Want a content engine that brings signups and revenue, not just pageviews?
Content marketing for startups should drive revenue, not just traffic.
I’ve been scouring the web looking for good advice on how to do content marketing and blogging for startups.
I’ve read about two dozen articles, blog posts, and watched a bunch of YouTube videos.
Went over courses by Moz, Ahrefs, and SEMrush. And even wrote an SEO comparison guide about the popular SEO tools I’ve been using.
There was one course that stood out in particular for being comprehensive and packed with actionable advice, and that’s the Blogging for Business course by Ahrefs.
The insights in this guide are my learnings from that amazing course as well as learnings I picked up from all the other sources.
The one pattern of advice that I noticed consistently given across the board is the importance of doing keywords research every time you go about creating content for your company.
Whether it’s for a blog post, a product page, a landing page, or a guest blog post.
The biggest mistake that bloggers make is writing about things that no one is searching for.
You have to blog about things that your potential readers are actually searching for in Google, so they can find your blog posts, and if the content is good then people will become regular readers of your blog.
So you have to do keyword research for every piece of content on your site.
Although keyword research seems easy, most people have no idea how to go about finding and using the types of keywords that matter.
Many choose a few generic keywords to target, but fall short in:
So the solution is to develop a method for analyzing and targeting high ROI keywords.
This guide will help you figure out how to go about it.
Things to keep in mind:
Here is the secret: If you target low competition keywords (high impact keywords with lower search volume) you can outrank others in your industry.
Those keywords are usually long tail with search volume of 0-10, 10-100.
Problem:
A lot of blog posts experience the “spike of hope” where there is a spike of traffic after publishing because of the promotions to email subscribers, social followers, niche communities like Reddit, Slack channels, FB groups, etc.
But then the traffic dies out.
Solution:
In order for your blog to grow you need to be reaching new audiences all the time, that’s where traffic from Google is important.
It doesn’t come to your posts right after publishing, it takes some time to build up, that’s where you invest in SEO and enjoy residual traffic that builds over time.
By applying SEO strategies your blog posts will start ranking in Google for relevant search queries and will bring consistent traffic that will not fade over time.
Content should be keyword rich, but not to the point of saturation (keyword stuffing could pose significant problems with Google).
So, as a rule of thumb, try to use 1 to 3 keywords per 100 words of text.
The most critical area for keyword usage:
People search online based on intent and their stage in the buying process, if your target keywords don’t match that intent it won’t be as effective.
An easy way to codify the buying process stages is thinking about it through the Marketing Funnel.
This will enable you to identify which keywords users search for at every stage of the journey.
Let’s now outline the steps in how to find those keywords.
Mapping the journey is basically mapping the experience that you want to provide to your customer at each point of interacting with your business.
A great way btw to discover what your customers want is to also conduct customer discovery interviews.
Your customer has a different intent in every stage of the journey, and will use different types of keywords in each stage.
The goal is to create a list of keywords for each stage of that journey.
Think of the way people search online, it’s different depending on what stage of the funnel that they are at:
Let’s breakdown each stage and look at how keywords would look like.
Your prospects go from not knowing they have a problem or not caring about it, to being aware of the problem and having the need to solve it, to understanding potential solutions.
In this stage search queries are called informational keywords.
They indicate no commercial intent, meaning they don’t have the tendency to convert right away.
Don’t neglect those keywords because they give you an opportunity to build an audience, understand pain points, and nurture towards your solution.
Examples include:
These are used when people are trying to understand a concept.
👉 Content examples:
When you create that content keep in mind that quality is the most important priority. The words, phrases, paragraphs, styles and images are the bread and butter of your content.
At this stage, prospects are aware of their pain points..
They are actively searching for a solution, trying to educate themselves, and are conducting product comparisons.
Searchers want to do something or solve a specific problem.
👉 Content examples: step-by-step guides, process breakdowns, tutorials, tool walkthroughs.
Example: “How to increase conversions with content marketing.”
Searchers are reading reviews, trying to learn about the differences and compare.
