How to Quickly Generate Content for a Full Year of Content Marketing

Blogging – a highly popular concept in today’s online world that covers pretty much every topic that can be discussed in this world. It’s all out there: From hobby blogs over influencer blogs to professional leadership blogs – you name it.

However, there is one massive difference between these blogs: While many of them are published just for fun or without a coherent strategy behind them, professional blogging with a clear purpose and goal in mind follows a completely different approach. To be more concrete: Professional blogs are published to systematically attract new leads and customers to a business and hence should always follow a well-planned SEO approach.

Table of contents

How is an SEO-oriented blog different from other articles?
Why building a long-term content strategy is key
How to conduct an effective and efficient keyword research
Example: a 52 Weeks SEO Content Calendar for a Wedding Planner Business

How is an SEO-oriented blog different from other articles?

1. It offers a solution to a clearly defined problem
2. It targets a clearly defined focus keyword in their answer
3. It covers this focus keyword extensively and in-depth (long-form content)

On top of that, SEO articles explicitly target potential prospects in one of the 3 phases of their buyer’s journey. A buyer’s journey is the process a person goes through before making a purchase decision (not including impulse buys). To make this a little more tangible, let’s look at an example together –

Top of the funnel (ToFu) – Attract users

This is the very first stage in a customer’s journey. In the so-called “awareness” phase, your potential client faces a concrete problem or need and starts casually collecting information to get a better idea about the issue. Mostly this happens without any clear purchase purpose in mind – yet. ToFu articles have the goal to get the prospect’s attention by using the right keywords in headline and meta description and leave a great first impression.

Middle of the funnel (MoFu) – Engage with user

While the customers at the ToFu are mainly focused on an existing problem or acute need, people in the “Consideration phase” are already a step further and try to find the best solution. After getting the attention of a person in the first step it’s now time to convince them that your offer is the best! MoFu articles have a clear purpose: Provide the potential customers with specific and convincing information about your product or service.

Bottom of the funnel (BoFu) – Convert leads into sales

This is the last and final step of the marketing funnel. In this so-called “decision phase” users are already well informed and committed to a purchase. Time to get them to actually commit to your offer! Articles on this level have the goal to give users the final push by reinforcing their decision.

Why building a long-term content strategy is key

We have just learned about the characteristics of a professional SEO-blog. However, implementing these characteristics requires some work upfront: You will need to know your target group, you will need to know their problems, find the right keywords, and make sure you target them according to their position in the marketing funnel.

In other words, never skip the first fundamental step in blogging: Plan, prepare, and build a long-term content marketing strategy.

Finding the right topics and titles to write about is highly important and planning them will save you a lot of headaches. Why? Well, you can have the best article but if nobody ever finds it because you target the wrong keyword, it will be a flop. You can publish an outstanding piece of content – but if it provides answers to a problem nobody in your target group really cares about – it will be a flop.

Hence, a very critical first step in building a content strategy is “Keyword Research.” Keywords are highly important as they determine what a search engine understands when classifying your article – this is essential so your content can be matched with the right search queries.

Unsurprisingly, we are convinced that every successful content marketing strategy starts with keyword research. This helps you determine what keywords to target, and which articles in your area bring in the most traffic – very valuable information and a great source before starting to write your own masterpiece!

How to conduct an effective and efficient keyword research

Let’s be honest, we are in 2020 and nobody would consider manually researching keywords one-by-one, especially since it’s usually not only one keyword that we are looking at. And this is the reason why tools like Ahrefs are so valuable. What is Ahrefs? Well, Ahrefs is a great tool that allows you to find thousands of relevant keywords together with important SEO information about them. This does not save you an incredible amount of time – it also provides you with highly relevant data that you would not extract simply by browsing Google’s search results. If this is the first time you hear about it – give it a try!

Subsequently, we will guide you through the bulk-keyword research approach within Ahrefs – step-by-step. To make it more tangible, we will use the topic “wedding planner” for this task. (No worries, the first two steps are always the same – completely independent of your industry and topic!)

Step 1: Use the keyword research tool

Ahrefs offers a so-called “Keywords Explorer” which will supply you with a full range of statistics to a certain keyword, such as ranking difficulty, search traffic, clicks, related terms, potential questions, and so on. This is extremely helpful to find the right keywords for your article!

To be more efficient, you can also add more than one keyword at the same time – this “bulk searching” approach will provide you with a comprehensive overview of the different keywords.

Now here’s a trick: What is particularly interesting is that most SEO articles will follow a certain pattern. Once you take a closer look, you will find that pretty much each blog post can be allocated to one of the following topic approaches:

1. The “explain and inform me” approach
   • How to …
   • What is …
   • X types of…
   • (City) (Topic) (Event type) in year xy
2. The “comparison” approach
   • Alternative A vs alternative B
   • X alternatives to … (a certain product, service, or tool)
   • (XYZ) review
   • The best/top …
3. The “free resources and inspiration” approach
   • X free….
   • X questions to ask/questionnaire
   • Template for XY
   • (Topic) ideas

These patterns are a fantastic source of inspiration when it comes to keywords and ultimately finding the right topics – let’s use them to bulk-search! Simply add them to the Keywords Explorer in Ahrefs and hit the search button:

You will now see the full overview of all your keywords’ statistics:

Step 2: Click on “Having same terms” in the menu on the left

This will show all keyword ideas that contain all of your search entries and you will end up with a VERY large number of keywords associated with these terms:

You might now say well that is great – but I end with a bunch of keywords that have nothing to do with my subject? And you are completely right! This is what we need step 3 for.

