SEO Content Strategy: Simple Steps to Boost Your Website

Last year’s B2B Content Marketing Insights report from CMI revealed that 7 out of 10 marketers think that content has become “more important” to their organization in the last year.

But why is that? Simply put, because it’s effective.

While many companies turn to social media to bring traffic to their websites, SEO is a much safer bet. Research shows that SEO drives 1,000% more traffic to sites than social media.

You can’t have effective SEO without effective content, and vice versa.

Understanding how both work and why they work so well together is the first step in creating a successful SEO content strategy. Let’s see how SEO and content together can help improve your website traffic.

An SEO content strategy is a plan to create and distribute content that will improve your search engine ranking, create a following, and, in the long run, generate more leads for your business. To put it simply, a content strategy defines who you are going to target, with what information, and what you are trying to achieve.

Sure, there’s more to it. We’ve only scratched the surface.

But before you can understand how to formulate an SEO content strategy, you need to understand its two key components. And those are, of course, SEO and… Social media…

Joking, joking… Let’s move on to the real explanation…

The Relationship Between SEO and Content Strategy

In simple terms, SEO and content strategy have a simple, symbiotic relationship: SEO makes your content visible and easily accessible to users, while content marketing provides material that attracts and retains traffic to your website, in turn helping you rank.

We need to look at this relationship more closely…

SEO and Content Discovery: This has been said a million times, but it bares repeating – it doesn’t matter if you create the best content in the world if no one’s there to see it. Your content strategy depends on SEO to give it exposure. SEO optimization puts your content in front of the right people, in the right context, at the right time.
Content Fueling SEO: SEO sets the stage for visitors. It helps you find keywords and topics your audience wants to read. High-quality content, in turn, attracts and keeps them coming for more. High engagement and repeated visits will rank you high in Google search results and increase organic traffic.
Mutual Growth: SEO and content enhance each other’s performance. SEO makes content discoverable and high-quality content keeps engagement high and generates backlinks over time.

How Content Strategy Enhances SEO

Reach Your Target Market:
Nurture Your Leads:
Improve Backlink Profile:

B2C SEO vs B2B SEO

SEO for B2C and B2B industries is a lot different. Yes, on the surface, it’s the same old thing: researching keywords, optimizing, and building like. But there are some HUGE differences here to these two approaches.

Category	B2C Marketing	B2B Marketing
Buying Process	Short, simple, emotionally driven by personal needs.	Long, complex, knowledge-driven.
Target Audience	Targets individual customers, often focuses on short-term relationships.	Targets multiple decision-makers in a single organization, relies on long-term relationships.
Keyword Strategy	High-volume, broad keywords with a lot of competition.	High-value, low-volume keywords with high CPC.
Sales Cycle	Short sales cycle with quick, impulse-driven decisions.	A long sales cycle, due to thorough evaluation.
Content Marketing	Relatively short, punchy, emotionally driven content.	Long-form, in-depth informational content.

Let’s focus on the last item in the table: content marketing.

In both industries, organizations use content to increase traffic, attract leads, and subsequently, boost sales. But since they want to attract completely different consumers, they use different strategies and types of content:

B2C Content Marketing: In the B2C world, you create that that aims to influence purchasing decisions of individuals, shopping for themselves or others. The content you produce, therefore, needs to engage with the reader, and drive an impulsive purchase. You’ll often find B2C content creative, emotionally impactful, and less formal – think short infographics and social media posts.
B2B Content Marketing: On the other hand, B2B content needs attract formal decision makers who are making purchase for a company. The purchasing decision in the B2B sector often affects dozens and hundreds of people. The content must offer solutions to serious problems, establish authority, and in ideal cases, build lasting relationships. You can achieve this through case studies, long-form blog posts, and white papers.

While you don’t really need any expertise per se to create content for casual audiences, you need expert-level knowledge for B2B content.

That’s because the content will be consumed by people with industry knowledge and experience who will easily spot if an amateur has written what they’re reading, listening, or watching.

