Episode 19: Crafting a Content Strategy That Drives Organic Growth

Episode Transcript

Ashley Segura: All right then let’s kick things off and when you’re not at your desk and you find yourself in the kitchen what is your go to dish to cook? 

Emma Valentiner: I thought about this a lot because I’m so obsessed with it and I want everyone to try it at least You it’s a broccoli upside down cake with cornmeal dough like cornmeal batter on it

there is a website from like the mid 2000s chocolate and zucchini it was a food blog from a girl in Paris so she has all these really amazing recipes on like with lots of veggies and healthy eating and all that stuff but this cake Cook the broccoli pour the batter on stick it in the oven for 20 minutes or something

and it’s incredible and you can add like toasted walnuts and golden raisins in there and it sounds like broccoli cake really but I promise it’s so delicious and you feel good when you’re eating it cause it’s mostly healthy stuff 

Ashley Segura: that’s a double win so it’s almost zucchini bread but it’s sweet still 

Emma Valentiner: not just savory like a little bit like you can control the sweetness of it depending on how much sugar you put in the cornmeal batter

so if I’m feeling extra kicky I might add a little bit extra but if I’m wanting to go like really savory with it then I’ll just mix the sugar 

Ashley Segura: ooh okay I love that you have the option to go back and forth of sometimes you really want something super sweet and other times you’re like yeah just give me the health and wellness with a little dessert on top

Emma Valentiner: yes that’s it that’s it so works so well cause it’s like broccoli and cake I’m here for it 

Ashley Segura: definitely let’s start talking about content and content strategy so can you kick us off by telling us about your journey on how you got into content and SEO and what really sparked your passion to get into this field?

Emma Valentiner: So yeah it’s a long journey so I will give you guys the short version of it I started working in advertising marketing in the early two thousands and worked with an agency in Seattle that was doing a lot of healthcare a lot of nonprofit work and so through that got into copywriting

like I’d contribute to some of the pieces that were going out for like ad copy or annual report copy that kind of stuff and so from that just got into copywriting a lot and like kind of bounce through several jobs like throughout the course of the two thousands and then ended up freelancing

I had moved to Canada and so that was a good way for me to bridge the gap and then from that got into SEO as I was doing freelance writing and then have merged those two things since then so really focused on SEO specifically since 2016 and working in a lot of like tech and some franchise some home services some legal clients it’s been a really pretty mixed bag

bag but which is fun like SEO is constantly changing and evolving and then you add in all of these different industries that you’re learning as you go so it’s been a really interesting like experience and I don’t think I could have said maybe 20 years ago that I would be like doing content and SEO and still be as excited as I am and still see it changing as much as it’s changing on a pretty frequent basis

Ashley Segura: what do you think makes it so exciting to still be in it? 

Emma Valentiner: We’re like we’re in Google’s sandbox for the most part for the majority of what we do like it’s really on them like we’ll do the right things for our clients and follow the best practices but at the end of the day like we don’t I do not have control over whether I’m going to be in the top three or not

and so learning how I think SEO is a great practice for being willing to experiment and I think that like SEOs I think that’s one of the things that got me so interested in SEO is there is so much great experimentation happening on what works what doesn’t and you’ll have things that work like FAQ schema we were all so excited about that for a couple of years and Google’s now phase that out

and so it’s really interesting to see the strategies and tactics that emerge but also the things that stay the same you’re still always going to want to do really like comprehensive keyword research you’re going to want to understand your competitors and where they’re ranking so even though things do change we’ve now got AI and are trying to adapt for AI overview and what does that mean for search going forward?

So it’s just this constantly dynamic industry and we’re all trying to find our way through it and sometimes stuff works and sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes you have to go down the rabbit hole of wait this blog post is amazing why is nobody reading it? 

Ashley Segura: Yes and I feel like that happens all the time

you mentioned when blog posts are like you publish a great blog post and it’s just not performing and when blog posts like isn’t getting the traffic that you’re like this is great why does that happen? 

