create a series of pillar articles to drive steady traffic to your blog

 

 1. Do Keyword Research to Plan Your Content Strategy

Keyword research is a technique used by content creators and SEO experts. It helps you discover specific words and sentences that users type into Google and other search engines to find the content they are looking for.

Normally, beginners just rely on their best guesses when creating content. As you can imagine, this strategy is hit or miss.

If you use the ‘best-guess’ strategy, then there’s a high chance that your articles won’t rank high in search engines.

That might be simply because no one’s looking for the keywords you have used, or perhaps there is just too much competition for those keywords.

By doing proper keyword research, you will unlock the following benefits:

• Discover actual search terms people are looking for
• Find unique content ideas for popular search terms
• Learn from your competitors and beat them with better content
• Create a series of pillar articles to drive steady traffic to your blog

Now the question is, ‘How do you actually do keyword research?’ Luckily, it is not as difficult as you would think.

There are a lot of free and paid keyword research tools that can help. We use Semrush for our content strategy.

All you have to do is enter a keyword and a website address. The URL could be for a competitor’s blog or your own website. After that, the keyword research tool will help you discover lots of new keyword ideas.

As an alternative, you can use a free keyword research tool like WPBeginner’s Keyword Generator to instantly get 300+ new keyword ideas. There’s also a free Keyword Density Checker to discover what keywords your competitors’ are optimizing for.

We have created a detailed guide on how to do keyword research for your WordPress blog with step by step instructions.

2. Make an Editorial Calendar

Once you have done the keyword research, you’ll likely come up with tons of blog post ideas.

Sometimes, a large list of keywords can overwhelm beginners to a point where they simply give up.

To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, we recommend creating an editorial calendar (a game plan). Remember, no large blog was built in a day.

It takes time and consistent effort to create a successful blog. Creating an editorial calendar will help you create and stick to the plan.

There are plenty of useful tools that you can use like Asana and Trello to name a few. These tools come with a powerful set of features that will help you stay on top of your game.

The goal is to organize, create a bird’s eye view of your strategy, and be more productive.

Here are some more tips on managing your editorial workflow more efficiently:

• Don’t be too hard on yourself. Start with two articles a week and gradually increase your pace when you can.
• Be consistent with your publishing schedule. Make sure you follow your calendar and publish regular content as planned.
• Add notes, keyword ideas, and outlines to your calendar. This will help you produce better quality content when you sit down to write.
• Use colors, tags, categories, and other features in your calendar app to make it more visual and organized.

Here are some more tips on managing an editorial calendar for your blog