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Joe Troyer

The Keys to Effective Blog Content Planning with Nate Turner

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In this episode, Ten Speed co-founder Nate Turner features on the podcast for the second time to share a blog content strategy that’s optimized to rank and drive organic traffic.

About  Nate Turner

Nate Turner, former VP of Marketing Operations at Sprout and now a co-founder of Ten Speed, a leading content optimization company, brings 12 years of hands-on experience in digital marketing. His unwavering passion lies in assisting marketing and sales leaders in problem-solving and scaling revenue growth. Newbie marketers and seasoned veterans alike can benefit from Nate’s wealth of knowledge as he shares valuable insights derived from his extensive background in the field.

How to Create Blog Content Plan That’s Optimized to Rank

To create a content plan that’s optimized to rank and drive organic traffic for your blog, Nate suggests following this proven framework:

  1. Topic Research: Start by finding a relevant topic that has good search volume and aligns with your business or website. Instead of targeting every single keyword, focus on commonly grouped keywords that form  comprehensive topics and content ideas
  2. Search Intent Analysis: Investigate the top 10 to 20 search results for the selected topic in Google. Understand the search intent of users for that topic (informational, transactional, navigational) and identify the type of content and formats that rank well.
  3. Create an Outline: Develop a structured outline when you write content for your blog post, using appropriate headings (h1, h2, h3, etc.) and bullet points to organize the information effectively for every piece of content you write. Incorporate a table of contents with jump links for longer posts.
  4. Content Writing: Write the content following the outline you created. Ensure that it covers all the relevant points, includes valuable resources such as charts, videos, and internal links to other related content on your website.
  5. Metadata Optimization: Optimize the title tag, meta description, and other metadata to make your blog post more attractive and compelling for users in search engine results.
  6. Promotion and Distribution: Once your content is published, add it to your content calendar and begin promoting it across various channels, such as social media, email newsletters, and relevant communities. Moreover, engage in outreach efforts to secure backlinks specifically for that blog post. A well-organized content calendar will ensure strategic and timely promotion to drive organic traffic effectively.
  7. Long-Term Strategy: Understand that SEO and content marketing take time to yield significant results, especially for newer websites with less authority. Set realistic expectations and commit to creating valuable content consistently over time.
  8. Consider Professional Support: If your company is overwhelmed with content creation, consider partnering with a specialized content marketing service like 10 Speed or similar agencies that can help with topic research, creating content briefs, and guiding your content strategy.

Remember, creating optimized blog content is an ongoing process, and results may take time to manifest. Patience and consistency are key to success in driving organic traffic through content marketing.

Topics Discussed

  • The concept of SEO content
  • Identifying topics and keywords
  • Content structure
  • Content distribution and promotion
  • How Ten Speed operates
  • Ten Speed’s typical customer

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Joe Troyer 0:44
I would love if we could zoom out, you kind of talked about how to make a piece of content that's already performed, perform again, right or re optimize, reinvigorate, restart it, I'd love to have you give us kind of a breakdown of of how somebody anybody off the street could create blog content that's really optimized from the start to rank and to drive organic traffic. So think kind of net new for somebody that doesn't really know what they're doing. Like, let's assume that they're a complete noob off the street, if you will,

Nate Turner 1:17
probably will have to make some some comments that it's someone who's completely new would have to search in and look at a couple of these things in more depth. But so certainly from like, a concept of SEO content is a term like that would be really just any written content, typically a blog that's intended to be indexed and ranked. So like, that's, that's the objective. So I think the the starting point is certainly, you know, finding a topic. And so that's one area that I think, has certainly shifted in the last four or five years that it's much less about creating a blog post for every single keyword and iteration.

And it's much more about what are the common, commonly grouped together keywords, that sort of round out this whole topic. And that's kind of where you'd be looking to find some relevant topics that have good search volume, obviously apply to your business or your site. From there, I think very similar to the process I just described, like you would be taking on some of those top keywords and that topic, searching that in Google and looking at, you know, the top 10 to 20 results in each of those pages that are ranking, because that's going to give you a pretty good indication of what Google is sort of identifying as the best quality and also some ideas around those search intent. So search intent being, you know, like informational, or transactional navigational, what what's the intent of the person?

Why are they searching that? What are they trying to achieve? So understanding that, and looking at the results, you can get a sense of the people that are ranking well, here is kind of how they're going about it again, is it like how to post or an examples post or a roundup of the best things like an ultimate guide that covers the topic fully? That's really a lot of what you'd be looking at. And then, you know, how long is it? Is it 1200 words long is it 5000 words like and kind of looking at some of those and not that you want to just average it, but you can get a sense of like how in depth and you know how all the areas that you need to cover that. And then from there, I think taking those learnings and the topic, you would then create an outline. And they have the structure is very important.

Using the right h tos h threes, there's like bullet points like numbered lists any of that kind of stuff to really organize, excuse me and structure the data, as well as if it's fairly long, maybe doing like a table of contents with with the jump links, as well. And really having that structure laid out is important to make sure that you're going to hit on all the right things and, and make it easy to understand and also the structure and the headings are important for the search engines to kind of understand your prioritization and your hierarchy of the information, then, you know, then you're finally going about writing the content, which I think is pretty straightforward, you kind of just seeing what those sections are in your writing. And I think another important area is like adding valuable resources.

