step #5: Identify Specific Pain Points

Uncover the pain points your buyer personas face, such as client schedule management or tracking progress. This understanding will guide feature development.

Step #6: Continuously Update Personas

Regularly revisit and update your buyer personas to stay aligned with your expanding user base. This ongoing refinement ensures your content, products, and services remain indispensable in the fitness coaching industry or whatever your niche.

3. Do Topic Research, Not Keywords

In modern SEO, the focus is on topics, not keywords.

Google's Helpful Content updates seems to have shifted the focus from standalone keywords (e.g., Mailchimp pricing) to topic selection (e.g., How much does Mailchimp cost) for a crucial reason: it enables content creators to better address search intent.

Let's illustrate the shift from keywords to topics. An online business broker targeting website sellers is our example.

Keyword-Centric Approach:

In the past, the online business broker might have focused on keywords like "sell website," "website selling tips," or "website valuation." This keyword-centric strategy often resulted in creating content that narrowly matched these keywords, lacking depth and relevance to the user's broader needs.

Topic-Centric Approach:

Now, in the era of topics, the business broker recognizes that potential sellers have various questions and concerns beyond specific keywords. 

They create content around a comprehensive topic like "How to Maximize Your Website Sale." 

The content could consist of articles, guides, and videos addressing everything from website valuation to preparing a site for sale, negotiating deals, and legal aspects of selling. To win the SEO game today, you need to start researching topics that allow you to cover the entire journey a website seller may go through, providing valuable insights and answers to their questions. 

It aligns with the user's intent, offering a one-stop resource for sellers. 

4. Create the Type of Content Your Audience Prefers

How you package your content will either appeal or annoy your audience.

The format of your content makes a world of difference. To rank on Google and grow your online business with organic traffic, you must identify the content format your buyer persona resonates with the most.

Glow Organic: A Case Study in Content Format Success

Let's take the example of a skincare brand, "Glow Organic," targeting health-conscious consumers.

Glow Organic recognized the diverse preferences of their audience. They started with traditional blog posts but soon discovered that their audience, primarily composed of busy individuals, preferred quick and actionable advice.

Glow Organics transitioned to creating listicles and in-depth guides on skincare routines tailored to various skin types. 

These guides provided step-by-step instructions, product recommendations, and real-life success stories. This format offered substantial value to their audience by addressing their specific pain points.

However, Glow Organic didn't stop there. They realized the potential for interactivity in content. By introducing quizzes that helped users identify their skin type and the most suitable products, they increased user engagement significantly. 

These interactive elements not only offered personalized recommendations but also made the content experience fun and memorable.

In this manner, Glow Organics catered to their buyer persona's preference for in-depth, actionable content while also incorporating interactive elements. This strategy boosted engagement, encouraged sharing, and ultimately drove organic traffic to their website.

The key takeaway here is that your content format should be designed around your audience's preferences. 

Don't hesitate to experiment, as Glow Organic did, and continuously monitor user engagement to ensure you're delivering the content type your buyer persona craves.

5. Figure Out How Often to Post Content for Your Audience

Consistency is the lifeblood of content strategy. Frequency varies, but the rhythm should be steady. 

Posting content at the right frequency is pivotal for audience engagement, organic traffic growth, and, ultimately, revenue.  Research by HubSpot reveals that businesses publishing 16 or more blog posts a month increase traffic by over 2,500% in one year than those publishing 0 - 4 times.

Truly, user engagement and search engine algorithms favor consistency. 

Regular posting keeps your audience engaged and signals to search engines that your website is active and valuable. Let's consider ContentBoost, a digital marketing agency. They initially posted sporadically, averaging one blog post per month. Their organic traffic and conversions were inconsistent!

ContentBoost decided to experiment. They increased their posting frequency to one engaging and detailed post per week, addressing common SEO topics.

Over a year, their organic traffic grew by up to 150% compared to their initial sporadic posting. Conversions, too, surged by 75%.

Their blog became a valuable resource, drawing in their target audience and converting them into loyal customers.

Publishing helpful content regularly and at the right time improved their search rankings and user engagement.

6. Develop a Content Distribution Style

It's not enough to create great content; it must find its way to your audience. According to Outbrain, you could leverage either Earned, Owned, or Paid Media, or use all if you have the resources.

You can master content distribution by learning from other brands. Here’s a case study from a tech company. 

Consider "CNET," a tech product review website. They have perfected content distribution through a tailored approach:

i). Instagram

CNET leverages Instagram to its full visual potential. 

They post high-quality images and short video snippets showcasing gadgets and product reviews. 

This platform allows them to engage their predominantly younger, tech-savvy audience, generating buzz around the latest tech products.

ii). YouTube

Recognizing the power of video, CNET maintains an active YouTube channel. 

They create in-depth product review videos, tutorials, and tech news updates. 

YouTube caters to CNET’s audience's preference for in-depth content and visual demonstration, driving both engagement and organic traffic to the website.

While social media signals may not improve your SEO efforts, they can drive traffic, engagement, and backlinks from authoritative and high DR (domain rating) websites. 

As seen from the graph below, Content, Backlinks, and Mobile Optimization carry more weight in influencing organic rankings today.

Note: Twitter and LinkedIn, while powerful, might not suit CNET’s visually-focused content and younger demographic. 

These platforms predominantly cater to a more business-minded audience and content that thrives on text-based updates and professional networking.

That said, you have to understand your audience and which social media channels they spend most time on. 

7. Have a Micro Call to Action (CTA) in Each Content

The power of persuasion lies in the micro. Incorporating micro CTAs in your content is a subtle yet potent technique to nudge people into taking action. 

It’s a mark of respect if you ask people to do just one thing after reading or watching your content. You value their time and decision-making capacity. 

By focusing on just one action, whether it's subscribing, filling out a form, or getting a discount, you guide your audience seamlessly. 

Wishdesk, for example, uses a simple CTA, which prompts the audience to get a free site audit:

This simplicity minimizes the risk of overwhelming them with too many choices, increasing the likelihood of follow-through. 

It's a powerful technique for achieving specific goals, whether it's generating leads, attracting repeat visitors, or converting customers, as it invites users to engage without feeling paralyzed by an array of options.  

HubSpot's use of micro calls to action is an excellent example. 

At the end of each article, they present readers with two concise and highly relevant options: download a valuable resource like a template or guide or simply sign up for their newsletter. 

This approach aligns with user intent, providing choices that cater to different needs. Users can choose to deepen their engagement with immediate, actionable content or stay updated through the newsletter.

HubSpot's well-executed micro CTAs have contributed to increased user interaction and, in turn, bolstered their organic ranking by enhancing user experience and dwell time on their site.

Takeaway

A well-designed content strategy improves organic visibility, traffic, and revenue because it aligns content with what users are searching for. Regular, valuable content engages users, boosting your website's credibility and attracting clicks from real people.

Strategic topic selection caters to user needs, answers their questions, provides actionable tips, and enhances overall user experience. 

This data-driven approach and adaptability to changing trends make content strategy a powerful tool for consistent business growth.