People are inundated with content these days, making it difficult to capture attention. But you must break through the barrage of content to build trust, recognition, and positive sentiment for your brand. The end goal of your content marketing efforts, of course, is that your brand becomes the definitive choice when a consumer is ready to buy.

It’s possible to make this happen. Create consistent, quality content in multiple formats across multiple platforms and you will increase brand awareness, growing a following for your brand.

8 Marketing Content Types

Different types of content are more effective at different stages of the marketing funnel. For instance, a social media post garners initial attention in the awareness stage, while an in-depth case study or thought leadership piece convinces the consumer to buy later, in the consideration stage.

There are multiple touchpoints in the consumer journey, i.e., multiple instances in which consumers interact with your brand on different platforms. For instance, they might see one of your videos while browsing YouTube or be sent an infographic of yours by a colleague. You must take all opportunities to grab attention, engage consumers, stand out, and be memorable by creating great content.

These are the eight best types of content your business should be consider.

1. SEO Content

When you optimize your blog content properly, you can achieve higher rankings on the search engine results page (SERP). Organic search remains the biggest source of website traffic, so ignoring search engine optimization (SEO) is giving away a majority of your potential traffic. Higher rankings mean greater brand awareness, more visitors, and more chances to convert.

To optimize blog content for SEO, perform keyword research to find the terms and phrases your target audience searches for most. Use top-performing keywords in your headlines and integrate semantically related keywords within blog content to increase traffic.

Organize content into topic clusters to ensure you cover the key topics comprehensively and prove to Google that your brand is the go-to resource with the most valuable information in your niche.

If this all sounds like too much, MBE Group can handle all of this for you so you can focus on other content streams.

2. Social Media

Social media content comprises a range of written content, visual content, and video posts. Content creation even extends to shoppable posts, quizzes, augmented reality experiences, and more.

Social media platforms are incredibly useful for growing a brand due to their immense reach. Around 4.7 billion people around the world use social media, with an average of 2 hours and 29 minutes spent on socials each day.

Get the most from social media by establishing where your target audience specifically spends its time. Set up a consistent publishing schedule. Be authentic to your brand, engage followers with user-generated content, and use content that aligns with the platform in question.

3. Webinars

A webinar is an educational resource in the form of an online seminar, often at a set date and time. You can repurpose webinar recordings as video content so you’re not starting from scratch.

Webinars are useful for encouraging positive associations with your brand as webinars are seen as high-quality, valuable content that actually helps people achieve something.

So, address an audience pain point with your webinar. And be sure to have a conversion goal in mind from the outset. Frame your product as the best solution to the pain point, without being too sales-heavy.

4. Infographics

An infographic is a visual representation of data in graphic form. They present one of the best ways to build links back to your website. The number of backlinks you have is a top ranking factor for Google.

Infographics are massively shareable and link-worthy. Make it easy for other content creators to do this by keeping your infographics simple and splitting them into blocks that bloggers may want to embed within their content.

The best infographics tell a story. Keep it simple and don’t overwhelm viewers with too much data or they won’t remember anything of note.

For a solid promotion strategy, reach out to relevant, high-authority content creators, influencers, and bloggers in your niche to let them know your infographic is available for use, with a backlink in return.

5. White Papers

Most common in a B2B content marketing strategy, a white paper is a piece of downloadable long-form content akin to a research paper.

As they’re so comprehensive and useful to your audience they demonstrate your brand’s expertise. Lay out your innovative ideas and solutions to industry problems to establish your brand as a thought leader.

You may also want to use the content within your white paper to frame your product or service as the answer to a potential client’s pain points. For example, you can argue the need for AI in HR communications and at the end, pose your product as the solution.

6. Case Studies

Case studies are accounts of entrepreneurial or customer success stories, detailing the steps taken and results achieved. They’re useful for capturing audience attention, with potential customers hoping to achieve similar results.

Case studies even have the potential for virality if the results are particularly impressive. Plus, they make good supporting evidence for other creators’ content and are thus very linkable. Most importantly, showing you’re able to achieve results with the work you do builds trust in your brand.

Establishing the objective of the case study is important. Choose challenges that will appeal to audience needs and desires to make them compelled to read. Use awe-inspiring, data-driven headlines to drive inbound traffic.

