![\"1](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/1-ahrefs-blog-growth.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nAnd this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this post, I\u2019ll show you how to create a winning content marketing strategy based on our experience at Ahrefs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But first\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n A content marketing strategy is a plan for consistently creating high-quality content designed to turn strangers into customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most people think this has to be something complicated, but that\u2019s not true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, our strategy at Ahrefs is pretty simple. We create educational blog posts<\/a> and YouTube videos<\/a> that teach people how to solve their problems with the help of our tools. We focus on search engine optimization<\/a> (SEO) during the content creation<\/a> process, so our content appears for relevant searches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Below, I\u2019ll explain how you can replicate our strategy in nine simple steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Goal setting can be complicated, but it doesn\u2019t have to be. If you\u2019re familiar with concepts like SMART goals<\/a> and OKRs<\/a>, feel free to use them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, we prefer to keep things simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s why our content marketing goal is simply to attract targeted traffic<\/strong> from search engines like Google and YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your goal might be different, and that\u2019s okay. Some other common goals include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n For this post, we\u2019ll assume that, like us, you want more targeted traffic.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Content marketing isn\u2019t about attracting anyone and everyone to your website. You need to attract people who might actually buy your product or service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That might sound obvious, but it\u2019s a common mistake, especially for those new to content marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, let\u2019s say you run a video production company. Should you write a blog post about \u201chow to color correct in Adobe Premiere Pro?\u201d Probably not, because this isn\u2019t what your customers are looking for. It\u2019s what other video editors are searching for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re targeting small business owners looking for video production help, you need to target topics they\u2019re interested in instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the only way to do that is to be clear about who you\u2019re trying to target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To do this, you can consider creating a buyer persona. This is an \u201cimaginary person\u201d that represents the common characteristics of your ideal customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s what that might look like for us:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is this something you have to do? Not really. For example, we\u2019ve never done this exercise at Ahrefs because we already knew who we were trying to target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, if you already feel you\u2019ve got a good grasp of who your target customers are, feel free to skip this step. However, if it\u2019s something you\u2019ve never really thought about, it can be a useful exercise to put this down on paper. Here\u2019s a good guide explaining how to do this<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Blog posts, videos, podcasts, webinars\u2014there are tons of content types<\/a> you can choose from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, if you\u2019re starting out, don\u2019t try to run before you walk. Just choose one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How? There are two aspects you should consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, think about what type of content your audience consumes. <\/strong>For us, that was blog posts, as most SEOs use Google to find information. If you run a cooking academy and want to share recipes, videos might be a better option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, think about where your skillset lies. <\/strong>Some people are naturals on camera, while others can\u2019t bear to hear their own voice. If you\u2019re the latter, written content might work better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re stuck, start with either blogging or video marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No matter what industry you\u2019re in, your audience will almost certainly be looking for information on Google and YouTube. So, either format will be a good starting point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once you\u2019ve decided, stick with this format until you\u2019ve figured out a process for creating it consistently. Only then should you branch out to a new format.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s what we did. Almost all our efforts were on the blog until 2018, when we hired Sam<\/a> to take over our YouTube channel. And Tim<\/a>, our Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) didn\u2019t focus on other content marketing formats (like courses<\/a> and free tools<\/a>) until he delegated the blog and YouTube to Josh<\/a> and Sam.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Our content marketing goal is to attract targeted traffic from search engines like Google and YouTube. So, besides knowing who our audience is, we also need to know what they\u2019re searching for. That\u2019s the only way we can create the type of content they want to see and attract traffic from search engines month after month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For this, you\u2019ll need a keyword research tool like Ahrefs\u2019 Keywords Explorer<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To start, brainstorm a few relevant \u2018seed\u2019 keywords. If you sell coffee online, these might be \u201ccoffee,\u201d \u201ccoffee beans,\u201d and \u201cfrench press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paste these keywords in Keywords Explorer<\/a>, and select Google or YouTube depending on the type of content you\u2019re creating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, go to the \u201cQuestions\u201d report. You should see a giant list of keywords and their monthly search volumes and other SEO metrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re not sure what \u2018seed\u2019 keywords to use, look at what your competitors are already ranking for in Google to get some ideas. How? Paste your competitor\u2019s URL into Ahrefs\u2019 Site Explorer<\/a> and go to the \u201cTop pages\u201d report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This report ranks the pages on a website by estimated organic search traffic. In other words, you now have a list of your competitors\u2019 top-performing articles and the keywords that send them the most traffic.FURTHER READING<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Since your goal is to get more targeted<\/strong> traffic, you should prioritize the most relevant topics for your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We do this by assigning a \u2018business value\u2019 score to each topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s the scale we use:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The neat thing about this scale is that it can be applied to pretty much any industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, let\u2019s say you sell coffee equipment online. A topic like \u201chow to make latte at home\u201d will probably be a \u201c3,\u201d since searchers will at least need to buy a milk frother to do this properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, a topic like \u201chow to clean a coffee maker\u201d would likely be assigned a \u201c2\u201d. Although you might sell specialistic cleaning products, most searchers probably already have something they can use to clean their machine, like white vinegar. So they probably aren\u2019t going to buy anything from your store today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, topics like \u201chow to get coffee out of the carpet\u201d would be either a \u201c0\u201d or \u201c1\u201d. While it\u2019s still topically relevant, people searching for this are unlikely to be coffee enthusiasts with a penchant for expensive brewing equipment. Maybe they just spilled a mug of instant coffee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s up to you which topics you do and don\u2019t cover. We focus on topics that score 2\u20133 and rarely publish anything that scores a zero.