The Worldclass Manual to Developing a Content Strategy for the Web

1. First, Look at Your Budget

How much do you need to budget for content? Well, that really depends on how large your business is. You already have countless items clamoring for your attention, so you have to go with what drives you the most value. Here’s a general guideline for businesses of different sizes:

$200,000 – $500,000 in annual revenues: $3,000 – $5,000 annually. Do a monthly blog post, and occasional web pages and press releases as needed.
$1 million in annual revenue: $8,000 – $12,000 annually. Do 4 monthly blog posts, 1 monthly press release, web pages as needed, and maybe a whitepaper or case study, and consider a newsletter and social media accounts
$2 million – $7 million in annual revenue: $20,000+. Do 4 monthly blog posts, 1 pillar post, monthly press release, web pages as needed, quarterly whitepapers, monthly newsletter, and regular social media updates across multiple networks

More content, as long as it is something searched or somehow contributes value to your customers, is always better. The best thing to do from a business standpoint is to develop a maximum budget and stick to that.

2. The #1 Secret to Developing a Content Strategy for the Web

Whatever your web content strategy ends up looking like, you must absolutely begin it with keyword research. If you use keywords with too much competition, or keywords that your market isn’t actually using to find your products and services, your whole strategy is shot from the start.

Keywords are the foundation of your online marketing success. There’s no way to guarantee your website, or any of its content, will rank for a particular keyword. Each piece of content you target to a certain keyword is kind of like shooting at a target that you don’t quite know the location of.

You take a shot, and some of it ranks, while other content doesn’t. It’s just the nature of the beast. Remember, if it can be searched, it can be optimized. So if you write a blog article, white paper, case study, or whatever it is, it needs to have some of your keywords appear within.

3. How do You Find Keywords Right for Your Website?

Well, that’s not easy. And truth be told, it’s an ongoing process.

Many marketing agencies today help you find a few core keywords, but that’s not the best way to use them. You see, what they do is use the same keywords repeatedly.

That’s okay to a certain extent, but it doesn’t work long-term because you’re limited to certain ideas. So, you get repetitive content. I know this because I’ve worked for more than 50 digital marketing agencies, and they all do it the same way.

Others tell you to build the “right content” and “visitors will come.” That’s partially true if you’re an established business with a number of customer relationships you’ve developed in the real world. However, you’re missing out on a gold mine of additional traffic by not optimizing for relevant keywords.

So let’s take a minute to identify a few simple ways to find them:

1. Google Adwords Keyword Planner

Take a look at an example of how to find content ideas with Adwords. This keyword, “how to invest your money,” is a great one for financial websites. Check it out in Google Adwords and some related ideas:

The monthly searches are 1,000, so that’s a pretty nice range to be in. For most smaller businesses, you want to look in the range of 0 – 10,000 monthly searches or so. Any more than that, and it’s really hard to be competitive. Some of these other keywords are really nice to:

ways to invest your money
where to invest your money
how to invest your money wisely

Yeah, they all have a few hundred searches or less, but that’s exactly what you want. Those terms are much easier to compete for. And, they’re highly relevant to the business. So, that means it takes less time and money to rank for them. And then you have a higher chance of making the sale because you have a good idea of the searcher’s intent.

That’s what internet marketing is all about – getting highly qualified leads at an affordable cost. But, the caveat with Adwords is that all terms, regardless of the “competition” rating by Google, are competitive. You see, everyone else does the same thing to find keywords. Adwords is a good starting point, but it’s hard to find keywords with lower competition.

2. A Couple Sneaky Ways to Find Low-Competition Keywords

We’re still going to use Adwords to find keyword ideas. In the last example, I just typed in a search term that I knew would generate some ideas. One super-secret way to find keyword ideas in Adwords is to go to the Adwords Keyword Planner. Instead of entering in a keyword, though, you type in your competitor’s web page just like so (Credit Brian Dean of Backlinko for showing me this):

And up come a number of cool keyword ideas you might never dream up in your head:

Wow, there’s a ton of nice terms to target! They all have a low number of monthly searches too. Let’s take a look at the search term: “which IRA is best.”