Emma Valentiner: There are so many reasons for it some of the most obvious reasons are like your site is really brand new and you don’t have a lot of relevancy yet for the things that you’re targeting

which actually let me roll that back one of the most obvious ones is not having a target keyword to begin with whenever I’m doing content I like to create like a content brief before I even get started so I’ll have a target keyword in mind I’ll have I’ll do a Google search for that target keyword and see who’s popping up and see what those results look like

so I love doing Google searches for SEO in general because it tells me in real time what Google thinks is relevant so I’ll typically I’ll do that search I’ll go through I’ll look for like common keywords that are being used if it’s I’ll look for commonalities in the page titles so if I’m seeing a lot of like easiest recipe ever or satisfaction guaranteed or seven day free trial whatever those verbs are those words are That are working for those page one rankers

I want to factor those in so by the time I sit down to do my content I not only have my keyword research on there but I also as I’m doing that I’m putting together an outline so I might take a look at some of the ranking pages and see okay what do they have in here?

That’s great what is missing from here? And then from that build out my outline which I think aI does a great job of building out outlines so I’m going to give AI a shout out for that not so much on the writing of the content but that’s a whole different story but I think that’s been the biggest

like process improvement for me is just having those briefs that way I know I’m really targeted when I go into it and that way like I have a clear expectation of what I’m expecting on the Other end so I know okay I want to be ranking for this and then from that like I can see okay What is my page engagement time look like our people jump you know visiting here and then bouncing off Are they visiting here and then looking at other pages on my website

and so once I have that like basic idea of this is what I’m focused on then I can start to look at the other pieces of the puzzle and it will totally happen sometimes you’re wanting to rank for a keyword that is just way too competitive for where your website’s at now and I would say if that’s the case and that keyword is really important to you add a couple different blog posts on related topics and include links back to that original post

also never miss like never underestimate the value of continuing to share content even if it’s a little bit dated there are people that are going to be in your Facebook feed or your X feed or your TikTok feed that have never seen that piece of content before and maybe it’s just what they’re looking for

so I think there’s a tendency to put a best by date on a lot of our content and the reality is the content that performs the best for the longest amount of time in fact it will improve in performance over time is that more evergreen content that’s really comprehensive and really focused on if somebody searches for this target keyword and they click on my article I want them to have exactly what they were looking for

Ashley Segura: so how do you go even like the step before the content on or the excuse me the content outline and determine which keywords to target and which keywords even create content for because you mentioned competitiveness and I feel like every brand has a different scale of competitive keyword volume that they’re searching for and what makes something too competitive can really be big

based on your brand and your authority and how much content you already have and like you mentioned are you a brand new site? So how do you even take that very first step of identifying which keywords to create content for? 

Emma Valentiner: So keyword research and this is true like I have I’ve worked with so many young like junior SEOs learning the basics and keyword research can be the biggest rabbit hole

and unfortunately it’s the rabbit hole the start of everything else that needs to happen so if you feel like you’re drowning in keyword research very often you won’t do those other steps that you are going to see success from so I would say like for whatever your industry is go look at what your competitors are doing and not necessarily from a competitive angle but hey these are people in the industry that I admire so if you’re a travel blogger who are some other travel bloggers that you just really love what they’re doing whether it’s the voice whether it’s the images whether it’s the place that places that they’re going and get a feel for what type of content they’re sharing

and the idea isn’t to like piggyback on that and regurgitate what they’ve done but like maybe you’re really keen on like a photo journal they did going through like the grand Canyon what is something that you’ve done recently that you could do something similar with and then look at how they are formatting their pages

