Building a rock-solid online presence to attract website traffic and sales leads has to involve a carefully planned content strategy.
The problem is that many business owners either don’t know where to start, or they pour their energy into the wrong tasks entirely.
Having done client SEO for over 15 years, I’ve developed a tried and tested plan for creating content and getting it to rank in Google fast.
Let me walk you through exactly how I approach content marketing for a small business, step by step.
9-Step Content Marketing Strategy
This is a complete strategy that any small business owner can follow, even with no content marketing or SEO experience behind them.
Each step builds on the last, taking you from optimizing what you already have, through researching and creating new content, to promoting it once it’s live.
I’ll also show you where the right tools can automate the heavy lifting, so you can complete in a few hours what would otherwise take weeks.
1. Optimize Your Existing Content
Before you write a single new word, look at what you already have.
This is the step almost everyone skips, and it’s the one that delivers results fastest.
Your existing pages already have something new content doesn’t: age, and a history with Google. Some are probably ranking on page two or three right now for keywords you’ve never even targeted on purpose.
Those pages are sitting on the edge of page one. A few focused tweaks can push them over, often within days, long before any brand new page would gain traction.
So the first job is to find them. Pull up every page you have, along with the keywords each one already ranks for and its current position in Google.
You’re looking for two things: pages ranking in positions 4 to 20 that are close to breaking through, and the primary keyword each page should really be targeting.
Once you’ve picked that primary keyword, the three on-page elements that matter most are your title tag, H1, and meta description. Getting those right, aligned to the keyword and written to earn the click, is what moves a page up.
This is where Xagio does the heavy lifting for you.
Using the “Import My Keywords & Rankings” feature in the Project Planner.
This will load all of your existing posts and pages, along with the keywords they are ranking for, the search volume, cost per click, and last known search rankings.
The project will also include any known information about the three most important on-page ranking factors:
- Title tag
- H1 tag
- Meta description
Your next step is to look at the list of keywords and identify which one you should be targeting as your primary keyword.
With Xagio, you can take the guesswork out of that decision by selecting the keywords and using the “Get Competition” feature.
Xagio will research the competitiveness of the keywords and will highlight the potentially easiest ones to rank with a gold bar.
Your primary keyword should strike a balance between good search volume and low competition, and this data will allow you to do that.
With your primary keyword picked, you can now turn your attention to optimizing those three on-page elements I mentioned above.
Don’t worry; there’s no need for any skills beyond clicking your mouse button–Xagio does all the heavy lifting and automates the process.
Simply click on the “Optimize with AI” button at the top of the keyword group, and Xagio’s magic starts to happen.
You’ll get a choice of five recommendations for the Title, H1, and Meta Description tags. Make changes if you want to, but in most cases, you can simply save the changes, and Xagio will complete this SEO task for you.
The reason I recommend you focus your initial content marketing efforts on your existing pages and posts is that they already have some age behind them.
Combining the indexation status and age with a few small on-page tweaks can send many of your search rankings up within days.
2. Build A Solid Foundation On Keyword Research
With your existing pages optimized, it’s time to build out new content, and that starts with keyword research.
This is the foundation everything else rests on. Skip it, or do it badly, and you’re guessing at what to write and hoping it ranks.
Good keyword research answers three questions: what your potential customers are actually searching for, how much demand each term has, and which keywords naturally group together into topics you can build individual pages around.
That last part, clustering related keywords into topical groups, is what turns a messy keyword list into an actual content plan. Each cluster becomes a page.
You also want to be researching what’s already working for your competitors, since the keywords they rank for are a proven map of what Google rewards in your niche.
Doing all of this by hand means exporting data from multiple tools, filtering thousands of terms, and grouping them manually in spreadsheets, which can swallow days before you write a word.
Xagio offers two ways to do this, but the best option for a small business owner with limited or no SEO experience is the AI Wizard.
You select your search location and language, enter some details about the keyword that best describes your business, and Xagio starts the research process.
Within seconds, you’ll get a list of the top-ranking websites for the chosen keyword. You then either select the ones Xagio recommends or manually select the sites you’re interested in spying on.
Xagio will then analyze all the ranking pages and keywords for those sites and return a project with keyword groups clustered by topic.
You can follow these instructions to complete the process in less than 30 seconds.
Pro Tip: If you want to learn more about keyword research and spying on your competitors, then check out our guide to recursive KW research here.
3. Identify Content Gaps
Your next task is to identify keyword groups from Step 2 that contain relevant topics for your business.
Not all of them might be suitable, so your first job is to identify those that are.
Consider each group from the perspective of new and existing customers; you’ll be surprised how many new topics you’ve missed that can broaden your customer base.
Before you start creating content, it’s best to consolidate your new keyword groups into your main project from step 1 above. Follow these step-by-step instructions to have one master project in just a few minutes.
4. Focus On Easy-To-Rank Keywords
You now have a set of new keyword groups, but not all of them are worth pursuing right away.
The smart play is to go after the easiest wins first. Ranking for low-competition keywords builds momentum and brings in traffic while your harder targets are still climbing.
For each new keyword group, you need to decide on the single focus keyword you’ll build the page around, the one that best balances solid search volume against low competition.
This is the same competition analysis you ran on your existing pages back in Step 1.
Select the keywords in your master project, use “Get Competition,” and let Xagio mark the easiest opportunities with a gold bar.