An SaaS content marketing agency like NUOPTIMA helps businesses crate data-backed content strategies, tailored to their needs. The content is not just expertly-created, but it’s carefully crafted to hit customers at certain points of the buyers’ journey.

This result-driven approach focuses on performance metrics that enhance ROI, ensuring quality content, good leads, and high conversion rates.

In the B2B sector, the goal of an SEO content strategy is to attract the consumer’s attention at a certain point in the buyer’s journey. Your content needs to attract the eyes of people who represent companies interested in your product.

To ensure your B2B content strategy is successful, it must contain several key elements…

1. The 95% Rule

Have you ever heard of the 95-5 rule?

The rule dictates that within a given B2B product category, only around 5% of the consumers are actively looking for a solution to a distinct problem, while the rest are passive.

While these numbers aren’t 100% correct, their underlying premise is objectively true: No matter what products or services you offer, an overwhelming majority of consumers aren’t looking for it. That’s why you need to put your business in front of as many potential customers as possible.

You need to target keywords that have both higher and lower search volumes. High-volume keywords have a broad reach, which translates into more opportunities for your brand. These keywords will target shoppers at the top of the purchase funnel.

This, in turn, will improve the effectiveness of the low-volume keyword content at the bottom of the funnel.

2. Long-Tail Keywords

This element goes hand-in-hand with the previous one…

As a SaaS company, you’re offering a unique solution to a specific problem, right? That means your potential customers are looking up extremely specific keywords.

These Google searches tend to contain more words and details about the service they seek. That adds another layer of depth, separating these keywords from the seed ones they branch out. Long-tail keywords are highly targeted and specific to a particular topic, product, or niche Sounds confusing? OK, here’s an example that will explain it better:

Seed Keyword: “project management software”
Long-tail Keyword: “how to integrate project management software with CRM tools”

Yes, these long-tail keywords don’t have a huge search volume. As a matter of fact, many have really low volume—think a few dozen searches a month—but they’re highly valuable. Why? Because they have low competition, higher intent and conversion rates and they cater to users who are looking for something very specific.

3. Topical Authority

The term “topical authority” refers to your expertise on a particular topic. Basically, it shows just how you’re knowledgeable on the topics in your niche. You build topical authority through well-written, highly-detailed content relevant to your business.

Why does topical authority matter so much? Because of E-E-A-T.

Confused a little? Let us elaborate.

E-E-A-T is an acronym Google uses in its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines and it stands for “Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness.” Originally, the acronym was a much more streamlined “E-A-T, but in 2022, an additional E was added for “Experience.”

If Google regards you as an authority on a certain topic and deems you experienced enough in the matter, it regards you as a trusted source of information and ranks you higher in SERPs.

To measure topical authority, you can use tools like Semrush or Google Analytics:

Semrush: The Keyword Overview tool in Semrush includes a Topical Authority metric that evaluates your site’s credibility for specific search terms. Enter a keyword and your domain to receive a rating of “Low,” “Moderate,” “Relevant,” or “High.” This helps you identify areas to enhance content and boost authority.

Google Analytics: Use Google Analytics to track organic search traffic. An increase in traffic indicates effective authority building. Navigate to “Reports” > “Life cycle” > “Acquisition” > “Traffic acquisition” to review your traffic data.

Educational content is pretty easy to understand: It’s a content format that aims to increase the knowledge of the reader on a certain topic.

It aims to answer the questions your audience has, instead of directly selling of them. At the top of the sales funnel, people look for answers not products or brands. Educational SEO content directly answers questions people often look up on Google.

In B2B, educational content targets potential leads by answering their questions, giving precise , data-backed information, and positioning you as the credible source. Blog posts, case studies, and white papers can help guide leads through the sales process, offer your SaaS as the answer to their problems, and increase chances of converting.

After consuming educational content, B2B consumers are not only 130% more likely to convert, but over 80% more likely to select the brand that offered the solution to their problem.

5. Strategic KPIs

Despite what some articles and videos would lead you to believe, SEO isn’t about generating traffic. It’s about generating leads, conversions, and customers. To do that, you need a well-planned, measurable strategy for your content. Pretty intuitive, wouldn’t you say?