The term “which IRA is best” appears in 2 of a total of 10 search results. So, that means there’s not a ton of competition for this keyword because no one’s optimizing for it. Also, one of the results is from About.com, which Google doesn’t care for all that much.

You see, About creates fairly high-level, shallow content that Google doesn’t care to rank. And if you go to read the article, it’s actually just a couple hundred words long or so – not all that helpful.

In sum, you have a good chance of ranking for this keyword. Now, when you create your content, you create the complete guide to it. Once searchers click through and read it, they’ll love it!

3. Google Autosuggest You’ve seen this before, but you might not have known it’s called “Google Autosuggest.”

So, you just start typing in a keyword like “which IRA is best,” and you get all these really nifty ideas. Many of them also show no searches in Adwords. And that’s fine because if those keywords appear in Autosuggest, you know they’re being searched on. You don’t know the number of searches, but people are looking for them.

3. Which Marketing Materials go Where?

So, that’s enough of keyword research. But, you can find many more ways to get keyword ideas than those. They’re some good ideas to get you started though. Once you start finding topics, then you have to decide what you’re going to do and how.

Here are some insights to help you make those decisions:

1. Blogging’s Always a Given Your blog is really your online marketing hub. You always do it, no matter what. What matters is how much you do it. A weekly blog article is a good idea, but you don’t have to do that much if your budget can’t handle it.

Whatever you choose to do (and there’s no perfect or “right” formula”), make it consistent. Blogs are what consumers know and expect these days, so you always have one, no matter what. Actually creating the strategy, though, is the difficult part.

You should always blog on topics relevant to your audience. Every post should contain keywords, but you shouldn’t expect each post to rank on the first page of Google. As long as your goal is to provide the best answer available on the internet with each blog article, you’re headed in the right direction.

2. Static Web Pages

These are the guys in the main navigation of your website. “Home” and “About” and “Contact” are a given. Believe it or not, your About page does quite a bit of selling. It’s a great place to put brief employee profiles.

You see, the modern consumer wants to know who they’re doing business with. So, you give a brief intro to your company and then talk about each of the staff a little bit.

The rest of your website is wide open.

If you get the same questions in your customer service department over and over again, or if you find them in Adwords, they make up your FAQ. Not only does your FAQ act as a gold mine for relevant searches, but you can send your customers there to reduce the hours your customer service department spends answering their questions.

Your “Services” pages should each be targeted around the primary services you offer, as they are reflected in search. You should have a separate page for each service, and around 1-5 keywords on that services page. You use separate pages for various keyword groups because it’s easier to rank multiple pages for multiple keywords than it is to rank a single page for many different keywords.

Does no one search for your services? Then you won’t get any business from them. You can still leave them up there, though, if your clients request these services in person, but don’t necessarily search for them.

You might also create a “Resources” section on your website with “How-To” guides for visitors to take the best advantage of your products and services. These can double up as good blog articles too.

Why should they be in your main navigation versus your blog? Blog posts get buried so eventually only people that find the specific posts in search read them. If you get a good response on your blog and you think the topic will be very helpful to new customers, you develop a super-in-depth guide directly on your main website’s navigation.

Every website is different, too. If you run a local business, you might have a “clients” page that shows off reputable local names you’ve worked for. With websites, the sky is literally the limit.

The main thing, however, is that you continue to build out valuable content throughout your website on a regular basis. You might also produce a “FAQ” section.

When you see relevant questions in Adwords, those go in your FAQ and your blog. Why double up? The FAQ gives the brief answers. It attracts new organic searchers, and it also serves as a quick reference for people who just landed on your website.

New visitors to your website won’t dig through 100+ blog posts to find answers to their questions. In the FAQ, you give a brief answer, and then you can provide a link to the more in-depth blog post for the full answer.

And another benefit you get is both a blog post and a web page that could rank for the same term. When searchers see two results on page one for a particular term, they’re much more likely to click on your link.

