Content development is not just limited to sharing information, it’s about creating something that resonates with the target audience. Have you ever come across an article or a blog post that felt like it was speaking directly to you? That’s the gist of content development– creating something that connects deeply with the reader.
Earlier, content development was more straightforward. But things have certainly changed nowadays. As the trends evolved, we realized that content development is more about weaving relevant stories and learned lessons into threads of information and knowledge. Because ultimately, it’s not about what you say but how you say it.
In today’s world, “Content is mightier than the sword.” Therefore, your content should solve your reader’s problems, answer their questions, and keep them updated with the latest trends. It’s about making a real connection with your visitors rather than stuffing keywords just to trick search engine algorithms.
Let’s dive into the article to learn more about proven content development strategies that we have cultivated through years of experience.
What is Content Development?
Content development involves conducting thorough research and analysis to create valuable, informative, and optimized content. It includes putting your knowledge, data, strategies, and experience into an understandable language to make the information accessible to everyone. At its core, content development is the bridge that connects your ideas with the target audience, enabling you to inform, entertain, and inspire while achieving your marketing objectives.
Besides this, content development involves curating captivating images, videos, and infographics and collecting relevant news, research, and statistics to back your content.
What are the Elements of Content Development?
The notion that content development plainly involves compiling information from different sources is entirely wrong. Content development goes beyond this as it includes:
- Developing a content strategy
- Researching and writing valuable content.
- Optimizing content for search engines.
- Proofreading, editing, and publishing the content.
- Marketing and promoting the content.
- Reviewing analytics.
- Updating content with the latest data, facts, and strategies.
How Content Development Uplifts Your Business?
Content development plays an essential role in achieving a robust online presence, enhancing customer engagement, and driving business growth. It is a cost-effective marketing strategy that can significantly benefit your business when executed effectively. Content development uplifts your business in the following ways:
- Connects your business to potential customers.
- Builds the audience’s trust in your brand and establishes authority.
- Educates the readers and answers their questions.
- Enhances user experience.
- Attracts leads and drives conversions.
Try These 8 Effective Content Development Strategies Today (Insights from our Achievements)
Effective content development is an ongoing process that extends beyond mere writing or SEO. Even the best content won’t be seen if it lacks the right strategy and promotion tactics.
At SEO Experts Company India, we don’t just offer content development; we deliver proven solutions that are sure to elevate your company’s online presence and build essential links for growth. We’re thrilled to share what we’ve learned in our journey of 12+ years that will help you kickstart your content marketing efforts. It might seem like a lot initially, but the rewards, such as increased visibility, better engagement, and growth, make it worth the effort.
Here are a few steps you can follow to make sure that your content development is headed in the right direction.
Select The Blog Topic
Selecting the right topic is the first and foremost step in developing valuable content. Here’s a bunch of techniques that we practice while choosing the relevant blog topic:
- Brainstorm ideas.
- Run a content gap analysis.
- Check what the competitors are writing about (Quick tip: Write an article that includes the answers and points your competitors missed).
- Work on the topic cluster.
- Take ideas from ChatGPT by giving intelligent prompts. For example– “I want to write a blog aimed at [AUDIENCE] about [TOPIC]. Come up with 10 ideas that I could write about on my blog” or “Give me topic cluster ideas for the keyword “XYZ.”
Expert Tip: Always keep the target audience in mind while choosing the blog topic.
Carry Out Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process of finding trending, relevant, and valuable keywords for your blog post. If you don’t select the right keywords for your blog, then even the most valuable and informative article can go unread.
Choosing the right keywords help develop content around the audience’s specific needs and questions, resulting in more engaging, valuable, and SEO-friendly content that resonates with users and search engines alike. By analyzing search engine data and user intent, you can tailor the content to align with what the target audience is actively searching for online.
For instance, when our client specializing in sustainable home goods (cannot disclose the name due to an NDA signed with the client) approached us, they struggled with low search engine rankings, despite offering high-quality products. We understood their pain point and decided to work on their keyword research strategy.
After employing tools and techniques, we optimized their content for industry-relevant keywords like “eco-friendly home decor” and “sustainable living essentials.” These keywords were not the most competitive ones but still showed promising search volumes and aligned with the user intent.
Targeting the right keywords was a game-changer that elevated their online visibility in search engines. The client witnessed a remarkable surge in organic traffic (as shown in the graph).
Organic traffic report of our client
Tip: You can conduct keyword research using dedicated keyword research tools available in the market designed specifically for this purpose.
Conduct Comprehensive Research
An exhaustive research is the most crucial step in writing an informative blog post. This sounds pretty simple and obvious, but many people skip this step in a hurry to complete their article. However, it is important to understand that comprehensive research acts as the building block that can guide you to write a detailed article.
How do we carry out the research?
Our strategy revolves around reading about the chosen blog topic as much as possible. We invest time in excruciating the data, stats, facts, and information about the topic. After completing the research, we compile the information and add personal tips, expert insights, and real-life reports to deliver valuable content to the readers.
The best trick is to club this conventional research method with the AI research method.
ChatGPT has been the talk of the town ever since it launched. Although the hype has somewhat settled but people’s interest towards the platform is certainly on the rise.
Google trends data for ChatGPT
Our say on how to use ChatGPT for research purposes:
- Always be informative and clearly define your objectives.
- Give intelligent prompts; for example, ask ChatGPT, “Give me 10 questions I should find answers to while researching for (your topic name).”
- Another prompt you can try is “List some engaging ideas for the blog about (your topic name).”
Write Informative Content
Well! The writing part is pretty self-explanatory in itself. Good research combined with thorough knowledge is the best match to deliver informative content that adds value to the readers’ lives. If you want to rank your content, it has to be unique and better than whatever is already there in the top results of Google.