Yet, according to Marketing Profs, nearly two-thirds of B2B marketers don’t have a written down content strategy. If you want success, that can’t be you.

Instead, you need to figure out what are the desirable outcomes for potential customers at different stages of your funnel.

At a certain stage, you only want to collect the user’s email—you can do that by having them sign up for your newsletter. And at another, you may want them to sign up for a demo of your software. Set goals and find how to measure them so you can make tweaks along the way.

A creative illustration showing the benefits of an SEO content strategy, with elements like a pencil, thumbs up, hashtags, and social media icons emerging from a notepad, indicating the positive impact of well-planned content on digital marketing efforts.

Obviously, a successful content strategy can do wonders for your business. It can take you from obscurity to the tip of the Google SERPs. Sure, rankings sound great, but there has to be more to it, doesn’t it? Here are some additional

1. Increased Website Traffic

Let’s get the obvious out of the way…

Careful planning and research lead to good content.

Decently executed, optimized content leads to high rankings.

And ranking on the first page of Google leads to decent traffic. Makes perfect sense.

Over 99,000 Google searchers are performed every single second of the day. Focusing on the right keywords and covering the most important topics in your industry will give you a solid piece of that traffic.

2. Improved User Experience

Besides being informative for readers and optimized for Google’s bots, you want your content to look visually appealing. Custom images. Infographics. Supplementary videos. Those are just a few elements you can add to your posts to make them look better.

Should you really focus that much energy on this? Will it really improve the effectiveness of your SEO strategy? Yes, it surely will.

When given a short, 15-minute window to consume online content, the average user will go for visually appealing content two out of three times.

Also, keep in mind that the look of your entire website has a major influence on the perception of your brand. A B2B website that offers great design will leave a great first impression and increase user satisfaction in the process.

3. Better Brand Visibility

Let’s continue with the theme of branding for now.

With more than 3.9 million new websites being created every day… Standing out isn’t going to become any easier any time soon. Granted, most of these websites aren’t in the B2B industry, but still, they pollute the Internet with convoluted, often AI-generated content.

Ranking on the first page of Google will increase your visibility in the eyes of consumers and establish you as a familiar face in your industry. After you optimize your content to match popular searches in your niche, you’ll almost instantly see more clicks.

And make sure to give your content some personality. B2B consumers are twice as likely to work with a brand that wears its values on its sleeve than others.

4. Enhanced Credibility and Trust

An SEO content strategy will allow you to produce quality content on regular occasions, promote it, and address your audience’s needs. This consistency, while it may take some time, will eventually result in increased consumer loyalty.

And, as Forrester research shows, trust is the biggest factor for other companies when deciding whether to do business with you. A lot of companies fail to capitalize on this due to poor or no content strategy… But this definitely won’t be you.

5. Long-Term Growth and Sustainability

What is every B2B company looking for? Long-term success, of course. You’re trying to create customer relationships that will last as long as you’re in business, correct?

Wouldn’t you know it, this is another benefit you can expect from a carefully thought-out content strategy.

High-quality content will attract the right kind of people to your website. While not all people will become customers, having a constant stream of visitors will bring more than a few leads. The word “consistency is coming up a lot because it’s key here/

After six months, you can expect a nearly 60% increase in organic traffic. After a year, that number climbs to more than 85% increase. And after two years, you can expect your traffic to be up a staggering 220%.

Illustration showing a person with various digital marketing tools, including a computer screen with analytics, a target with an arrow, and a content creation process, representing a comprehensive content marketing strategy.

Creating a Content Strategy for SEO

With so much talk of content strategy, one has to wonder how you even come up with it. Creating a content strategy for your SEO effort starts with finding out who your target audience is. Once you know that, you’ll be able to figure what to do to attract their attention.

Sure, formulating a strategy isn’t EXACTLY the same for all businesses, but there are certain characteristics that every single one of them has.

Let’s look at the basic steps to creating a content strategy for SEO:

1. Figure Out Who You Want to Target

Without knowing who your target audience is, it would be practically impossible to create content for them, right?