Repurpose case study content as part of your wider digital marketing strategy. Use them as the basis for guest posts, create an infographic out of the data, or post compelling snippets to social media.

7. Podcasts

Podcasts are an increasingly popular but not yet saturated channel, which is the content marketer’s dream. Your podcast has a real chance of standing out.

People love podcasts because they’re entertaining, engaging, and easy to consume. They have a wide reach. Distribute your podcast across multiple channels such as Audible, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and so on. Also, publish your podcast on your blog with the transcript as a written piece of content, which is great for SEO purposes.

8. Video Content

From short, eye-catching social media videos to lengthier product explainers, there are a bunch of ways to do video marketing. What makes videos great is their ongoing popularity — just look at the explosion of TikTok.

Video content has the unique ability to humanize your brand as it’s so relatable and appealing to new audiences. Plus it has reach in ways you may not have even thought of with Google now showing videos on the search engine results pages.

There are multiple types of video content to meet different marketing goals and to suit different marketing campaigns. For example, you might send a customer testimonial video out as part of your email marketing strategy but post a less serious, short video on social media to announce a new product release.

Incorporate These Different Types of Content Marketing Into Your Strategy

You may not necessarily implement every single type of content you learn about. But it’s worth experimenting with different forms of content to increase brand awareness and reach potential customers across different marketing channels and in different stages of the customer journey.

Choose three or four types of content that make sense for your brand then see how well they perform in terms of the audience response and what your analytics data shows.

Chat with us if you need help deciding which types of content would be the best fit for your brand. At MBE Group, we’ve managed the SEO content strategy for Fortune 500 companies and growing startups alike, so your brand will be in good hands.

Intentional messaging that resonates with your audience is the bedrock of any good content marketing campaign. But with all the mediums and trends out there, how can you come up with a content strategy that will help you achieve your business objectives?

A content strategy framework is the answer. It’s a plan you use to outline your business goals — including your SEO strategy — as well as the types of content you will create along the way to achieve these objectives. By creating a framework like this, you ensure every piece of content you make aligns with your KPIs and overall brand identity.

We’re here to help you out with a step-by-step guide to creating the best possible content strategy for your business. You’ll need to:

1. Define your identity.
2. Choose your channels.
3. Generate content ideas.
4. Execute your strategy.

1. Define Your Identity

To create a content strategy framework, you need to know who you are as a brand. Without this sort of company self-knowledge, you’ll have a hard time managing your existing content, let alone planning for new content.

Ask yourself how you stand out in your industry and what makes you unique. Evaluate your current content to see what’s working and what’s not. Consider your customers and their journey, demographics, and personas. This will help you create a more tailored approach to your content creation.

When you know who you are and — just as importantly — who your customers are, the puzzle pieces will all start to fit together intuitively. You’ll be able to create a template for action based on differentiating yourself from your competition, addressing pain points for your customers through content, and targeting the right audience for your offerings.

These are just some of the things you’ll need to keep in mind when it comes to building a content strategy framework around your brand identity:

• Ask how you stand out. There are a lot of companies out there and, unfortunately, that usually means there are companies out there doing something similar to what yours does. You just need to show customers how you do it better. The easiest way to do that is creating content to appeal to your target audience through building a strategy framework ahead of time. Otherwise, you’ll just be wasting time on half-baked ideas when it comes to lead generation.
• Consider your customers. As you build your strategy framework, keep each aspect of the customer journey in mind. Think about how you’ll appeal to different demographics at each phase of the process, from first exposure to your brand to the eventual conversions you desire. This will often mean creating customer personas and conducting market research. The more info like that you have to inform your content framework, the better.
• Set problem-solving goals. You and your team will need to engage in constant ideation at each phase of the content strategy framework development process. That means predicting pain points ahead of time and being able to fix issues as they arise after you implement your strategy. Figure out the sorts of problems you want to solve for your customers, and then decide how you’ll solve the problems in your own content marketing framework to get there.

2. Choose Your Channels

To make the most of your content marketing efforts, you’ll need to tailor all your SEO-optimized posts, blogs, and other offerings to a wide array of different formats. In today’s digital ecosystem, customers expect to engage with you in a litany of different ways. Your job is to figure out which of these distribution channels has the greatest effect.

