SEO Writing Structure for a fast-growing Startup

Client Case

Scalability for many startups nowadays in the digital environment, is currently linked to how effectively you can grow your audiences through awareness. SEO writing allows companies to create content plans based on keywords that come directly from user searches and therefore reflect the real questions users have.

One of the most important steps in building the marketing funnel is to effectively craft content that builds genuine interest in the community you are growing. This is particularly important if you are working inside industries where client acquisition and lifetime value are key to your business succeeding: especially if you´re working to position yourself as the authority in certain subjects.

This is how this task began.

What was the problem

Being an expert in content creation, the CEO of SlideBean reached out, so that we could map together an SEO strategy for their blog. Their business model is a subscription site, where you can for a monthly fee have access to hundreds of beautiful templates for business and startups.

Each one of the presentation templates they deliver to the users is paired with an article that clarifies how to customize each presentation according to your business needs. Positioning each one of these blog posts on search engines requires keen keyword selection and true-value in the article itself.

As well, even thou they have very good rankings in most of their other posts, some of them were not on the first search page, and this needed as well some SEO Optimization.

The work was laid out:

  • We would map top long-tail keywords relevant to the presentations that existed

  • A priority would be defined for writing cornerstone articles that would help build awareness, conversion, and loyalty.

  • A calendar should be created to define the publishing times

  • New ideas for new templates should come out of this exercise.

How it was resolved

The first part of the strategy was getting deep into the types of content that their company created. It was necessary to understand blog posts that had been successful, and also what the benchmarks were for the brand.

The next step was with the help of tools like Google Keyword Planner and Sem Rush to understand the volumes of search. It was important to find great phrases we could use as keywords that would also resonate with the brand's content. After this, it was important to create categories and word clusters to understand which phrases were essential to use and which ones were nice to have.

Tools and actions

Using basic collab tools like Google Sheets and Docs, lists of desirable keywords were created. Working along with the marketing team, based on their current goals and strategies, we did a group effort to establish a road map for this task. Media team, social team, and even customer service teams provided a strong input based on their experience of how these articles could look like.

Kpi´s established and we defined that 6 articles should be built per week. We would as well track down their performance in Analytics to understand how they were performing weekly. As well a plan was set in place to complete a table were we would track weekly the position on Google when using certain keywords for search.

This were the steps to be taken:

  • Download keywords to a spreadsheet

  • Purge the spreadsheet making sure we had the ammount and types of keywords we needed.

  • Establish groupings and categories

  • Define priorities of content

  • Validate with the team

  • Define KPIs and measurement tasks.

Getting here required a very collaborative work with several different teams, including technical, data and communication teams. The structure had to be solid and should provide a quick turnaround.

Implementation

Each one of the articles had several parts:

  • Title

  • Images

  • Keywords

  • Publising

To get the strategy going, a calendar was set up with the first weeks of content titles. We would have daily and weekly stand-up call or meetings to understand if we're hitting production goals.

My main task was going through the spreadsheet daily and making those weekly articles happen. Daily tasks were divided between content production time and KPI follow up. Everyday 1 or 2 articles would be produced, proofread and I also had to put in the request to create images for the post.

The design team would create any graphic materials, to the point that even some new templates came out based on the list. This also became a part of the social media process where we had to also create social media posts and graphic materials to promote these new templates.

Streamlining the process was crucial for success.

Final Results 

On the final week of the project (this was a commissioned limited-time project) we did a revision of keywords and the process to make sure that their team could continue the implementation going forward.

  • A list of more than 200 keywords was created for future use prioritizing top-performing keywords.

  • A 6-month structure was outlined

  • The post format was optimized based search

  • The awareness and conversion goals set up on initial stages were reached for this channel

  • Top ranking articles for the brand moved up in the search rankings minimizing churn

This project had a very clear orientation and goals were set up to make sure the project was not just doable, but also would provide tangible results. It was an amazing experience with amazing results.