Audience research is a crucial part of creating a content strategy. Discovering your target audience will dictate everything from topic selection to the platforms you should target for content distribution.

Let’s look at CISCO at the moment. The company’s target audience is made up of tech professionals who use their products at work. That’s why CISCO mainly targets potential customers through LinkedIn, where they have over 6 million followers.

CISCO is also aware that their audience mainly consumes their content during work breaks, so they create bite-sized pieces of content to quickly attract the attention of the user.

So let’s say this is the first time you’re working on your content strategy. Where do you find your target audience? What’s a good starting point?

Competition research is the best way to go. Your competitors surely target a similar audience, and by checking their website traffic, social media followers, and keywords they target, you can find out who these people are.

You can use Semrush, Ahrefs, or even Ubersuggest to find all of this out. Then, you can create buyer personas. A buyer persona is simply a profile of imaginary users who make up your ideal audience. Their profiles should contain demographic information such as:

Age
Location
Education level
Job status
Income
Pain points

Consider creating “anti-buyer personas” as well. These are the types of customers you don’t want to target. Defining anti-buyer personas will help you save time and money in the long run.

2. Identify Keywords You Want to Rank For

Once you know who you want to target, it’s to select the keywords you want to rank for.

Although you’re probably familiar with keyword research, let’s define it, just in case: keyword research is the process of finding the keywords you’ll use in your content so you can rank high in search results and attract relevant traffic to your website.

For this example, we’ll use Ahrefs to show you how to quickly find relevant keywords, with search traffic potential:

Go to Ahrefs’ main dashboard.
Click on ‘Keywords Explorer.”
Enter a couple of broad keywords related to your niche.
Head to “Matching Terms” report.
Then, filter for keywords with good Traffic Potential (TP).

This metric – Traffic Potential – is the estimated organic traffic that can come from targeting that keyword. It’s more reliable than Search Volume as a metric because SV only shows how many people are looking up a particular keyword and not how many of them will visit your website.

Traffic Potential takes out the guesswork out of the equation and gives you concrete data.

If all of these concepts sound foreign to you, or you simply don’t have enough time to do them properly, you can always hire someone to do the dirty work for you.

And yes, NUOPTIMA does offer keyword research services that can help you tackle this.

3. Research and Create a List of Topics to Tackle

Yes, we’ve already established that your content needs to be filled with sweet, relevant keywords so your audience can find it.

But you’re not creating content just for Google’s algorithm. You’re creating it for people too. Did you know that 94% of all created content out there gets no organic backlinks? That’s in part because a majority of the content nowadays has no useful information for the reader.

To create content that will ACTUALLY RESONATE with people, you need to know what information will benefit them.

Of course, to research topics, you can always go through Ahrefs or Semrush to find what topics have a good amount of links. But if you want to find new topics to cover your audience will be interested in, you can also:

Research platforms like Reddit, Quora, and Answer the Public to see what are some of the more popular questions in your industry.
Analyze the content of your competitors, see what content types perform the best and what is missing from their content strategy.
You can also survey your audience, see what kind of content they want and what their biggest questions are.

4. Build Up Topic Clusters

To take your topic research to the next level… We need to talk about topic clusters.

Building topic clusters is a relatively new SEO strategy that allows you to organize your content around central themes and improve your rankings in the process.

In this strategy, a central “pillar” page serves as the main hub, linking to multiple “cluster” pages that cover related subtopics in detail. The pillar page is like the trunk of a tree, and the cluster pages are the branches extending from it. This interconnected network of content enhances SEO and provides comprehensive coverage of a topic.

Back in 2016, HubSpot employees Cambria Davis and Anum Hussain experimented with cluster topics. They discovered the more interlinked they did, the better their SERP rankings were. Their overall impressions and backlinks improved too.

Here’s an example of how to create a basic topic cluster:

Pillar Page: “Marketing Automation”
- Broadly covers various aspects of marketing automation.
Related Content Pages:
- “Email Marketing Automation”
- “Lead Nurturing Strategies”
- “Data-Driven Marketing Tactics”
- “CRM Integration Best Practices”
- “Automated Social Media Campaigns”

Each of the related content pages links back to the central pillar page. By focusing on covering topics and not just isolated keywords, topic cluster can help you create content that will be helpful to your audience and cater to the Google search algorithm.