Keep these tips in mind as you build your strategy to attack the channels your customers use the most:

• Ask where your customers are. When you understand what your customers need, you’ll figure out what your content needs to succeed at the same time. Figure out which distribution channels your target audience takes the most advantage of. Your framework should place the greatest possible emphasis on serving up relevant content to your audience where they spend the most time.
• Find the right CMS. Consider the wide variety of content management systems on the market to help you put your plan into action. A content strategy framework is how you build a digital content strategy from the ground up. A content management system, on the other hand, is the all-in-one tool you’ll need to put those actionable steps into motion.
• Tailor your strategy to each platform. Identify the platforms where your customers are. Focus on the ones most relevant to achieving your business objectives. You’ll want to generate brand awareness in a way that’s unique to each channel. A detailed infographic might work better on LinkedIn than on Instagram, for instance. Successful content marketing frameworks take multiple platforms into consideration.

3. Generate Content Ideas

To meet your content goals, it goes without saying you’ll need to turn your company into an idea machine. Think of your content strategy framework as a Christmas tree. It’s the foundation upon which you’ll hang all the ornaments. The only catch is: When it comes to content, no ornament is premade. You’ll need to generate each type of content yourself.

Here are a few tips to fall back on when it comes to brainstorming content ideas:

• Create a content calendar. Build out an editorial calendar specifying all your content goals, as well as which types of content will get published when. Once you have this sort of schedule, you’ll be able to see firsthand which gaps you need to fill. Find a balance between content creation and distribution along the way too. You’ll want to give both your creative and digital marketing teams breathing room so they can perform to the best of their abilities.
• Focus on your customers. Never forget to prioritize your target audience when it comes to content planning. As you generate content ideas, always keep in mind who you’re writing them for in the first place. Do they come to you for comprehensive guides or quick tips? Do they want to see pop culture references or academic studies, or both? Do they want to post a Tweet thread summing up what they learned or make a TikTok? Plan your content strategy around your customer case studies and personas.
• Use different content formats. Make sure to generate ideas for all sorts of different content. You’ll want to have everything from social media and blog posts to whitepapers and case studies ready to go, depending on the kind of business you run. As just one example, a B2B marketing funnel will keep your content team busy for a very long time.

4. Execute Your Strategy

Up till this point, building a content strategy framework has been largely theoretical. Now, you’ve reached the point where you can put it all into action.

As you rev up the engine on your marketing plan, you’ll see just how much you’ve stood to gain from developing this sort of framework. You’ll have tools at your disposal for tracking content performance, while also automating huge portions of your creative and strategic work. Not to mention, you’ll have everything in place to pivot if need be.

Even the best laid plans and most ironclad strategies may need some tweaking once they hit the real world. It gets messy out there! Luckily, you’ll be far better equipped to handle any ups and downs with such a robust set of content ideas and initiatives to fall back on.

Consider these steps as you execute your strategy:

• Automate the process. Use interactive tools like Mailchimp, HubSpot Marketing Hub, and Sprout Social to automate your workflow as much as possible. As you look at the content strategy template you’ve built, think about how you can put your plan into action with as little work as necessary. It’ll free you up to work on higher-level problems.
• Monitor your metrics. Conduct content audits regularly to make sure all your different offerings are hitting your KPIs. Tools like Google Analytics can help you get an up-close look at what’s working and what isn’t. Your strategy framework lays the groundwork to achieve conversions, but you’ll still need to think on your feet to change things up in the real world.
• Remember to optimize. As you get the ball rolling with turning your strategy template into a reality, remember there’s still work to be done on a lot of different levels. You have a plan for all your content — that’s more than a lot of businesses can say! But still, you need to optimize posts that don’t perform super well to keep those conversions rolling in.

A Content Strategy Framework Can Set You Up for Success

With a far-reaching and holistic approach to your content strategy, you can set your brand up for success on every possible metric. Paired with top-of-the-line search engine optimization, frameworks like these are key to maximizing organic traffic to your various products and offerings.

Creating a comprehensive framework for your content creation may seem like a heavy lift up front, but it’ll reduce your workload for years on end once it’s up and running. Don’t have time to figure all of this out yourself? Contact us and we’ll set you up with an SEO strategy to flesh out any framework you’re starting to build.

