Keyword research should be plugged directly into your content development process. By carrying out keyword research, you’ll be able to identify new opportunities to target keywords relevant to your business and drive quality traffic to your site.
Now, whilst keyword research should play a part within your content creation process, there’s a lot more data available to you that you can use to get the best possible results from your campaigns. One of these data sources comes in the form of existing popular content related to the topics that you’re targeting.
Having an understanding of the different components that make up a successful piece of content should be high on your priority list. I often dedicate a huge portion of my content development time to researching established content and breaking it down into the different elements that make that post a success.
Here’s my general process:
- Understand the overarching subject area that you want to develop content around (for example, web hosting).
- Research keywords related to the core subject and map out more specific queries that can be targeted (for example, where to buy web hosting).
- Identify existing content that has been heavily linked to and shared that relates directly to the keywords that you’ve targeted.
- Analyse the popular content to find trends and features that work well.
- Implement the findings of your analysis to develop content that has a dramatically greater chance of success.