Where do keywords fit in your blog content strategy?
Should Keywords Drive Your Blog Content Strategy?
In a perfect world, every blog is written with a purpose in mind. It could be to educate, to repurpose other types of content like a video, or to drive traffic to other pages, such as products or webinars. Specific goals help inform your blog content strategy, which details the types of blog topics needed to accomplish certain objectives (for example, you may need to write about various aspects of running in order to sell more running shoes).
Yet, if you are looking at your blog content from an SEO (search engine optimization) perspective, then you may also be aware keywords retain an important role in the process. Keyword research reveals how many searches occur for specific keywords, as well as the competition for those keywords, so you can determine which ones are the best fit for your content. After all, if no one is searching for your keywords, then your blog post content likely isn’t going to be seen organically.
So here we have a common deliberation: should keywords drive your blog content strategy, or should it be the other way around?
Let Blog Content Drive Your Strategy
In other words, write your content according to the topic first, and then assign keywords that match that blog post content. For example, if you want to write about training for a marathon, then focus first on creating the content for your end user. This is how you arrive at high-quality content that gets more clicks, more shares, and more engagement.
After you write the blog, do your keyword research and select the keywords that are most relevant first and have decent search volume second. When you approach your blog content strategy this way, you find the keywords have a more natural fit than if you were to write content to your pre-selected keywords. Your writing will feel less forced and it will be more effective.