3. White Papers/Case Studies These documents are highly authoritative. White papers come into play when there’s a pressing industry problem happening.

For example, I wrote one for the staffing industry that targeted a problem of great concern to the clients it served. The government decided to start cracking down on businesses hiring independent contractors, but treating them as employees.

They were levying heavy fines for companies doing so. Some companies engaged in this practice purposely, while others did so accidentally. But, the IRS didn’t care.

So, the white paper demonstrated evidence that this was a problem to be taken seriously.

Case studies are a little different. They demonstrate a specific customer problem your company solved, and exactly how it managed to do so. They’re a huge credibility builder because they position you as an expert.

One case study I wrote for a design firm showed how they created a new web design for a client, and how that new design helped their client double their sales. Now that looks pretty spectacular in the eyes of your customers!

Again, the more white papers and case studies you can do, the more authoritative and competent you look in the eyes of your target market. If you do one about one per quarter, that’s good.

4. Press Releases

These work best when your company actually has news. Some companies fall into thinking you should create them to get more links.

Not a good idea at all – Google says not to do this. You should aim to make them as powerful as possible so they help you get links, but you shouldn’t create them with the sole goal of acquiring links.

You can write them as often as monthly, if your company has news happening that often. Or, you can create them more infrequently. It all depends on your comfort level.

To really make a good press release, you might have to do something to develop a compelling news story. That could mean donating money to charity, volunteering for half a day, or releasing a new product or service.

4. How Long Does it Take to See Results?

Wow, that’s a tough question to answer. Here’s the thing: there’s more than 2 million blog posts published daily.

The competition is definitely intense, and it won’t get easier anytime soon. Also, it depends on where your business is at in its own life cycle. If you’ve just started your website, it can take 6 months before you really see any results from your efforts.

However, one thing you have on your side is your existing customers and business contacts. In other words, you have a young audience right at your fingertips that you can drive to your blog and website right away. So that’s helpful.

But if you’re starting a business totally from scratch, then expect it to take some time before your efforts have a concrete payoff. That’s just the way the whole process works. You can’t guarantee any specific time frames, but if you put in good ol’ fashioned hard work with some smart marketing, you’ll do all right.

5. Guidelines for a Successful Content Strategy for the Web

Now, when you actually create the content, you must follow certain techniques to make sure it resonates with your visitors. The more it does so, the more links and social media shares you earn (both powerful ranking factors for Google).

If you read on the web regularly, you’ll notice that about 80-90% of it is the same generic thing repeated over and over again. Yes, that’s true, even if you read on a local business blog or at Forbes.

Not all of the content at Forbes follows this format, but I can’t tell you how often I’ve read very generic articles at their site that anyone could have written. How do you make your web content strategy succeed?

Here are the rules I follow:

1. Eye-popping titles. Attractive titles get clicked more. The big blue text listed in Google’s search results gets noticed first, so you have to do something to stand out from the other results.

The go-to titles are “How to” and “5 Tips for…,” but these do get stale after a while. Have you ever tried coming up with original blog titles for a period of years? Not easy by any stretch of the imagination. I actually did write a blog post on generating different ideas, and I gave you 34 1/2 of them. Read it here.

To stand out, you write titles like “27 Tips for…” or “The Ultimate Guide to Personal Investing” or “Are You Making this Catastrophic Investing Mistake?” The first title stands out because 27 tips offers more value – much more than 5-7 tips. “The Ultimate Guide…” well that’s the final authority on that topic.

The last title – a question – peaks curiosity. Freelance copywriters keep a “swipe file,” a collection of titles known to work. A swipe file is always growing, and mine has around 50-60 attention-getting titles I’ve found from various sources across the web. There’s about a million more things to do with titles, but that’s what you need to do for starters.

2. Going farther in-depth than everyone else. You see this blog post’s length? At this point, it’s already 2,575 words, and it continues on. The common misconception out there is that blog posts must be 500 words or less in length because people have short attention spans.

They do, but the problem with following the common wisdom is exactly that – it’s common. Do what everyone else thinks you should do, and you blend right in.

