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What do you want to accomplish with your content? You can rank in Google all day long, and have great, linkable content on your blog. You can even build links with relevant keywords, but unless you are hitting the topics relevant to your niche and your current and future customers, and getting good conversion rates from your site, it is useless.

This is a hard thing for many companies to see, but you need to have a content and digital marketing strategy, one that is targeted to specific goals. We have talked before about the need for a pillar approach to SEO and content, but what does that really do for you? How will you achieve your content strategy goals?

Here are some tips for setting and achieving those goals.

Be Realistic

What can you actually do with your website right now? This is an operation of two separate things: time and money. Even if you outsource your content and link building, it will still take you time to inform those contractors what your wants and needs are. If you plan to do much of the work yourself, it will take even longer.

The next question is budget. Typically, good link building and good content is not cheap. Either you need to build an internal team of writers who you need to pay as employees, or you need to outsource to freelancers to do the work for you. Either way, it is an investment you need to make.

The thing is, you don’t always see immediate returns on your money. It takes time for link building to affect rankings and for good content to earn organic links. So this is a slow investment. You won’t earn your money back for at least 90 days depending on how aggressive your campaigns are, and probably not until six months in, when you see a real rise in organic traffic.

Know what to expect, and act accordingly.

Develop a Plan

Here is the kicker. Once you know what you can realistically afford for time and money, you need to have a plan. What are your specific goals, and how will your content help you achieve those goals? If you don’t know, neither can the people you hire to do some of the work for you.

This means that certain things are vital for you to do from the start.

  • Competitor research: What is your competition doing, and can you either duplicate that or do it better than they are?
  • Find your keywords: You will want to know what your target keywords are. You want ones that are relevant to your business in search, but hopefully not too competitive.
  • Understand the work: SEO and content strategy is a complex, multi-pronged process. Be sure you understand what you need to do and take the right steps in the right order.
  • Make goals ambitious, but achievable: Goals that are too easy will not challenge you, but make sure they are realistic (see above) so you can actually reach them and see yourself making progress.

This plan is the crucial part of the process. You need targets that you can work toward, and you need to know how you are working toward them.

Measure Results

How do you know if you are getting where you are going? Are your efforts working, helping, hurting? The only way to tell is to regularly measure things that will make a difference to your website. Subscribe to services and use Google tools that let you do just that.

  • Organic Traffic: This should be a constantly rising curve.
  • Bounce Rates: These should be low, and this can be helped by using internal linking effectively.
  • Conversion Rates: This is how many people do what you want them to on your site, and you can set these goals in your Google analytics. This lets you know how effective your website really is.

There are other third-party factors like Domain Authority (Moz) and Trust and Citation Flow (SEM Rush) that can let you know in general terms how your site is doing. These companies also offer tools that make improving your efforts through keyword analysis and competitor analysis easier.

Achieving your content strategy goals means that you will have to make some significant effort and investment. You will need realistic goals, a plan, and a strategy to measure your progress. With those things, you can make your content strategy effective.

Need help with strategy or just with creating content? Contact us at [email protected]for answers and a free 30 minute consultation.