Pick the focus keyword for each group based on that data, and you’re ready to create the content.
5. Plan A Schedule For Content Creation
You’ve now got a list of new keyword groups along with their main target keywords and it’s time to come up with a schedule for creating the content and posting it to your site.
I would generally suggest posting about one to two new blog posts or sales pages per week, which can keep you quite busy.
Your options are to find the time to write the content yourself if you’re creative and skilled enough, pay someone to write it for you, or use AI.
We’ll cover these in Step 7.
The main thing right now is to prioritize the keyword groups and devise a schedule.
6. Optimize Every New Page
Just as you did with your existing pages in Step 1, every new page needs its three core on-page elements optimized before you publish.
That means a title tag, H1, and meta description, each aligned to the page’s focus keyword and written to earn the click.
In each of your keyword groups, click the “Optimize with AI” button and let Xagio prepare five recommendations for the Title, H1, and meta description tags.
You can choose and modify the recommendations, then save them for the keyword group. Xagio adds these tags to the relevant HTML on the page, so you don’t need any coding skills at all.
Follow our step-by-step guide for each new page, and you’ll have professional on-page SEO completed in a matter of minutes.
The difference now is scale. You’re applying the same quick process from Step 1 across every new page you create, which is exactly why having it automated saves you so much time.
7. Write For Your Target Audience
So far, your content marketing strategy has involved optimizing your existing content, coming up with new ideas, and preparing the on-page optimization for new content.
Now, it’s time to start writing, and there are a few options.
If you’re a skilled writer who knows how to optimize content for search engines and your target audience, then go ahead and start writing.
However, creating content yourself is time-consuming, and you have to ensure you have enough gaps in your schedule to stick with the content marketing timeline you set up in the previous step.
The second option is to hire a blog and/or copywriter to take care of this job. I’d recommend this as a better option than doing it yourself because your focus should be on your main area of business.
It’s always best to hire people who are more talented than you for individual tasks, and content marketing is no different.
However, there is an interesting third option.
Because of the huge advances in AI technology, it’s now possible to produce lots of excellent content using AI.
There’s a small problem with the majority of AI tools, though.
If you simply ask for an article on a specific keyword, the results you get won’t be great for your content marketing.
What you actually need to do is come up with a series of prompts that tell the AI specifically what you want:
- The target audience.
- The tone of content.
- The style of content.
- The design of paragraphs.
- Whether it’s a sales page or blog post.
- And anything else that makes it clear what your content should be like.
Our team at Xagio has done a lot of research and testing with such prompts, and we’ve built a feature into the Xagio plugin that allows you to simply click a button.
Our advanced AI content feature will revolutionize your content marketing efforts and deliver a great article in just a few seconds.
In most cases, these articles are ready to post with just a bit of editing and adding some images. And it’ll cost you a fraction of hiring writers.
Check out this guide to see how fast and easy it is to create new blog posts for your content strategy.
8. Track Your Keyword Rankings
You’ve done the keyword research, optimized your existing content, and created new pages. So what now?
Every content strategy is an ongoing process, not a one-time project. That means two things: consistently coming up with new content ideas, and keeping track of whether the content you’ve published is actually working.
Tracking is the part most people neglect, and it’s the part that tells you where to focus next.
The metric that matters most is where your target keywords rank in Google. Rankings are a leading indicator, they move before traffic does, so they tell you a page is gaining ground well before you see it in your sales numbers.
Watching those positions over time also shows you which pages are climbing on their own and which ones need another round of attention, so you’re never guessing where to put your effort.
The catch with doing this manually is that rankings shift constantly and vary by location, so a one-off check tells you very little. You need consistent, automated tracking to see the real trend.
Xagio has a rank tracker that makes this effortless. You add your main keywords, and it monitors their positions on autopilot.
All you need to do is add your main keywords to the rank tracker.
Xagio will monitor the rankings on autopilot, and you can access a report whenever you want to see what’s happening.
9. Promote Your New Content
Creating content and optimizing the pages will lead to improved organic traffic–but there is something you can do while you’re waiting for ranking improvements.
The first thing you can do is share the content with your existing customers through email newsletters or on social media platforms.
It’s always easiest to inform and sell to people you’ve already done business with, so make that your first step.
Oh, and it’s practically free to send emails and make social media posts.
Make sure you tell people in emails and social media posts that they can simply respond to you with any questions or comments–that’s one of the easiest ways to start conversations that could lead to sales.
You can also combine your content marketing with paid ads on Google and social media platforms.
The advantage this provides is that you get a quick boost in traffic that allows you to analyze how well your new and existing pages are doing for conversion to leads and sales.
Conversion rate optimization is a whole different part of content marketing that goes beyond this blog post.
But what you have at this stage is a full blueprint for a content strategy that delivers results with just a few hours of work.
Automated Search Engine Optimization With Xagio
At this stage you know what it takes to come up with a strategic approach to creating content and implementing the most important SEO steps without the need for hiring an agency.
I have worked with many small business owners, and I can tell you that the above steps definitely give you the 80/20 effect, where 80% of the SEO benefits come from just 20% of the work.
The good news is that Xagio makes implementing that 20% insanely easy at a fraction of the cost of hiring professionals.
Get started with Xagio today and see how quickly you can achieve the same effects as most SEO agencies provide.