Step 3: Filter results by adding your niche keywords

Remember we shortly mentioned the wedding planner example before? Well, now it’s about time to work with it! Try to come up with a handful of keywords related to your topic.

Tip: Make sure to include both keywords that are relevant and specific to your industry and niche as well as keywords that are known among the “expert crowd”.

In our case, we could pick keywords such as “wedding”, “marry” “wedding planner”, “bride”, “groom”, “engagement”, “wedding dress”, “bridesmaid”.

Add your selected keywords to the Keywords Explorer by clicking “Include” > “Any word” and typing them into the respective field. Once you’re done, hit the “apply” button.

Step 4: Refine your results

Depending on your industry and keywords applied, you likely still end up with several hundred thousand keyword proposals. To bring that number down and make sure we target the right keywords in the crowd, there are several filters we can lay over this result:

1. Keyword Difficulty: Remember: Our number one goal is always to rank as high as possible. Hence we should try to target keywords with low keyword difficulty, for example. 0-15 so that we have a chance to rank at all! If the first page on Google is dominated by established websites such as Hubspot, it will be VERY hard to outrank these pages.
2. Volume: If we put time and effort into an article we want to make sure people actually look for the targeted keyword so people will find our blog at all. We hence suggest setting the volume to 50+.
3. Word Count: Our goal is to find potential titles for our articles. Set the word count to 4+ to find the right results quickly!

You will find all of these filters in the top row of your results:

In our example, applying these three filters leaves us with a little more than 5,000 results.

Step 5: Browse results and find topics

Now it’s up to you – look at the results and find titles that can be turned into valuable content! In our case, the first page alone gives us many great options for any wedding planner, such as:

1. How long does it take to plan a wedding?
2. Best wedding songs 2020
3. Wedding ideas for spring

And these are not only great topics and some good inspiration – but they also come with a significant search volume and a low Ranking Difficulty and hence fulfill the requirements of a potential high-performing SEO article.

Step 6: Plan ahead!

Make sure you don’t forget what we said in the beginning – plan your content! To give you a better idea I put together a content plan for 52 weeks below that is basically suitable for every wedding planner’s business. By using the bulk approach this only took me one hour to do. And once again – all these topics are a great choice from the SEO perspective.

So what are you waiting for? Go and start your own content marketing plan!

Example: a 52 Weeks SEO Content Calendar for a Wedding Planner Business

How to…

• How to plan a wedding
• How to make a wedding veil
• How to write a wedding speech
• How to preserve wedding flowers
• How to clean a wedding dress
• How to pick wedding colors
• How to assemble wedding invitations

What is….

• What is a wedding registry?
• What is the best food to serve at a wedding?
• What is a wedding shower?
• What is a good song for mother and son to dance to at the wedding?

X types of…

• 4 types of engagement rings
• 5 types of wedding dresses
• 3 types of wedding veils
• 6 types of wedding cakes
• 3 types of wedding bands

X alternatives to…

• 3 alternatives to diamond wedding rings
• 5 alternatives to wedding cakes
• 4 alternatives to traditional weddings

Alternative A vs alternative B

• Engagement rings vs wedding rings
• Bridal shower vs wedding shower
• Tuxedo vs suit for the wedding
• Ivory vs white wedding dress
• Wedding band vs DJ
• Save the date vs wedding invitation
• Trumpet vs mermaid wedding dress

(XYZ) Review

• Royal Caribbean wedding review
• Preowned wedding dresses review

Best

• Best wedding songs in 2020
• Best wedding DJs in Chicago (depending on where you are based)
• Best cameras for wedding photography
• Best wedding dresses in 2020
• Best wedding venues in Southern California
• Best wedding dates in 2020

X free…

• 5 free wedding venues in Chicago
• 3 free outdoor wedding venue options
• 5 free printable wedding planner worksheets

X questions to Ask/Questionnaire

• 10 questions to ask your wedding photographer
• 5 questions to ask your wedding DJ
• 10 questions to ask your wedding planner
• 10 questions to ask a bride at a bridal shower

Templates for XY

• Templates for a wedding reception program
• Templates for a weekend wedding itinerary
• 5 wedding welcome letter templates
• A wedding checklist template in Excel
• 5 wedding timeline templates

XY ideas

• 5 special wedding gift ideas for the bride
• 3 creative wedding table number ideas
• 10 unique wedding ideas for spring
• 5 cute ideas to make your wedding reception special
• 4 special wedding shower decoration ideas
• 3 unique winter wonderland wedding ideas

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