I think that’s one of the really interesting like aha moments as you’re learning SEO is going to competitor blogs and being able to read through the page and be like oh That’s a really smart piece of anchor text and I bet that links to a blog of theirs that is perfectly optimized

and those are really great headers I can read through this really clearly I can find the information I’m looking for easily the re the whole goal of this is to give the searchers the best experience and to help them find the information they’re looking for when they get to wherever they’re going and ideally it’s your website

and so Google looks at those page engagement metrics like the time they spend on your page how many pages that they’re looking at the click through rate impressions all of that stuff and crunches it and the better those metrics can be the more likely you are to get more rankings and so there is an element of time in here

so I would say if you’re new to this And you’ve been at it for a couple of months you’ve optimized a few things and you’re not seeing like the pickup you expected it does take some time like industry average SEO organic traffic growth is around 21 percent a month or 21 percent a year that’s not a lot

and so and it does like what in the first zero to three months like you’re probably going to see double that in the three to six months it really does take some time and momentum to get going so I would say like definitely look at what your competitors are doing but also there’s free tools like uber suggest is really good

oh yes free I love stemrush so much it’s a little pricey if you’re a solo practitioner ahs is another good one but those both offer free tools Freebie versions of the tool so you can at least get started with doing some keyword research and just try Oh Hey that seems like a really interesting term

and you can try for something that’s maybe less competitive so maybe things that are maybe middle type volumes so maybe 50 to a hundred searches a month so the the risk there is a little less than if you’re going for something that has 40 000 searches a month that’s going to be a lot more hard to get

and probably demoralizing when you don’t get it 

Ashley Segura: yeah it’s hard though because if you only have 20 to a hundred searches and say you’re a one man band trying to put it all together is it really worth putting your resources there? But unless you do it and try it and see okay I am getting traffic even though it’s not a lot but I am getting traffic

and I and then like you said the internal linking strategy from that piece of content is that is where you can really create an entire content strategy around what the user flow will be by giving them a journey from that one smaller piece of content to some bigger more pillar pieces of content

Emma Valentiner: yeah and just being very patient with it it’s really easy to get demoralized because it does take like when you’re starting out it takes time to get that momentum but one of the very best things is when you hop in a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs and drop in that URL of a blog post that you wrote and get to see how it’s growing in visibility

so we did an initiative for a large corporation a few months ago and we started with 29 rankings positions all like 51 and lower in Google so pretty bleak and I think I checked today and we’re around like 2000 rankings positions and so that’s just in six seven month period we’ve managed to make a huge splash in terms of visibility we’ve increased visibility

the value of traffic that’s coming to us just in terms of the cost per click it does it is possible and it is possible to do it with national nationally known brands but it does make that kind of that perseverance and the dedication to like knocking down a domino at a time 

Ashley Segura: so to get that kind of increase

how many pieces of content did you create? And totally okay if you don’t know the number offhand but was it a dramatic increase of new content or was it more existing content? Like what was 

Emma Valentiner: your strategy? It’s a mix of things so I would say we probably did in total 10 to 15 new pieces of content

and that in the course of that entire campaign we started with a few like mid level like feature type pages and then we really went to town with the blog content like what are all different variations of this? And we also even within that the blog strategy itself we had different types of content

hey we’re we want to target this one for a really not necessarily ultra relevant keywords so in this case maybe it’s something like Amazon prime for us to rank for Amazon prime not really going to help us but a lot of people were interacting with that article and so Google saw that interaction and they’re like Oh Hey they’re super relevant for this

maybe some of their other content should also be ranking for this cause it seems like people are finding the information that they need so even within that that overall strategy we had buckets of okay this is a visibility play we really want to get a lot of eyeballs on this this is really about impressions

and then this here this is a conversion play so these are articles that really go it drilled down into what you need for this kind of a software what you need if you’re trying to sell books wholesale each of those different levels so we’re not just throwing everything at one one target and hoping it sticks you’re keeping a mix in there

that way you can get a feel for what works and what doesn’t and typically those different things will work better one will work better than the other and certain campaigns and vice versa 

