How to create SEO content that ranks (A Step-by-Step content strategy)
If you want to turn your SaaS blog into an inbound acquisition MACHINE… keep reading.
In the next few minutes, I’m going to give you the exact process for developing a content strategy that not only ranks, but also FILLS your calendar with booked demos from high-quality prospects.
I’ll also reveal how to create this strategy by answering a few specific questions that determine:
-WHO you should write for
-WHAT you should write about
-HOW to make your reader deeply care about your writing
But, before diving in head first…
You’ll need to understand the “science” behind what makes blog content “high converting" and 2 crucial content principles, so you can effortlessly repeat this process in the future.
Here’s what I mean…
Each high-converting blog post starts with understanding your buyer's journey
(A theoretical process in which a prospect goes from being a cold lead to a paying customer).
And for each stage of the buyer’s journey, specific types of content must be produced to satisfy search intent.
Here's a breakdown of content needs for each stage:
Principle 1. “The Buyer's Journey Expeditor”
Once you understand what content to create based on the “buyer’s journey”, you’ll need to accelerate the process…
This is what I call the “Buyer's journey expeditor” principle.
This principle states that in order to increase the speed at which your dream prospects go through the buyer's journey and become a paying customer for your SaaS… you need to focus on building trust in their minds.
And you do that by creating high-quality, long form content based on a small number of topics.
Remember: The main objective of your blog content is to satisfy search intent, ensuring alignment with what users are searching for.
If someone searches “best project management tools for solopreneurs” they DO NOT want to read a blog post on the history of project management.
Which leads us to our 2nd principle…
Principle 2. “SEARCH INTENT SATISFACTION STREAK”.
This principle states that creating content that satisfies search intent on a consecutive basis (or “streak”) for a specific set of buyer personas will inevitably lead to an OVERWHELMING amount of inbound leads for your SaaS in the long run.
All it takes is:
- Defining your target audience.
- Identifying their pain points.
- Writing out queries that they’ll search up on Google to solve said pain points.
- Validating if those queries are worth writing about through keyword research.
- Creating a list of content ideas based on customer + keyword research
- Creating a content plan.
- Creating a content calendar
- Next steps moving forward …
I’ll be showing you how to do ALL of this in this guide.
Ready? Let’s get straight into it …
1- Defining your target audience
If you don't know WHO you’re writing for, your content strategy won’t be “strategic”.
You'll essentially be “talking into the void”, plus your content will lack structure.
To identify your target audience, all you need to do is to ask yourself 3 main questions …
- Who would benefit the most from my solution?
- Who will be most likely to share my product with their friends and colleagues?
- Who do I want to champion and represent my brand and company as a whole?
Example 1: Let’s say you provide a “digital adoption platform” that helps with onboarding, clients, customers or new staff… your content will likely be most beneficial to big enterprises looking to streamline their onboarding process.
Example 2: If you sell a project management tool like notion… your target audience could be freelancers, small business owners, or remote teams looking for a collaborative workspace.
Once you’ve got a good idea of WHO your target audience is, you can then move on to the next step …
2- Identifying their pain points
The power behind understanding your customer’s pain points has 3 core benefits …
- It allows you to understand what terms and phrases to use in your content to amplify the amount of trust and credibility you have in their minds.
- Differentiation from competitors who aren’t as focused on helping users make informed buying choices.
- Better conversion rates and more booked demos
To identify their pain points, use:
-Forums
-Online surveys
-Polls on social media
Find common pain points that occur for your target audience that are relevant enough to address in your content.
As you find these pain points, make sure to note all them down for later, don’t leave any out, no matter how irrelevant they may seem.
From here we can then move on to the next step …
3- Writing out queries your prospects will search up on Google to solve their pain points.
Once you’ve listed your prospect’s pain points, you can then find possible queries that they’ll search up on search engines like Google or Bing to actually understand their problems, remove their fears and educate themselves on possible solutions.
Example: If your company provides a marketing automation tool and your main target audience involves small business owners… then you may focus on creating content for pain points such as …
-Generating leads
-Customer retention through email marketing
-Building and maintaining a presence on social media
(FYI: Each of these can be content buckets which you can make blog content on.)