5. Settle on a Couple of Content Formats

Next, you need select a few content formats. There are many mediums available for your content:

Blog posts
Social media posts
Videos
Podcasts
Ebooks

To engage your audience, you may want to use a couple of different formats. For SEO purposes, you need to have a blog, of course. There, you can post and interlink various types of content and promote it to your audience.

When it comes to B2B content, we’ve already mentioned that educational, in-depth content suits target audiences. One content type you should look into are complete guides.

These guides cover certain topics from top to bottom. Let’s say you’re writing a complete guide to marketing automation. Your article would cover areas like fundamentals of marketing automation, basic terminology, techniques to implement it, best platforms, and examples.

Complete guides, when done right, are wroth reading and sharing on social medial.

They also tend attract backlinks and rank pretty well due to their length in-depthness.

One downside is they take a lot of time, energy, and resources. It takes 5 to 10 times more time to write one of these monstrosities than a regular blog.

But if you’re willing to put in the work, you can reap the benefits of complete guides, possibly for years to come.

6. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize

You’ve done your due diligence. Now’s the time to start working.

That means, you need start creating content and inserting keywords everywhere. From the text of your blogs to your tags and descriptions.

In general, here’s where you want to insert keywords:

Title tags
Meta descriptions
Main page heading
Content subheadings
Body text

Inserting keywords into different components of your page helps a lot with ranking.

However, you need to make a conscious effort not to put too many keywords in your content. That’s called “keyword stuffing” and it’s a practice Google doesn’t approve of. So much so, that keyword stuffing can have negative consequences on your rankings.

7. Create a Content Calendar

When you decide to start publishing content, you need to make sure to do it on regular occasion. Google needs to know that your blog is active, and the best way of doing so is to post content on a weekly basis.

To keep up with content posting, you should create a content calendar.

It will help you plan out what are you going to create and when are you going to do it. A content calendar will keep the rest of your creative team in the loop and keep them accountable. That’s why over 75% of B2B companies reportedly use calendering in their content strategy.

So, what’s the best way to create a content calendar? What app should you use? How long should you plan ahead?

When it comes to apps, sure you have many dedicated apps for it, but in reality, you can use a simple tool like Google Sheets to plan your posting schedule.

Speaking of planning, you should always plan a couple weeks in advance – a few months at most. Markets, budgets, and audiences can change quickly. You don’t want to spend a couple of months planing a year-long posting calendar, only to start changing them after a month or so.

8. Do Some Off-Page SEO

So far, nearly all we talked about was on-page SEO. But to work, your content strategy requires some off-page SEO as well. That means, you need to plan out your link building strategy.

Just like SEO and content marketing, link building and content creation have a mutually-beneficial relationship.

A backlink is a link from one website to another and is one of the main ranking factors used by Google and other search engines. If you want to have an authoritative page and surpass other people competing for it, you need to build a solid number of backlinks.

In board terms, backlinks fall into these three categories:

Natural Backlinks: These are the links to your website that occur naturally. Other websites will undoubtedly find your content valuable and use it a source of information. These are definitely the most valuable types of links, but you can’t just rely on them.
Manual Backlinks: Manual backlinks are created through outreach, collaboration with other websites, and relationship building with other businesses. They require more effort and resources, but are worth it.
Self-Created Backlinks: This refers to backlinks created through forum posts, profile signatures, and comments. Backlinks created using these tactics can be seen as “spammy” by Google and offer the least value to your website.

If you want to know how to get quality backlinks, we recommend you reading our recent blog post on the topic. There, we covered everything from the fundamental terms to advanced link-building strategies.

9. Set Up Analytics and Performance Indicators

You can’t be sure that your content strategy is working or not if you’re not tracking it properly, so, you need to set up some metrics to keep track of.

According to Content Marketing Institute research, three of the most tracked metrics for content include:

Email engagement;
Website traffic;
And user engagement.