Ashley Segura: that’s really smart to organize your content strategy based on the goal itself so often I feel like we all have the one overarching goal and that’s revenue in whatever form that looks like whether it’s from ad revenue or actual sales conversions or service conversions like whatever that looks like

yeah but we rarely build our content strategy for all of the supporting elements in that which again is all built around a user journey so if you start one piece of content just hoping for impressions doesn’t matter if it makes us a single penny we just want impressions and then from there have more of your middle top of funnel articles to support the whole ecosystem

but what if you have a really Small amount of resources to develop a strategy like that cause usually those are a little bit more robust strategies you have multiple writers to be able to execute there’s a team of people that are helping 

Emma Valentiner: me 

Ashley Segura: yeah so if you’re really slim team or are the team how would you go about still going with a strategy based on different types of goals not just conversions and executing 

Emma Valentiner: so always revenue is going to be the king driver

like we can look at these different strategies and the different goals that we’re trying to target but at the end of the day like all we really want to be doing yes sharing really helpful information and getting people to our websites but ultimately we want to drive conversion so we can all stay in business

so yes that’s definitely always a factor I would say for the solo printers like folks that are themselves are really small team really niche down and I know that this is an ethos that a lot of other people have spoken about but they do because it works so really decide okay for this quarter for the next four months I’m going to or the next three months I’m just going to focus on this topic

so maybe if you’re writing about say you’re writing about pound cakes cause I’m now I’m thinking of cake but maybe you want to do four different posts and maybe one of those is you’re targeting a keyword that has huge amount of volume so like best sugar to use for pound cake icing or something that’s probably doesn’t have a lot of volume but in theory and then maybe the next one you want to include some affiliate links to maybe like a flower company

that’s really good and so you really want to drive visibility on that but you also want to drive this conversion so you might tweak that copy a little bit more to find those people that are looking for the best flower for their pound cake so I would try like with each article of those three that you’re three or four that you’re going to do for that topic try and find a slightly different focus slightly different end goal for each of those and rinse and repeat the next

so You’re in a three month time period it’s probably not going to be enough time to really see that momentum picking up on those keywords but you should start to see toward month two month three you’re going to start to see stuff tick up then you’ll be focused on your next question

quarterly topic whatever that is and then go back and check how is that one that you first started on doing? What are there other topics that you can address that are still within that genre and build on it that way so it is slow it does take time and I would say in the beginning to lean on social media if you’re If possible and it doesn’t have to be everywhere

you don’t have to be everywhere but choose a platform or two that you want to share your content with because that’s also going to help drive that early visibility that lets Google know okay people are visiting here people are paying attention to what this person is saying so it is again that small step by small step approach

yeah thanks for 

Ashley Segura: preaching that you don’t have to be on all of them because we’re already even it’s too much yeah even those of us with like robust marketing teams that actually have content departments SEO departments paid departments like so lovely but we’re still stretched very thin amount that of content that we need to produce and then distribute it on top of it

so trying to be yeah so actively engaged and post the right type of content on every single network it’s not always realistic so you can really narrow down on one or two to where you can like you said build your following build your actual community through there then every piece of content that you share is more likely to have some kind of

engagement or some kind of actual traffic to your website versus another zero impressions zero reach 

Emma Valentiner: it’s so crushing and I know like I I’ve had small blogs before I’ve been responsible for them I’ve had my own and it in those early days can be really soul crushing cause you’re putting out content that you’re excited about

but trust me when I tell you your audience is out there like the internet is so big there is a niche for everyone and just keep doing it and learn you’ll learn as you go when I look back at some of the work that I did before I really learned SEO best practices I’m like Oh my God I was throwing away traffic

you know what I mean? It was I was like repelling it but you learn these things as you go and now I can look back and be like Oh my you survive and learn some things along the way 

Ashley Segura: yeah you have the whiteboard of things do not ever repeat and so much in the whiteboard of these are the things I’m going to try to do for now on

you mentioned post publishing like you’re in the next quarter you’re focusing on the next topic but you’re also taking a look at last quarter’s topic and all the content that you publish so how do you have a specific rule of how soon you make any modifications to the piece of content? Say you want to re optimize it or add more takeaway