When your potential customers search for information online, what are they looking for? They want content to be engaging, even entertaining, but there’s another ingredient that’s just as essential: authority.

Page authority indicates your site is a resource other experts would turn to for their own research. It measures the strength and ranking potential of a single page in reference to how thorough, backed up, and cited the information is.

Now, we’re not talking about coming across like a high school principal here. Besides, dry and pedantic content rarely ranks well anyway. Building up your page authority score is more about showing you have the goods to back up who you are and what you’re saying — but still ensuring the user has a good time reading your content.

So if you’re ready to supercharge your blog’s Google ranking, it’s time to learn more about how you can create content people trust as much as they enjoy.

Why Is Page Authority Important?

Page authority scores help businesses predict how every page on their sites will perform on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Like any other element of SEO, it’s just one part of a much bigger story. Still, a high page authority score (or PA score) indicates your page has a much better chance of ranking well than a low score would. As a matter of fact, page authority is a major input for Google’s algorithm PageRank (as well as its nofollow update).

Imagine you’re back in high school and want help on an upcoming homework assignment. Would it be better to go straight to your teacher? Or would you go to another student who seems to be as confused about the content as you are? Odds are you’d pick your teacher! They are the ones with the answers after all. The same goes for people on the hunt for content.

Most people want their favorite brands to be trustworthy. They want you to anticipate their needs before they can even articulate them themselves. Page authority is one of the main metrics you can use to track how well you’re doing on that front.

What Factors Weigh Into Page Authority?

Plenty of important factors enter into making a page authoritative. Some have to do with the content itself, while others relate more to how you link and (just as importantly) how other authoritative websites link to you.

These are just a few of the most essential factors to consider when it comes to boosting your page authority:

• Content relevance: Pages with content relevant to the topic at hand have a stronger page authority score. High-quality content is always a necessity when it comes to SEO, from a host of different angles. It plays into so many different ranking factors that you really can’t afford to ever phone it in on creating content.
• Domain authority: The overall strength of your domain also plays a role in individual page authority. Build an impactful and high-traffic brand in general, and the rewards will rain down on each of your individual pages. Just remember: Your domain authority score (or DA score) has an effect on your PA score, but they’re not the same thing.
• Link count: The more external links you have pointing to your page, the better off you’ll be when it comes to your PA score. When other websites treat you as an authoritative source, search algorithms will take their recommendation seriously.
• Link quality: Pages with more high-quality links generally have a stronger page authority score. In order to improve your link quality, try to get authoritative and expert-level sites to link to your content. Low-quality links from spam sites can have the opposite effect.
• Social media sharing: The more people share your content, the higher page authority score you’ll have. Likes and shares indicate people take your content seriously, and that means search engines will too.

How Do You Calculate Page Authority?

SEO software company Moz was the first to develop a page authority checker tool. To calculate the score, it takes dozens of factors into account, including the ones listed above. Key page authority metrics include high-quality external links, expert-level inbound links from other high-authority websites, and the domain authority of your entire website.

It then charts each page’s authority from one to 100 on a logarithmic scale (just a fancy way of saying a long-ranging, multifaceted rubric). Among other things, the company’s MozBar extension allows you to generate this type of score for any page you visit. Other prominent SEO tools provided by companies like Ahrefs and Semrush now allow you to quantify your page and domain authority as well.

4 Simple Steps to Increasing Your Page Authority

Increasing your page authority requires a multipronged approach. For one thing, any attempt to improve your page’s trustworthiness ranking should go hand in hand with a more wide-angle SEO strategy.

Engaging, viral pages are authoritative pages, and the same is true vice versa. But you need to capitalize on a variety of strategies in order to maximize each individual page’s full potential.

By utilizing these four simple steps, you can increase your page authority while improving your site on multiple other optimization metrics as well.

Step 1: Build Better Links

Effective link building is a must for increasing every specific page’s authority as much as possible. Include anchor text reflective of the content you’re linking to, whether it sends a user to another page in your archive or another authoritative site.