Also, Google takes E-E-A-T (Experience-Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness) pretty seriously, so make sure you follow the E-E-A-T rule to shine in the eyes of Google. Write about something that aligns with your expertise and niche. Offer unique insights based on your first-hand experience to increase your content’s credibility and value.
As per Google, “The website or content creator may not be a trustworthy source if there is a clear conflict of interest. For example, product reviews by people who own the product and share their experiences can be very valuable and trustworthy. However, “reviews” by the product manufacturer (“Our product is great!”) or “reviews” from an influencer who is paid to promote the product are not as trustworthy due to the conflict of interest.”
Additionally, your focus should not be “keyword stuffing” or fulfilling other ranking signifiers while developing the content. Your concern should be to deliver content that people can read, enjoy, and share (the search engines should be secondary in the priority line).
Quick tip: We put ourselves in the reader’s shoes to understand the reasons behind their search for a particular topic and what kind of content they’d be interested in. We then, strategize to create valuable content that not only meets the reader’s search intent but also encourages them to share it.
Add Internal Links
Internal linking is a vital content development strategy that involves connecting different pages within your website through hyperlinks. By strategically linking related content, you can guide visitors to explore more of your site, improving their overall experience and engagement.
For example, here’s an internal link on our article linking to another article on our website.
Example of an internal link
This anchor text helps readers and Google understand that the blog being linked to is about “Keyword Gap Analysis.”
Search engines also use these links to understand the structure and importance of your content, potentially boosting your ranking in search results. Effective internal linking helps establish authority, making it a crucial aspect of content development, further enhancing user experience and search engine visibility.
For instance: One of our clients, specializing in “gym activewear,” approached us to enhance its website’s performance. We started by refining their internal linking structure. Initially, we addressed duplicate and canonicalized internal links and further cross-linked their category pages strategically.
The outcome? Within a short span of five months, these minor internal link changes resulted in a remarkable 120% surge in organic traffic for our client.
Pro tip: Conduct an internal link audit, preferably every six months, to discover the low-priority pages that are receiving unnecessary attention through internal links. You can use Google Search Console to conduct an internal link audit.
Proofread, Optimize, and Publish
Proofreading is a simple step that can transform your content writing strategy. We strongly recommend you to revisit and read your content for any grammatical errors and missing information once you complete writing the blog. While you are at it, check the reading flow of your blog post and see if you have rightly connected the dots.
After proofreading, optimize your article by checking the word count, readability, relevant keywords, internal and external links. Besides this, also optimize your meta description, titles, and other on-page elements to increase visits and click-through rates.
Tada! It’s time to share the information with the world and publish the valuable content that you curated.
Quick tip: Never add unnecessary information to your article.
Market Your Content
In today’s age, hitting the publish button is not enough. Content development is strongly intermingled with content marketing. Content marketing is the practice of promoting and distributing your content to reach the right audience.
Our marketing strategy involves sharing content on social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc., and advertising it through YouTube videos or podcasts in order to increase engagement and discoverability.
Promoting the article isn’t just about getting more people to see it; it can also get you important backlinks, which are highly valuable in the SEO world.
Revisit, Review, and Revise
Content development is a never-ending process that starts as soon as it ends. Internet changes fast! After working for numerous businesses and helping them create ranking content, this is one important lesson we have learned. Always revisit, review, and revise your content on a regular basis in order to keep it updated and fresh.
It also helps your blog appear better in search results, making it easier for people to find. So, if you want to be a smart content writer, don’t forget to give your old blogs a little makeover now and then.
Besides this, analyze data to get insights into your audience’s geography and interests. This will help you make amendments to your content strategy, if required.
Some Insider Tips We Follow for SEO Success and You Should Too
- Understand the target audience and tailor the content according to their needs, interests, and search intent.
- Always focus on providing “quality content.” The content might only be 300 words long, but it should be unique and helpful for the readers.
- Incorporate eye-catching visuals, videos, etc., to attract the audience and clearly explain the point.
- Pour first-hand experience and expertise into the content.
- Include CTAs in the content to help readers easily share the content or take any other desired action.
- Maintain a regular posting schedule and carry consistent efforts.
- Regularly track the performance and change content strategy accordingly.
How We Can Help You in Your Content Development Journey with our Services
Content development is essential to attract the target audience and boost website traffic. However, it is crucial to recognize that content development is a continuous and ever-going process that requires regular updates to your articles, images, links, and more to achieve the best results.
If you’re looking to save time and benefit from expert assistance, our skilled team is here to help. We house a skilled team of content writers who have spent years perfecting content development strategies covering everything from creating engaging content and optimizing it for SEO to designing eye-catching visuals and marketing it through various channels.
This is how we ensure that your website continues to attract a wider audience and drives better results through our content development services.
Keyword Research and Optimization: Our team conducts thorough research to identify popular and high-impact keywords that have the potential to boost your content’s search engine rankings and online visibility.
Content Creation: Our expert content team increases your company’s revenue and rankings by crafting well-researched, high-quality, original, and compelling content tailored specifically to your audience.
Content Strategy: Our team works closely with your firm to develop a personalized content strategy that aligns with your business objectives. We design content strategies that keep the audience engaged and interested in the business.
Content Audits: We assess your existing content regularly to ensure that it remains accurate, fresh, updated, and SEO-friendly.
Content Gap Analysis: Our team conducts content gap analysis to find opportunities for new content creation and existing content modifications.
Content Promotion and Link Building: We employ effective content promotion and link-building strategies to broaden your audience reach and secure authoritative backlinks.
Content Analytics and Reporting: We provide detailed performance reports so that you can track the impact of our content strategies and make further decisions.
Get in touch with us to help us create content that ranks and glues the users.