I would 

Emma Valentiner: I usually wait at least three months like sometimes I will get a little excited and be like no I need to fix this one or two thing it’s going to drive me insane but for the most part like I like to leave it alone for about three months just to give it a chance to settle in especially if you’re new Google doesn’t really understand what your site’s selling yet

they’re trying to get get an understanding of the topics that you’re going to be sharing about so you’re probably going to see your rank rankings fluctuate a lot I have a really good example of this I had a client once that did business coaching amazing love that but on their blog they went with a strength training metaphor that was deeply involved in all of their titles

it was like how to become like 10 X your strength power as a coach like teaching people how to be business coaches google saw that and they’re like hang on it’s from the from your homepage it sounds like you do business coaching but from your blog content it feels like you do strength training so just because they use that metaphor and it was so deeply ingrained into their content they would rank for things like strength training tips and also business growth tips and but not very well for either of those so if they had checked into their rankings performance a little bit earlier than when they called me they would have noticed Oh Hey maybe we should clean that up google doesn’t seem to be clear so all to say like there are businesses that are very far along that can still make these kinds of errors because they’re not looking at the data

so I would say like as much as possible look and see what you’re gaining rankings for but give it at least three months to get its footing and I would say that even for most companies that have well established blogs I would still say give it a good three months there’s constantly like rankings are constantly changing

core algorithms are just things that we live with so yeah Let it simmer a bit 

Ashley Segura: yes yeah exactly I always try and recommend if you’re producing a lot of content on a monthly basis then do a content audit quarterly like internal content audit that you can pull using screaming frog or SEMrush and then get those analytics that way

but if you’re slowly producing content on a month to month basis like only Producing a few pieces a quarter you need a little bit more time to get the data so the three to six months range seems to be a pretty safe estimate of all right now it’s okay to go back and actually make some changes or give it some more time

but other than going through and we started at the initial the keyword research and then creating the piece of content based on the outline first and now you’ve published it now you’re looking at the data this is a pretty well rounded content strategy concept where are the new things that we should be doing especially with 2024?

You dropped AI with the content outlines but where else are or should we be putting our focus when we’re developing content strategies? 

Emma Valentiner: I’m going to put this I’ll say a few words about AI I do think there’s value to it but I would also say and I say this as somebody that deeply loves the written word

deeply I have been a reader my entire life been a copywriter for most of my career that said people love video content so don’t hesitate to include video content in your content strategy and the way that I love to do that is like this like doing an interview with someone maybe I’m doing like a travel log and I’m making a video of that

or maybe I’m baking something and doing how to video take the video post it to your blog but then have a transcript underneath that way you catch the people that want to watch a video but you also catch the people that want to read something more long form and you also get the SEO benefit of that all of that content being on your website

so that’s one thing I think that I would really love to see people doing more of because there is so much video content out now and we’re missing that that extra opportunity to take take yes have it on YouTube and optimize your YouTube channel so make the best use out of like where it says your channel about your channel make great use of that

send people back to your website send people to your other social profiles like definitely make sure you’re robust on YouTube but also save that video share that video on your own website too and make it as easy as possible for people to consume it and then you can also cut up clips of it and share those to Instagram Reels or TikTok

there’s so many ways that you can repurpose video that is a little bit less intense than like having to rewrite an entire article every time 

Ashley Segura: yeah it used to be like infographics or white papers were our version of what we have with video now but the time that it takes to make those was so much more intense from coming up with the stats fact checking the stats working with the graphic designers to have all the supporting creative whether it was going to be for the infographic itself or the supporting creative for the white label

it just was such a timely process that you needed to squeeze every bit of content that you could out of that because it took so many resources but now with video we can chat for 30 minutes and I could have 15 different pieces of content from that which is a combo of like you said it’s the written the video the shorts it’s on YouTube it’s on your website

and so video content on its own is even changing and we’re seeing what used to be 90 seconds was a good timeframe now it’s 60 now it’s getting smaller then it’s getting larger again that’s a whole conversation in itself on how to optimize for video content but do you have any tips for if you’re just going to for the first time just starting with video content what kind of topics do you approach first?