Then that target audience could search for these example queries to solve each problem:
-Lead Generation:
"Effective lead generation strategies for small businesses"
"How to optimize landing pages for lead generation"
"Tips for running targeted ad campaigns"
"Best lead magnet ideas for capturing leads"
-Email Marketing:
"Email marketing best practices for small businesses"
"How to segment email lists for better engagement"
"Improving email deliverability tips and tricks"
"Measuring email open rates and click-through rates"
-Social Media Management:
"Social media management tools for small businesses"
"Creating a social media content schedule"
"Engaging with the audience on social media"
"Analyzing social media performance metrics"
Now, all you have to do is come up with different queries using this example by applying it to your own SaaS solution.
Leading us to our next point…
4- Validating your queries through keyword research.
Much like an aspiring startup founder would validate their idea before creating a product … you MUST validate whether your queries are actually being searched for on search engines or not.
To do that, we’ll utilize the power of keyword research.
This is the process of identifying and analyzing the specific words and phrases that people use when searching for information, products, or services on search engines like Google or Bing.
Here is a simple way to find accurate keywords:
-Translate queries into potential search terms (Think about what your target audience would type into Google when trying to find answers to their questions).
-Type those search terms into a tool like Ahrefs, SEMrush or Similar web and check to see if that keyword has any volume.
-Checking for search intent is also important (You don’t want to rank a “How to” post for a keyword that clearly has navigational intent).
-Look at your competitors who are ranking for those keywords and analyze their content that ranks for those keywords.
If your competitors are already addressing those pain points through their content, it's an indication that the pain points are worth writing about. (Pro tip: If you notice a lack of relevant and high-quality content, it may represent an opportunity for you to fill that gap.)
Once you’ve created a list of keywords that fulfill the above criteria, we can move on to content ideation based on customer + keyword research …
5- Creating a list of content ideas based on customer + keyword research
Next, you’ll want to create a list of content ideas based on prior research.
Start off by identifying what topics most of our keywords fall under, then making 1 blog post per week on each topic. (I’d recommend choosing 3 topics then listing blog post ideas under each of them).
Once you get this down, you’ll be building what’s known as topical authority.
Topical authority refers to a website's or an individual's expertise, credibility, and trustworthiness on a specific topic/subject, a crucial concept in SEO and content marketing.
By building authority in certain subject areas that your target audience wants to study in order to solve their pain points, you are essentially utilizing the “buyer's journey expeditor” principle to its MAXIMUM POTENTIAL.
This allows you to not only build an audience that knows, likes and trusts you… but it also decreases the amount of time it takes for them to convert and actually book a demo or sign up to a free trial for your SaaS.
So with that being said, let’s move on …
6- The importance of creating content for EVERY stage of the buyer's journey.
Now, whilst it’s important to build topical authority and make content that solves pain points, we also want to focus on making content for every stage of the buyer's journey. Leaving no stone unturned.
My best advice on this is to focus on making content for every stage of the sales conversion cycle.
This means focusing on creating pages that rank for informational, navigational AND transactional keywords.
See below:
Focusing on only one of the three is a HUGE mistake I’ve seen in the SaaS marketing space.
Why?
Two reasons …
- It limits REACH: Making what's known as “BoFU content” limits the amount of people that you’ll reach. As search demand is lowest for high intent transactional keywords.
- It limits TRUST: Having no informational/user focused content results in readers having FAR LESS trust for your brand compared to a company that’s been posting 3-5 high quality blog content for the last 5 YEARS STRAIGHT.
This is why it’s important to take a more “holistic” approach so you can maximize traffic, conversions, and trust.
7- Creating a content plan.
After all the customer and keyword research you’ve done, alongside the content ideation you mapped out, it’s time to create a content plan.
To do this, I’d recommend focusing on:
-Aligning the content plan with your business goals
-Having key performance indicators in place to track your progress.
-Aiming content for each stage of the buyer's journey, such as increasing brand awareness or conversion rates.
-Strategies to maximize the overall output of your content, such as link building or social media promotion.
-Processes for creating said content, whether you wish to build an in-house content team, use AI to automate the writing process or hire a series of writers as contractors or freelancers.
Below is an example of a content plan I found at smartinsights.com.
Now let’s move on to the final process …
8- Creating a content calendar.
To keep everything organized, you’ll need to create a content calendar that illustrates when, how and what content will be produced in the next few months.
I’d recommend highlighting who will create and upload each content piece.
Click here for a breakdown of how to create a content calendar:
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Conclusion.
Implement the advice shared in this blog, and you’ll be able to develop and systemise your SEO content creation process.
If you’re interested in partnering up with our agency to help you book more demos and get more signups for your SaaS without Ad spend, be sure to book a discovery call with the link below and we’ll see if we’re a good fit.
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Thanks.
-Hamse
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