So yeah, any charts or videos, anything to just put those in mind and make it something that someone doesn't have to leave your page and go find more information. You're kind of bringing it all, all together one, and then kind of closing out with like, the most common, you know, metadata like title tag, meta description, a lot of that stuff. And then I think the piece that maybe gets forgotten, forgotten a lot is like promoting it like distributing it. So sharing across channels, promoting that doing some outreach to get backlinks to that specific page. Not just to your site in general. So that takes some work to, you know, go about and do some some research and outbound email to get backlinks, but all that can then kind of help push that up as well. So really doing your best to understand what's going on how to fully cover the topic, how to structure the post correctly to achieve that, writing and then and then promoting it. Oh, man,

Joe Troyer 5:24
that's a that's fantastic. I think that's a really thorough outline without like literally giving every particular detail. I think that somebody could definitely like Google search and find what does each of those things mean, as well. So I think you did a good job of hitting it from the top without too much detail. I'm curious man, cool. Your opportunity to to insert a plug for 10 speed? Where does 10 speed fit in with that now that everybody understands what we just went through? Like? How does it bolt in which pieces does it handle? Who are you guys kind of meant for built for if somebody you know, maybe knows or works with a customer, it could be a customer of yours?

Unknown Speaker 6:05
Who is that audience

Joe Troyer 6:05
that you guys are really asking?

Nate Turner 6:07
Yeah, so there's a couple couple opportunities from in terms of optimizing existing content. companies that have you know, good amount of, you know, 100, or more existing blog posts. And, you know, we do a lot with like b2b SaaS, but also some consumer brands and like D to Z. And that the range is, it works across those, I think the common your uniting factor, in terms of identifying them as any company that like, organic traffic is one of the top three drivers of revenue. So companies that aren't just, you know, trying to get traffic for the sake of traffic, but they know this is a core channel for revenue and for growing the business is, that's why it works for companies across those.

So any, any of those companies is great. And we can kind of layer in it and optimize the content, we do also work with companies on sort of the process I just outlined, for just helping them tee up new content and build build new optimized content. So again, kind of across those same types of companies, but of everything I described, like we're doing, we're doing the the conversations to understand who's your audience, you know, who's the buyer persona and the pain points they have, we're understanding the the general topics you want to go after, like high level topics. And so within that, we do all the research to find the topics, we do all the search intent, analyzation, like, analyzing everything there, then we do the entire outline for you.

And so that is basically the meaty part, the first half of what I described. And so each time we deliver a content brief, it has all that research in there all of the outline. And then our customers take that they have the subject matter expertise on their their business, and they know that brand voice all that. So they take it in either in house or freelancers. They're, they're writing that content, adding the resources, we do give guidance on the metadata and stuff as well. And then and then publishing it. So we really do the heavy lifting on the front part. So customers just know, we're gonna get two briefs a month from 10 speed or for six. And they slot it into their content calendar, follow that content, brief in the outline. And away they go.

Joe Troyer 8:35
I love it. Man, that's such a big bottleneck for so many people. They'll have some freelance writers, but then it's like, what do I write about? And it's a time it's a big time investment. I feel like not many companies really have that process down. And if they do have it down, it's probably like what you said at the beginning, it's just like, they're, they're just kind of automating so much of it, and not really thinking through it or writing good briefs, that the content that comes out the other side is just kind of, and it's just kind of adding more clutter than any real kind of asset content asset.

Nate Turner 9:09
Totally. It's, it's, it's a, we see it a lot. I mean, that's, you know, we'll we'll talk to a company and they'll say this great like, is the part I dread the most is I got a feels like it comes up. Every you know, it's just comes up so often that I gotta sit down and try and figure out the topics. And I think I know what I'm doing. I don't really want to, like, do this. And if we can just figure that out, you know, we know we're gonna be doing it in the sort of the best way possible. It saves them time, and they're getting the level of expertise that you wouldn't have time to do in house or it's hard to hire, hire for that role in house. And then also, yeah, just works better and saves time.

Joe Troyer 9:49
I love it man. If you were speaking with a good quality prospect, but they're not getting a third or more of their traffic or their sales from inbound. Or from organic. And their SEO presence was not very good or not very authoritative. Let's say it was kind of newer, right? And they're in that Google sandbox sandbox type of period, they really don't have many links, they don't have much ranking. They're barely even ranking for their brand. Right? And they're at the kind of that stage, what advice would you give them in hopes that, Hey, man, if I, if I execute this over the next 612 18 months, maybe then there'll be a stage or two years that, that we could work with them? You know, we

Nate Turner 10:35
certainly will, will entertain working with a company who is at that stage. So I'm definitely have had a number of conversations around that, I think the biggest thing that we want to make sure is that there's an understanding, like we were setting good expectations, that, that there's there's probably a longer ramp when you are newer, and not in the typical, like, oh, SEO takes nine to 12 months. Because I don't think that's that's true. But if you are a newer company, not many links, like you're gonna have a longer a longer road to results. And so we have that conversation, very clear about expectations.

And in order to work with that, it's really finding people that, you know, from the top down and bottom up within the company, like no, like, no, we're committed to creating content and content marketing, like, we know, we just need to start it now. Because it will be a big channel for us later. And you certainly come across plenty that understand it. No, it's an investment. They just need to start it. And so that's, that's typically where we would be looking is like, really just kind of again, talking through here's the topics. here's, here's what your competitors are doing, like your direct business competitors are doing. Here's what the competition in the in the SERPs for those topics. That's what it looks like. So kind of paint a pretty realistic picture, but then certainly can can help with those companies. Because creating it, the content that's optimized from from day one is also helpful and getting some good, thorough content that you can build more links and all that stuff. So it definitely works. I think just the expectations have to be set correctly. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 12:19
definitely. 100% agree.

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