Emma Valentiner: I would say for somebody that is a small business solopreneur what are you really passionate about? Like ask me a question about SEO and you’re not going to get away from me for at least the first 15 minutes like your eyes are going to glaze over I’m so sorry but I will keep going and so find those things that you’re that keen to talk on

and like from that like you can even use those like little clips or whatever you can use your social media and ask what people are interested in hearing about Hey I’m putting together a few blog posts on SEO what are the biggest questions that you have? And use the network that you already have to start to get information or Hey I’m traveling to Italy this summer

do you have any recommendations for the best places to go? And so really use your network it’s where the best thing about social media is that you get this like real time feedback and real time responses so from that list that you get back from people see what you’re really keen on talking about and start there

I think we’re always trying to figure out like what’s the data say is the best topic for me to discuss and I’m a huge fan of data driven marketing I a hundred percent believe in it but I think in these cases especially when it’s your business falling back on those things that you were so passionate about sharing with other people there’s nothing that beats that

that because there’s something that happens like in your face and in your voice that comes across where people are it’s just genuine and authentic and people appreciate it whereas if I’m writing about something like paid that I don’t have as much affinity for or if I’m being asked to talk about paid like I’m just not quite as joyful as I am if I’m talking about like SEO and content strategy

Ashley Segura: understandable and I could definitely mimic you on that one but that makes sense as we wrap up is there any secret sauce that you’re just absolutely in love with right now? Is it a tool a book a strategy? We talked about video is something to focus on but what else do you got up your sleeves as far as a secret sauce?

Emma Valentiner: So secret sauce right now I have received so many questions from people about how can we use AI to create content? Are there any concerns about that? And yes there are but we absolutely can use AI within our process so a couple of fun ways that I’ve used it I love to use it to do competitive research

so I’ll ask the AI Hey I want to be ranking for this keyword what can you tell me about the people that are the websites that are ranking there now? What are they doing great? And then from that list I’ll get a list of a few people that are ranking well and then okay tell me a little bit more about this company

what are they doing great in their marketing? What’s their messaging like? Who do you think their target audience is? So talking with AI like a person yes really drilling down into some of those questions and then the other way I really like to use it it’s awesome for doing FAQs and I’ve talked about this a bunch ’cause I’m such a fan

but I’ll upload a blog post and be like Hey what questions didn’t I address like before I even posted what am I missing here that somebody might have a question about? After reading this and so from that I’ll take okay here’s three questions that I didn’t answer in that content and I’ll add a few more paragraphs at the bottom of like commonly answered questions

and I’ve seen this ad like between 30 seconds to maybe a minute and a half more dwell time on those articles I had FAQs yeah it was like like it was I was really not that keen on it to start I was like how good can this be? And then I did it and I was like Oh no that’s significant 

Ashley Segura: yeah that’s 

Emma Valentiner: that’s notable for sure

yeah that’s a really fun way to do it I would hesitate to post just straight AI content to anywhere I think it it just like my issue with AI is just that it regurgitates what’s already out there there’s nothing new and that’s the thing when you’re writing a blog or website copy anything that you are sharing words with another person you want it to represent you or your brand

and if you are and you want it to be authentic and creative and AI doesn’t do that and not to say that it won’t do that and won’t do that I know there’s so many really smart brains working on it but I would say there’s We have yet to find a replacement for the creativity and the humanity of a person writing content

Ashley Segura: yes a hundred percent and I honestly hope we don’t ever get to that stage because then we’re just reading robotic content and what’s real what’s not real that’s if you read a book you’re reading it because someone wrote it and you want to learn from that person or be told a story from that person

so hopefully that doesn’t ever get lost but TBD with AI as a lot of things with us so much yes yeah thank you so much for joining us today this has been really great loved all the the content strategy angles from the beginning of keyword research to checking your data at the end and definitely implementing video

very easy yes awesome sweet.