As you build a larger archive of material, you’ll be able to link to more and more relevant content on your website from each specific page. Not only will this make you look like more of an expert in the eyes of your potential customers, it’s also what’ll get you on Google’s radar for higher ranking.

Step 2: Get on the Radar of Authoritative Websites

While internal linking will help you establish credibility with search engines, coming up with a viable backlinking strategy will go even further to increasing your page and domain authority. To increase individual page authority and your domain rating overall, you’ll need to learn how to get quality backlinks from other reputable sites.

Early on, this might mean reaching out to other authoritative sites to see if they’d be willing to feature links to your content in their own posts. Consider starting with small to mid-range firms in a similar field before moving on to the top-ranking options.

Build up an archive of content you can use to impress like-minded businesses as well. Make a unique mark on the content in general, and try to attack it from a specific angle. That way, other sites will be far more eager to link to your expertise. After all, this sort of backlinking is mutually advantageous. You scratch their back, they scratch yours.

Step 3: Create Relevant and Optimized Content

As with SEO in general, never sacrifice on creating quality content for potential customers. Every single page of your site should be full of information conveyed in an authoritative and engaging way. Give your readers a reason to trust you, and they’ll generate the organic traffic necessary to keep you climbing higher on SERPs.

Your on-page SEO strategy will go a long way to boosting your page’s authority as well. It takes a lot of tools to rank as high as possible. If you utilize keyword research and other SEO strategies, your content will climb the ranks on Google and other search engines. Once it does so, it’ll start getting more hits. As this process continues to snowball, your site will become a trusted source of information for more and more people who visit it.

Step 4: Maximize Shareability

Organic traffic helps improve your page authority score, and widespread social sharing will help you improve your organic traffic. As a website owner, do your best to make your content as shareable as possible.

People share content when they think their own networks will profit from it somehow. Aim to create content people trust and love to read. Expertise and entertainment are not mutually exclusive. Also, make sure to include share buttons for all the major social networks on each individual page.

Page Authority Comes from an Effective SEO Strategy

In order for a web page to rank well on search engines, it needs to be as trustworthy and authoritative as it is fun to read. Search algorithms look for pages with a lot of internal linking to other reliable content, backlinks from other authoritative sites, and relevant, thorough content to recommend to users.

Your potential customers are on the lookout for the best options to meet their needs. In this day and age, many will think those options are always on the front page of whatever they just searched. With the right page authority strategy, you can be there when they show up.

Ready to increase your page authority and take your blog posts to the front page of any given search engine? Reach out to us and we’ll help you craft an effective SEO strategy to make an indelible mark online.

Anyone tasked with content writing knows that the better content you provide on your website, the better your odds of ranking well on SERPs (search engine results pages). It’s a foundational concept of search engine optimization, or SEO.

But every copywriter and content marketing manager also knows that SEO writing is anything but simple. It’s a worthwhile but demanding endeavor. To reap all of its benefits, you need to consistently publish content that attracts both search engines and your target audience.

An important trick of the trade can help you balance user expectations with SEO requirements: content outlining.

With content outlines, you’ll write faster, improve your workflow, and maybe even find your site on the coveted first page of Google. In this article, we’ll cover how content outlines can help you not only create great content but also manage the rigorous undertaking of content creation. We’ll also provide you with a step-by-step outline template that will guide you through the SEO writing process.

What Is a Content Outline?

Outlining is a vital part of the writing process. In its most basic form, a content outline is a structured document that organizes your ideas into a framework that you can reference to construct your blog, whitepaper, press release, etc.

The goal of a content outline is to identify and organize the key takeaways in your content. When it’s done, the content outline will also help speed up the actual writing process. Using bullet points, numbering, or even classic Roman numerals, you organize your ideas into sections, including your intro, main points, and conclusion.

It’s tempting to forego the outline and just sit down to write, but a content outline has a lot of benefits, including:

• Built-in fluidity: You can easily manipulate your copy without composing complete paragraphs. If you need to change or scrap an idea, you can do it more easily in the outlining phase.
• Better brainstorming: An outline provides a safe space for brainstorming without the pressure of worrying about structure or readability.
• Ditch writer’s block: Kick writer’s block to the curb with a content outline. Start with high-level bullet points and add more details as you go.
• Clearer flow: Creating a content brief organizes your thoughts into a logical order with supporting evidence.
• Hit the mark: A content outline provides a checklist of things you want to include in every piece you write. This is a big one for SEO! An outline ensures that you link internally, cite credible sources, and include images to create more SEO opportunities for your website.