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Consistent content creation is all about finding the balance between your content quality and the speed of production. Your goal is to publish as often as possible without dropping your quality standards. After all, there is no point in posting content that doesn\u2019t get read, watched, or listened to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, we can\u2019t say how often works for you. It varies from business to business. But what we can tell you is that you need a content calendar to keep things on track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Content calendars are just schedules showing what you plan to publish and when.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, this is what our content calendar looks like at Ahrefs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n With this simple calendar, we can easily see at a glance who\u2019s working on what, the stage they\u2019re at, and when the content is ready for publishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This keeps everything organized and ensures we\u2019re publishing consistently.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Content doesn\u2019t get discovered on its own. You have to get it in front of people so they will read and hopefully share or link to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are a few simple content promotion ideas to get you started:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This one is the oldest trick in the book for a reason: it works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every time we produce a new piece of content, we send out a dedicated email to our ~70k engaged subscribers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In content marketing, there is a secondary, \u201chidden\u201d audience that most people neglect to target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Known as \u201camplifiers,\u201d these are the journalists and influencers who can share and amplify your content to their followers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you can somehow get these people to care about your content, you could potentially earn shares, links, referral traffic, or even future partnership opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In digital marketing, this is known as \u201coutreach<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the key to doing this well is having a compelling reason so that they will care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are just two reasons that you can use:<\/p>\n\n\n\n That second one has worked well for us on numerous occasions. In fact, we recently created a list of SEO statistics<\/a> and reached out to over 500 bloggers that were linking to outdated statistics. As a result, we earned links from 32 websites<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Learn how we did that here:https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gMcA-8nalL8?autohide=1&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&wmode=transparent&autoplay=0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paid advertising is probably the fastest way to get your content in front of new prospects. Whether it\u2019s Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, when you put some money into paid ads, you\u2019re paying for trackable results: from impressions to clicks and conversions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right now, we promote every new post with Facebook ads. If these ads perform well, we invest more money into the ad (this generally means a low CPC of < $0.30).<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also regularly sponsor podcasts<\/a> and run YouTube ads:https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/index.html?creatorScreenName=siquanong&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1295086793008853003&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fahrefs.com%2Fblog%2Fcontent-marketing-strategy%2F&siteScreenName=ahrefs&theme=light&widgetsVersion=219d021%3A1598982042171&width=550pxFURTHER READING<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Since things change all the time, we also have to ensure that our content stays relevant to rank years down the road. That\u2019s why it\u2019s crucial to monitor content, and there are various ways to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first thing that most people think of is Google Analytics<\/a>. This is the industry-standard when it comes to checking actual traffic numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re creating YouTube videos, then, of course, you should be looking at YouTube Analytics<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And finally, since ranking high on Google<\/a> is important to us, we keep track of our rankings via Ahrefs\u2019 Rank Tracker<\/a>. We do this by tracking the main target keyword for each post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If traffic and rankings for a specific page drop for a few months in a row, we\u2019ll start looking into why that happened. And in most cases, we often schedule a rewrite or update of the post.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n As I just mentioned, you should keep an eye on how well your written content is doing at any given point of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it\u2019s maintaining its rankings in search results, it probably doesn\u2019t need updating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it\u2019s rapidly dropping ranks and losing visibility, though, it\u2019s probably time to give it a makeover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That might mean just updating a bit of information to keep it fresh, or rewriting the post entirely. At Ahrefs, we usually wait about six months to give a blog post time to rank before deciding to rewrite (video format doesn\u2019t exactly have this luxury, though.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"2](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/2-youtube-analytics.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhat exactly is a content marketing strategy?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"3](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/3-evergreen-content-ranking.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep 1. Set a goal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Step 2. Know your audience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"buyer](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/buyer-persona.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep 3. Choose a content type<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"how](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/how-to-choose-the-right-type-of-content-marketing.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep 4. Find what people are searching for<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"4](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/4-seed-keywords.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"5](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/5-questions-report.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"6](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/6-top-pages.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep 5. Prioritize the most promising topics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Step 6. Create a content calendar<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"7](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/7-content-calendar.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep 7. Promote your content<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Send new content to your email subscribers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"8](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/8-email-newsletter.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n2. Outreach<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"comtent](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/comtent-four-groups.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n3. Paid ads<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"9](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/9-facebook-ad.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep 8. Monitor the results<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"1](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/1-google-analytics.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"11](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/11-youtube-analytics.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"12](\"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/12-ahrefs-rank-tracker.png\"){kind=tracking}
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep 9. Refresh your content<\/h2>\n\n\n\n