SEO content strategy: the 7 phases you can't skip

Ten years ago, publishing a couple of articles a week, waiting and, why not, crossing your fingers for organic traffic to reach your blog or site was a real thing. But that’s just it: ten years ago.

The rules of the game have changed (and they’ll keep changing), and content goes far beyond filling a blog or any block on a page with words just to “publish”, because that isn’t what your potential audience is looking for.

But how?

Adapt to the change or live in the past: SEO content strategies evolve

These days, the conversation between users and brands has turned 180 degrees. Brands no longer just tell people what they need; there’s a two-way conversation where audiences tell us what they want to find in the brands they follow.

It’s changed, hasn’t it? And this is exactly where a lot of companies and projects fail to adapt, and don’t make the most of everything a well-structured SEO content strategy can offer them to show up in the top results of search engines.

Why do you need an SEO content plan? Here are today’s “rules”

Before we get into it and explain the what, the how and the when of putting a strategy in place for your business, it’s vital you understand how Google breathes today.

Unlike a few years ago, when keyword stuffing (repeating keywords for no reason) worked, today the algorithm values other things: experience, expertise, authority and trust, but above all, user intent.

People use Google to look into specific problems or needs they have, and what they want to find is information, comparison, and if what they find is convincing, to buy the solution Google offers them (from brands and businesses, of course).

That’s why it’s neither empty articles nor gut feeling: valuable content is what rules, and it’s basically what matters to win the match against your competitors. And that’s where SEO content marketing comes to life, to offer a solution, and whoever shows it best will be the top bidder and, therefore, the one people buy from.

7 phases to put an SEO content strategy in place

Right, let’s get down to business! What and how should you work an SEO content strategy so you don’t put a foot wrong?

Phase 1: research and audit

Starting to write like a headless chicken, without research and above all without any prior analysis, is one of the mistakes you need to avoid. So sit down, think and ask yourself:

• Who is your target audience? Who you want to talk to and who you want to buy from you, or rather, who wants to buy you as a brand. It’s also important to know their pain points so you can help solve them. If you’re not clear on this, start by creating a buyer persona.
• How do you want to communicate with them? Define your tone and your communicative and editorial style. With that base and your brand’s value proposition, you’ll build the storytelling for your strategy, depending on the channels you’re on, but without losing your “soul” for connecting with your audience.
• Where can you find your target audience? How? A brand doesn’t always have a single audience (or it might). If you have several, not all of them consume digital media the same way, nor do they share the same pain points. To reach them and solve their “problems”, you need to work out where you can communicate with them.
• What is your competition doing? Find out what your peers, the ones you compete with, are up to. What they’ve done to be better than your brand, or which search intents they’re answering for your users that your business isn’t reaching (or has let slip), are some examples.

This groundwork is, in essence, that of an SEO audit: knowing where you stand before deciding where you’re going.

Phase 2: research the queries your target audience makes

Let’s say it again: the landscape digital marketing sits in is ever-changing, and so is its conversation. Organic ranking isn’t limited to the SERPs; there’s a cyclical feedback between channels like this one, social media (Social SEO) and AI environments, where SEO content ranks across all of them.

On any of these channels, understanding what people search for is a must you can’t ignore. What do we mean by that? That we no longer judge a piece of content’s viability by its search volume alone (that too), but go further and look into what kind of queries a user makes, how and where they make them. This is where keyword research stops being a list of words and becomes a map of intentions.

With that in mind, we can work out how interested users are before buying your brand. It isn’t the same to solve a more generic problem for someone (e.g. what is SEO content marketing?) as it is to dig into certain topics to solve and settle “deeper” needs.

What does this mean? Well, once we have the research on which keywords, taxonomies and/or queries fit your business, we have to classify them by the funnel, knowing that:

• The ones that inform are at the Top (TOFU).
• The ones that compare are in the Middle (MOFU).
• The ones that buy are at the Bottom (BOFU).

Phase 3: cluster your content strategically

Do you know what can and can’t be in your SEO content strategy?

After analysing and researching which queries fit your project, it’s time to “organise”. Organise what? The thematic blocks and angles your content plan will be built on.

Now, what you have to do is segment the types of queries (and keywords) by intent according to their nature. That marks an angle and lets you uncover the more specific search intents you can put a face to in a strategy that gets results.

Vague, isn’t it? You simply have to determine which will be the core topics your content centres on, and which are their “trunks”. In technical terms, pillar pages and topic clusters, respectively. If you want to bring it down to earth, it’ll help to create a content map.