Why Is Content Outlining Important for SEO?

Content outlining is a must for any writer. But when it comes to the moving parts of effective SEO content that speaks to search engines and searchers alike? Well, let’s just say that outlining should be part of your overall content strategy, not just your writing process.

To achieve content marketing success, you need web content that ranks. To do that, each piece of content you create needs to meet a search engine’s criteria for A-plus content.

Of course, there are many strategies to level up your SEO writing. So many, in fact, that a templated content outline will ensure you include all of your must-haves. Think of it as a useful checklist that helps you include critical pieces to the SEO puzzle.

The bottom line is that, in addition to organizing the main points of your article, an outline helps you organize the main components of SEO writing, too.

5 Components of an Effective Content Outline

Now that you know how useful content outlining can be for the SEO writing process, download our outline template to become your very own subject matter expert.

Whether you take advantage of our template or have your own outline in mind, make sure you include these five SEO essentials to optimize your content every time.

1. Choose a Target Keyword

You already have a topic for your content, but that topic needs to tie into your SEO strategy. To do that, you need to identify a target keyword.

If you want to create the most comprehensive article on a topic, check Google’s “People Also Ask” feature to source effective keywords.

You can get a big boost from SEO keyword research tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush, too. Be sure to watch for keyword difficulty and search volume to find that sweet spot.

Search intent also matters here: opt for keywords that indicate interest. For example, “renters insurance” has low intent, while “best renters insurance for college students” has high intent.

Once you decide on a target keyword, place it at the top of your outline. Whether you write in-house or hire a freelance writer, this will help you keep the keyword top-of-mind during the outlining phase.

2. Add Relevant Keywords

Don’t just use keyword research for your main keyword. Once you have your target keyword, use your keyword research tool to build a lexicon of related keywords, which are also known as “semantically related keywords.”

If you’re using an SEO research tool, it will generate a list of relevant keywords for you. Think of this like a word bank you can pull from. It not only helps you nail SEO, but also cures writer’s block because the keywords will naturally guide your outline.

Go through the list and look for clusters of related topics. Once you identify a pattern, organize the keywords into individual sections that will eventually become sections of your article.

Now’s the time to look for header ideas, too. Determine which keywords should be your headers and subheadings. From there, drop keywords underneath each header to guide the content for that section. This will help you maximize on-page SEO by including relevant keywords in your H2s, which will make your content both skimmable and Google-friendly.

3. Link Internally and Externally

The flow of your content matters, but links matter for SEO writing, too. You should leave space in each section of your outline for links. These should not only support your main points, but also give readers additional resources if they want to do a deep dive into a particular topic.

Every content outline should include two types of links:

• Internal links: These are links from your website. They’re usually other blogs or resources, but they can be product pages, press releases, or reviews, too. Internal links keep readers on-site longer. They also indicate that you’re a subject matter expert, which can build trust with readers over time. If you can keep users on-site longer, Google will look at that as a positive ranking factor, so internal links are a win-win.
• External links: Be sure to find a few sources from other reputable websites to back up your claims. It may seem counterintuitive to link to another website, but citing credible and authoritative sources can increase your authority. Used wisely, external links can boost your credibility both with readers and search engines.

4. Optimize Visuals

Text matters, but so do images. If you want to squeeze more value out of your content, be sure to include visuals in your content outline.

You don’t have to design them right now, but adding direction for graphics, videos, and other visual elements can help you tell a more compelling narrative. This can also include structured visuals like bulleted lists, numbered lists, and headers.

Images are an underutilized aspect of SEO that can help you rank better over time. Image SEO optimizes the images in your content so they’re easy for search engines to read and rank. Always include images to improve your user experience, boost visibility, and ultimately increase your rankings in Google.

5. Get Meta

At this point, your content outline is taking shape. But before you begin the writing process, it’s a good idea to come up with options for your metadata. This essential information goes on the back end of your blog.

Although most of your readers won’t see it, Google will use your meta information to rank your content, so it’s a must-have for any content outline.