But those are far from the only KPIs you need to pay attention to. Some of them may not be even relevant to your business goals. You need to sit down with your team, talk to them about what needs to be accomplished, and only then set KPIs.

In most cases, the metrics below are tracked to ensure

Article Views: Monitor the number of views using tools to understand reach and audience interest. Tracking article views helps you identify which topics resonate most with your audience. (Track with Google Analytics)
Inbound Links: To see how effective your off-page SEO tactics are, you need to measure the number of inbound links to your website. More inbound links indicate your content is seen as authoritative and trustworthy. (Track with Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush)
Click-through Rate (CTR): Use CTR to Measure the effectiveness of your calls-to-action (CTAs) in driving traffic. High CTR indicates your content is compelling enough to prompt readers to take the desired action.(Track with Google Analytics or UTM parameters in URLs)
Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who perform the desired action is called conversion rate. Understanding your conversion rate helps you identify which content pieces are most effective at driving sales or other key actions. (track with Google Analytics or HubSpot)
Average Session Duration: Use ASD to see how long visitors stay on your site to gauge content engagement. Longer session durations indicate that visitors find your content valuable and engaging. (Track with Google Analytics)

10. Update Your Content and Revise Your Strategy

All of the things we discussed so far take time.

But these tactics yield results, so they worth it.

You need to monitor your content strategy at all times, measure it’s success, and every few months or so, revise it.

Sometimes, you’ll need to devote more time to building backlinks. Other times, you’ll have to work content more. Even when everything is going smoothly, you should take time and assess your strategy to see if there’s any room for improvement.

Also, you need to take time to update your content, at least once a year.

In one Semrush study, around 50% of marketers saw an increase in engagement rates and traffic after updating their content. Google loves fresh content, so it’s your job keep it that way.

Investing in an SEO content strategy requires patience. It’s not something that will give you results overnight. If you want to invest in content, don’t give up on it early after your traffic or products haven’t doubled after a few months.

Create a plan and stick with it. Of course, there are certain things that can speed things up. Are you looking for SEO services that drive high conversions? Nuoptima is here to help.

We recognize that every business out there is different. So, our content strategy will be different for you than it was for our previous clients. It will be tailored to you needs, your audience, and of course, your goals.

Book a call today, and let us develop an SEO content strategy that will work just for you.

Conclusion

Businesses want results and they want them ASAP.

That’s why creating content around high-volume and high-traffic keywords seems so attractive to many. You simply target keywords a lot of people are searching, optimize your content, and you wait for links and rankings to start coming, right?

No. Ranking on the first page hasn’t been that simple for quite some time. And even if you COULD RANK… That doesn’t mean your strategy would help you meet your business goals.

You need to create an SEO content strategy that will help you address direct business need – whether it’s brand exposure, customer acquisition, or something completely different – if you want to really succeed.

FAQ

What is SEO content strategy?

An SEO content strategy is basically a plan for creating and distributing content that improves your website’s visibility in Google SERPs. It involves multiple steps, from keyword research to on-page and off-page optimization. Regular performance tracking and adjustments ensure the strategy remains effective, helping attract more organic traffic and achieve business goals.

Does Content Strategy SEO Work for B2B and B2C?

Yes, the content strategy works for both B2B and B2C sectors. However, content strategies for these two types of companies differ significantly in certain segments because they aim at different audiences.

What Makes SEO Content Successful?

Successful SEO content is characterized by thorough keyword research, high-quality and relevant information, and strategic on-page optimization. It should be well-structured, engaging, and valuable to the target audience.

What Are the Most Effective Types of Content for SEO?

The most effective types of content for SEO include:

Blog Posts: Regularly updated, informative articles that target specific keywords.
How-to Guides and Tutorials: Step-by-step instructions that address common problems or questions.
Listicles: Engaging lists that are easy to read and share.
Infographics: Visually appealing graphics that present data or concepts clearly.
Videos: Engaging and informative visual content.
Case Studies and Whitepapers: In-depth analyses and reports.

SEO Content Strategy: Your Guide to Better Website Traffic

What is SEO Content Strategy?