Let’s take an example. If we have a site about medical nutrition, we’ll understand that:

But it isn’t only that. With this clustering of queries we’ll also learn which types of content can relate to each other, so they can be linked. That internal linking helps Google understand what your site is about, and gives it an idea of the authority it holds within the sector, so it can recommend you in more detail in user queries.

Phase 4: build your SEO editorial calendar

Theory is all well and good. But what about in practice? This is where the SEO editorial calendar comes into play.

This isn’t a simple diary where you mark dates, it’s your roadmap, your way of bringing to earth what, how and when you’ll create content, to then publish it.

This tool will also help you set which content is most viable depending on the time of year, or whether it simply works at any moment, by defining:

• User intent.
• Seasonality.
• Keywords and related semantic concepts.
• Format and multimedia resources.
• Internal linking.
• Publication date.

Got it? You’ve taken the first step towards making your SEO content strategy real. Let’s keep going!

Phase 5: SEO writing and On-Page optimisation

Time to roll up your sleeves and put all that prior work down on the page. The moment to write has arrived. But not write like a fifth-grade essay, rather write with meaning, with value and, above all, answering the search intent of your potential users, based on the earlier analysis, research and organisation.

Content matters, and a lot. It has to be valuable, but at the same time you have to write for people while optimising so you show up in Google’s results. If you want the fine detail, we have an SEO writing guide for this phase.

So make sure you include your keywords naturally (avoiding over-optimisation, since it can backfire) in your headings, meta titles and descriptions, without losing the literary sense and while keeping the text “scannable”, visual and to the point.

Just that? No. We can now write with AI, but it doesn’t communicate like humans, so you have to watch that this writing doesn’t sound like a robot did it. If you lean on these tools, give the result your brand’s tone of voice afterwards, so you reach your users too.

Phase 6: publishing

Got the content? Now you have to publish it.

This can be one of the simplest phases. However, keeping a sense of layout at the look-and-feel level for the user’s own experience is just as important as what you’re going to write and which intents you’re going to answer.

But let’s not get sidetracked. Publishing a piece on a specific date or with a particular aesthetic is vital, not only so it ties into your storytelling and brand value proposition, but so it also shows up in the search results for a given intent at the right moment.

Bit by bit:

• Page or blog design. When we talk about aesthetics we don’t just mean “pretty”, but that the information shown to the user is accessible, usable and helpful while they’re reading, and that has to be planned for at publishing time.
• Seasonality and search results. Not all content works at every time of year, and knowing when to publish can be the difference between success and failure for your business. For example, with sunscreen (whether a landing or a blog post), we won’t publish or focus on it in December, since that isn’t its “strong season”; we’ll do it in summer and the months around it, to gain that ground on the results pages.

Phase 7: measure and pull results

In an SEO content strategy you have to be consistent and bet on valuable content for the long term. By this point, I think you’ll already know that.

But tracking the results of each piece published in an SEO editorial calendar, and its corresponding strategy, lets you pull plenty of useful insights.

For that, you have to review the results in tools like Google Search Console, GA4 or Sistrix to extract data. Once you have it, analyse which content performed better than the rest and weigh up: why it worked, why it didn’t and what fell halfway.

What can you do with this? By knowing what works best for your brand’s strategy, you can see whether you need to adjust it, optimise content or come up with new ideas to hit your goals. And with that, you go back to phase 1: the framework is a cycle, not a list that closes.

Your strategy: more than putting two words together

Following a content strategy can help your business attract customers. It isn’t exclusively about keeping an updated blog, but about understanding how Google’s algorithm (and other digital environments) connects users with the solutions they’re looking for.

If you follow these 7 phases, you won’t only see a rise in your positions, but also the capture of qualified traffic that can turn into sales.

So if you still haven’t tapped the full potential of SEO content for your brand, now’s the time. This framework is exactly the one we apply in our SEO consultancy, and it’s how an SEO agency that produces content with judgement, not just to fill space, works. Need a hand setting it up on your project? Tell us about your case and we’ll shape it together.

FAQs to keep your content plan on track

More questions? Here are a few to get your SEO content strategy just right.

How long does an SEO content plan take to show results?

Generally, if you work consistently and with focus, though it’s not a mathematical rule, organic ranking results start to show between months 3 and 6. Magic? No, it’s slow, deliberate work.

How often should the SEO editorial calendar be updated?

It should be a living document, updated periodically and adapted to seasonality and trending moments. We recommend reviewing it monthly or quarterly to stay adapted, though you should track publications at least weekly.

Is quantity or quality better?

Quality, always. Google prioritises helpful content, so it’s better to publish two articles a month that genuinely help your user (and Google, of course) and are well-documented, than eight mediocre texts that add nothing new.