Come up with some options for your:

• Title
• Title tag
• Meta description
• Image alt text

While your meta information needs to be descriptive, it should also include your target keyword.

Boost Your SEO Marketing Strategy With Better Content Outlines

You need to consider a lot of factors when you write content for SEO. While there’s nothing wrong with simply writing a blog from scratch, a content outline will help you ditch writer’s block, share your ideas clearly, and improve your search engine rankings long-term.

Whether you follow a template of your own or use MBE Group’s content outline template, be sure to follow these tips to glean more value from your content:

1. Choose a target keyword
2. Include related keywords in the copy
3. Link internally and externally
4. Optimize visuals
5. Include metadata

SEO writing is a rigorous process that never truly ends. Once you produce one piece of content, it’s time to get started on the next. If you have limited resources but want to scale up your SEO content strategy, work with a content marketing agency like MBE Group. Contact us now to get tailored advice for your business from an SEO expert.

For many businesses, their niche is, well, not that niche. In a saturated market, SEO newcomers often find themselves choosing between unattainably difficult keywords or keywords with negligible search volume. You don’t want to pour hours of effort into a losing strategy, so stop targeting such competitive keywords.

You’ve got to start finding niche keywords to stand out. That’s going to help you reach your target audience and score a real shot at landing on page 1 of the SERP.

So, when you find yourself crammed in a corner on the internet, how can you get noticed? Check out this guide to finding niche keywords, no matter your business model or audience.

How Finding Niche Keywords Benefits Your Business

Niche keywords go beyond the generic keywords that everyone in your industry is targeting. Instead of a keyword like “accounting software,” you create more specific options like “payroll software for HVAC businesses.”

Niche keywords are long-tail keywords, which use at least three words. Because they’re longer, they typically won’t have as high search volume as hub-and-spoke keywords, but in many cases, this also means conversion rates are likely to be higher and organic traffic to be more qualified.

Volume alone won’t boost SEO, clicks, or sales — but relevance will. And niche keywords have the relevance you need to boost sales. Translation: you’ll find the exact people you need to get in contact with while minimizing irrelevant or unqualified traffic.

There’s nothing wrong with targeting a few broader keywords, but finding niche keywords can help you:

• Improve your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy: If you want to boost organic traffic to your website, your SEO goal should be to rank as highly as possible on the search engine results page. Sprinkling niche keywords into your web copy, headers, and metadata can help you do that over time.
• Bring in more PPC leads: Which keywords should you add to your paid ad campaigns? Niche keywords might get you fewer clicks, but they’ll help you connect with higher-quality leads that actually want to engage with you — and that translates into more sales.
• Score wins faster: Because niche keywords have lower traffic volume, we often find that our client’s competitors haven’t discovered the value of these keywords and aren’t targeting these keywords at all. Since niche keywords have less competition, the barrier to entry (or keyword difficulty) is lower, which means you can see quicker gains in your SEO and PPC campaigns.
• Save money: If you’re finding niche keywords to use in advertising campaigns, you need to choose options with a low cost-per-click (CPC) to control your budget. Niche keywords tend to have low CPCs, which means you can connect with lower-funnel leads at a cheaper rate.

5 Steps for Finding Niche Keywords

While there’s an argument to be made for targeting broad industry keywords, you can save both time and money by finding niche keywords early on in your content marketing strategy. This is especially important for small, growing brands that need to make the most of a less-than-ideal marketing budget.

To get more bang for your buck, you’ll need to research which niche keywords are the best for your business. Follow these five steps to find the best keywords for your content marketing campaigns.

1. Define Your Niche Target Audience

First things first, you need to understand your target audience. What do they need? What’s their biggest pain point?

Your goal is to connect with a very specific type of customer through carefully selected keywords, so you need to understand your ideal customer before you select niche keywords.

Identify your customers’ biggest problem and brainstorm potential search queries for that problem. For example, if your customers struggle to find affordable, cruelty-free beauty products, your niche keywords might include “vegan beauty products under $25” or “affordable cruelty-free mascara.”

Search intent also matters here. You need to understand your target audience enough that you choose keywords that reflect their intent. For example, a generic keyword like “full coverage insurance” doesn’t show intent, but “affordable full coverage for teen drivers” does.

