How to Create an SOP for Optimizing Blog Content

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is incredibly crucial for the vast majority of B2B companies. It is a process that allows your website to become more visible to people using search engines to find your solution(s) and things related to them. This article spells out the importance of having blog content that organically helps your business rank well on search engines.

Blogging is an essential factor in optimizing your website, as it positions it as the relevant go-to site for answers to your customers' questions. Furthermore, by using various on-page SEO tactics on your blog posts, you avail more opportunities for your site to rank in search engines. The outcome is that your site becomes more appealing to visitors. 

However, to scale your SEO strategy through blogging, you need to have an SEO roadmap. 

What is an SEO Roadmap?

An SEO roadmap is a structured document that you refer to for your SEO-related activities to keep them on track. It plays a vital role in eliminating errors and streamlining decision-making. Also known as an SEO plan, the roadmap clearly outlines every tactic you intend to use in your SEO efforts. 

Most importantly, the document defines various workflows and standard operating procedures (SOP) in executing each SEO tactic. For the sake of guiding you in creating an SOP for the optimization of your blog posts, let's delve into the details of SOP. 

Standard Operating Procedures 

Standard operating procedures refer to a set of step-by-step guidelines that outline how to carry out specific routine and tangible tasks. Once you create your SOP defining how to go about a specific task, you should always complete the task the same way each time. Think of standard operating procedures as checklists that help you improve your SEO strategy. They are the instructional manual that makes SEO easy for your business. 

Steps to Creating Effective SOP for SEO

Depending on your business objectives, you need to examine your industry, and what really matters to your audience(s). These are crucial factors to help you develop an SEO strategy that produces results. Here are steps that you can use in setting up standard operating procedures that work

1. Create a List of Topics 

While keywords are at the heart of SEO, they are no longer the first crucial step in helping your website achieve organic growth. Instead, the first step should be to create a list of topics you'd like to address through your blog content. 

To start off, you can create a list of about ten words and terms closely associated with your service or product. Then, using an SEO tool like HubSpot, Ahrefs, GrowthBar, or Google's Keyword Tool, you can research these words to establish their search volume. Next, come up with variations that are relevant to your business. 

Doing so will help you create popular short-tail keywords that represent the overarching topic for creating new content. However, you still need to come up with related keywords to incorporate into your content. Again, use competition (keyword difficulty) and search volume (monthly averages) as the basis for creating your list. 

2. Make a List of Long-Tail Keywords 

Based on the topics you create in the first step, you can optimize your blog posts for specific keywords. Use the keyword tool to find ten long-tail keywords that help you delve deeper into each topic. This step is crucial in helping your business attract people with varying concerns and interests to your products or services. 

You can use long-tail keywords to create web pages that explain specific topics within your blog. The more detailed your content is, the better it will be in meeting the particular needs of your audience, a factor that will likely convert traffic into leads.

3. Build Pages for Each Topic

In trying to make your website rank in search engines, getting one page to rank for a handful of keywords can be an uphill task. However, you can achieve this objective using the pillar topics you created to build a page or post with a high-level overview of the subject. 

Use the long-tail keywords to create pillar pages that can essentially form your table of contents. This allows you to describe the main topic while giving your readers a preview of what you will discuss in other posts. Ultimately, the topics for which you create pillar pages will be determined by your business needs. 

4. Establish a Consistent Blogging Schedule 

Your web pages or blog posts don't necessarily have to belong to a topic cluster. Instead, you need to derive value from creating tangential content that your customers care about, which helps you build authority with Google algorithms. 

You can decide to blog at least once a week, for example, keeping in mind that it's more about your audience and not search engines. Study your audience and write about the things they are interested in. 

5. Develop a Link-Building Plan

Topic clusters help with your SEO efforts, but they are not the only way to make your site rank higher. Link-building helps with off-page SEO by attracting inbound links from other sources to your site. As a general rule, go for sites with high authority, as they will significantly impact your site's ranking. For this to happen, you need to brainstorm ways to attract high-quality inbound links. One excellent idea is to approach other blogs and ask them to let you create guest blogs that you can link back to your site. 

6. Measure and Track Your Success

Optimizing your blog for search engines is demanding and involving. As such, you want to know if all your efforts are paying off, which is why you must track your metrics to analyze the overall success. You also should identify the areas that need improvement. 

Tools exist to help you optimize your blogs and monitor traffic and rankings on SERPs. This way, you will recognize your success and areas that present more SEO opportunities. While all these steps and processes can take a toll on you, an expert in inbound marketing can help with your SEO efforts. Contact The Gist for more information.