I don’t force clients to go with super in-depth blog posts, but I highly recommend them. Neil Patel, a web marketing thought leader, did a study on how content length affects rankings. The top 3 results for a given query average more than 2400 words! The 10th result averages 2,032.

The point isn’t to pound out 2,000 – 3,000 words you can with every post. But you should be willing to write a good idea further in-depth in order to rank higher and attract more organic traffic.

3. Consistency. Google’s Fresh algorithm update, which was released in November of 2011, gave preference in the search rankings to websites that regularly produce new content.

There’s no golden rule to what you need to do, but if you’re serious about content marketing, a weekly blog post is a must. You can do more – including several posts daily. It all boils down to your budget and how aggressive you want to be with your web content strategy.

4. Use casual language. Throw the stilted, formal business language from the 1940s – 1990s out the window entirely. People want to read, and they want to do so quickly on the web.

When you write for the web, you write just like you’re talking to someone standing next to you. You wouldn’t say to that person, “We’re a dynamic company that develops industry-leading, integrated solutions for businesses of all sizes.” What does that say? It could apply to any company.

Instead, you might say, “Our service helps you get it done faster.” See how nice and easy that is? If you make things sound complicated and technical, web readers get frustrated and leave! They don’t say, “Oh, this is very technical. I’m not sure what this person’s saying, so I better give them a call.”

Instead, when they understand you know what the heck you’re talking about, they develop a connection and respect you. Then, they give you a call when they finally need your service.

5. Understand it’s an evolving process. Your website should start out with 5-7 pages or so, and a couple blog posts. But, you’re going to continuously add content over time. And you keep repeating the process ad infinitum.

Eventually, your website will have 25 pages, then 50, and then 100. Long-term, Google wants websites that have been around for years and who have a big bulk of high-quality, interesting, and original content. It calls these websites “authoritative” websites.

And there’s no way Google’s ever going to dock the rankings of such websites. The only way Google will dock your website’s rankings based on what you write is if:

You copy and paste the content from other websites
You use keyword-rich anchor text on every single link throughout your website

You won’t get penalized, but Google may not rank you as highly if you:

Never link off-site to other authoritative websites
“No-follow” every site that links to off-site websites
Make many (a couple are okay) typos and grammatical errors
Use awkward language
Write the targeted keywords all over the place

6. Have a dedicated pro do the job for you. In my experience, most smaller companies (and some corporations) simply do not have someone they can dedicate to blogging and maintaining their website’s content.

It’s too overwhelming, or they don’t like writing, or they just don’t have someone with the time available to do it. Because web content is growing so much in demand, there’s a ton of freelance writers popping up all over the internet.

Don’t go to the online workplaces like Elance or Odesk. That’s where cheap writers reside, and with writing, you certainly get what you pay for. You’ll get generic, stale content from those writers. That type of content can be found anywhere on the web.

While you might have content, the sales you generate from that content will be minimal. It’s kind of like paying a child to repaint your car. The job will be done, but it won’t be done well. There’s a saying out there that goes,”The quality of your leads depends on the quality of your content.” Very true.

Put My Web Content Strategy Principles into Action, Didn’t I?

I spent much of this post telling you about in-depth content and how you need to have it in order to stand out and rank well. This post has more than 3600 words – making it a pretty solid guide on web content strategy.

And it has a nice title too: “The Worldclass Manual…” will capture people’s attention. And keep in mind…these are just the basics.

There’s so much more to web content strategy, including analytics, social media, building a newsletter list, and establishing yourself as a thought leader (the holy grail of web content).

Click here if you need help organizing your thoughts and creating a content strategy for the web.

The Worldclass Manual to Developing a Content Strategy for the Web

1. First, Look at Your Budget

2. The #1 Secret to Developing a Content Strategy for the Web

3. How do You Find Keywords Right for Your Website?

3. Which Marketing Materials go Where?

4. How Long Does it Take to See Results?

5. Guidelines for a Successful Content Strategy for the Web

Put My Web Content Strategy Principles into Action, Didn’t I?

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