2. Look for Common Questions in Your Niche

To find the best keywords for your niche, you’ll need to compile a list of keywords to start. Paste potential keywords into an Excel sheet for now — you’ll narrow them down in step #4.

You can try finding niche keywords by putting yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes. If you are a mattress brand, who do you sell to, and what questions are they asking online?

You can find these by looking at:

• Quora, Reddit, or industry forums
• Social media platforms like Pinterest or YouTube
• Google Autocomplete answers
• Take a look at the “people also ask” feature in the search engine results page

Questions are an easy way to find long-tail keywords that you can easily integrate into your SEO or PPC campaigns, too.

3. Use a Niche Keyword Research Tool

While you can do SEO without tools, keyword research tools, such as Ahrefs or SEMrush, can certainly speed up the process.

For most tools, you’ll enter a seed keyword and the tool will spit out related keywords for that search term. That usually means you enter a short-tail keyword and the tool will produce long-tail keyword suggestions to choose from.

Google Trends is another great SEO tool for finding niche keywords. This free tool will show trending topics and ideas based on Google searches. It might not give you a ton of long-tail keywords to start, but Google Trends provides big ideas that you can then whittle down into a more specific niche keyword.

Sometimes you can get ahead on emerging trends with this data, so don’t knock the power of Google Trends.

4. Compare Keyword Metrics

At this point, you have a list of potential keywords, but that doesn’t mean you’re done. Targeting 200 keywords will make you go crazy, so you need to narrow the list down to your top 20 to start with. Instead of simply picking your favorites, back up your selections with data.

For PPC keywords, try using Google Keyword Planner. This option is now only available if you have a Google Ads account. Google Keyword Planner allows you to not only generate keyword ideas, but check out how effective they are for Google Ads campaigns too.

For SEO, we recommend Ahrefs. This keyword tool costs $99 to $999 per month, depending on your needs. Simply enter your list of keywords into its Keyword Explorer tool and Ahrefs will spit out essential metrics about those keywords.

Whatever tool you decide to use, you’ll need to evaluate your keywords based on:

• Monthly search volume: This tells you how many times people search for this term every month. Keep in mind that niche keywords will have lower monthly search volumes. Even so, you should try to target keywords with higher volumes where possible. Choose keywords with a minimum of 100 searches per month.
• Keyword difficulty: This measures, on a scale of zero to 100, how difficult it is for you to rank for a keyword. Think of keyword difficulty as the level of competition you have to deal with for each keyword. Ideally, you want a low keyword difficulty with a moderate to high monthly search volume.
• CPC: High CPCs will eat up your PPC budget if you aren’t careful. If you’re finding niche keywords for ad campaigns, you should rank them by estimated CPC. Research tools will tell you, on average, how much you can expect to pay for that keyword every time someone clicks on it.

There’s no such thing as the perfect keyword, but you can choose specific keywords that work best for your digital marketing campaigns based on these metrics.

5. Track Niche Keyword Performance Over Time

Whether you’re running an SEO strategy or an ad campaign, you can’t expect niche keywords to change your business overnight. Content marketing is a long game, and results can take 3-6 months to see, which means your team needs to monitor keyword performance over time to get an accurate understanding of how well your strategy is performing. With SEO, consistency is key.

If your keyword strategy isn’t gleaning the desired results, in three to six months, it might be time to revisit and rethink your strategy, and consider optimization opportunities for existing content. You won’t know that without data, though, so tracking your SEO and PPC performance to know if you found the right niche keywords is imperative.

Do Keyword Research to Get Ahead

You’re investing a lot of energy into your SEO and other marketing strategies, so arm your site with the best keywords for the job. Finding niche keywords is easy when you have the right processes and tools. You can find niche keywords by:

1. Defining your target audience
2. Looking for common questions
3. Using keyword research tools
4. Comparing keyword metrics
5. Tracking keyword performance

But we know it’s tough measuring your keyword performance long-term, not to mention optimizing your campaigns for these keywords. If it’s time to refresh your niche keyword strategy, go with MBE Group.

We help growing businesses overhaul their SEO for impressive organic results. Chat with MBE Group now to find the best niche keywords for your business goals.