👉 Content example: Testimonials, Case Studies, Reviews. If you are listed in sites like G2, Capterra or GoodFirms, then you should link to them and include some of the best reviews in your testimonials pages.
Those are the transactional keywords that prospects use when they are ready to make purchase decisions, those keywords will have high conversion rates and will be the most competitive.
High-intent keywords in include:
👉 Content example: Product pages, Feature pages, Use Case pages, Pricing pages. Example: #1 Content Analytics Tool.
At this point the prospect is an official customer, even if they are on a free trial.
This stage is often neglected because it’s after the purchase, but it’s super important because that’s where the company needs to prove the product value to the customer.
If value is proven, then there is reduced churn, opportunities for upsells, and high NPS which all are huge contributors to a health and thriving business.
Content in this stage will focus on helping your customers implement your product, troubleshoot, learn how to use features to extract maximum value.
Search terms will include:
👉 Content examples:
Awareness
Consideration
Decision
Post-purchase
When you have your groups of keywords, use SEO tools to research them.
How to choose a tool?
I actually did a comparison research of SEO tools comparing SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz, and Ubersuggest.
I found using Ahrefs to be the best use of time. So the following examples will be using the Ahrefs tools.
These traffic estimates will help you make educated data-driven decisions about what keywords are the most valuable to go after. The data will also help you better prioritize your budget and resources.
Use a spreadsheet to document:
The best tools to find your Google Ads competitors’ keywords and ads is using Spyfu.
Find out how well your competitors are doing in each part of their customer journey by using the keywords for each stage:
The chart below from Orbit Media helps explain how to choose keywords:
After you find the keywords, you can use tools like Ask The Public to find the most searched questions in those keywords. They will be great in your:
Make sure that when you’re doing your content marketing and blogging you include keywords in your article’s titles and give it the proper structure, here is an example:
Keep in mind:
A deeper coverage of a topic with more written content will lead to ranking in Google for multiple related keywords and getting more search traffic in total.
When you put your keywords in the Keywords Explorer you will see related keywords.
If you rank for that top keyword you will also rank for many relevant long tail keywords.
When creating the blog post title, include the keywords term that are searched for the most.
Ranking = keywords + on-page optimization + backlinks (links to that page from other websites)
The content of your page needs to be 100% relevant to the search query.
It needs to help searchers with what they were looking for, loads fast, optimized for mobile, provides a great user interface, great user experience and it’s visually appealing.
Ask yourself:
That’s why it’s so important to understand and measure your content engagement so you can improve it.
AllFactors makes it easy for you to measure content engagement. You can see exactly how long people read and if they go to the next page or leave.
Ranking in the top 10 search results is the ultimate goal.
Links from other websites is what gets you there.
You can think of backlinks as ”votes”.
When another website links to your page they are telling google that out of all the pages on the same topic, they think your page is the best. The more of those votes your page will get, the more Google will respect it.
On average you can expect to acquire 1 natural backlink for every 1,000 visitors.
So if you want to get 10 natural backlinks to your blog post you should aim for 10K visitors.
You need to understand what people enjoy sharing, which usually falls into one of the four categories:
Stories – case studies, examples. We love stories because they are easy to relate to. For example it’s one thing to read some general advice about how to lose weight, but it’s a better experience to read a real story of how someone has lost weight and learn from their first hand experience.
Emotion – for example news that makes us happy or upset, entertaining content or controversial content.
Utility – tutorials, guides, how to’s. If we discover something particularly useful we’ll be inclined to share it with others. This is a way to earn ‘social currency”. If you provide value to society by helping people solve their problems, society will love you back.
Numbers – research, data, statistics. Numbers help us make a point and add credibility to what we say. That’s why we love to reference research to solidify our argument.
A great book for content marketers to learn about the human psychology of what makes people react to things is Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger.
How many pages reach the front page of Google in the year after being published? According to a study by Ahrefs that number is 5.7%. Ranking for at least a single related keyword, not even the main keyword that’s targeted.
That means that 94.3% of all newly published pages never reach the front page of Google and never get search traffic.
Why?
Because most people prefer to rely on the “Publish and Pray” approach in hope that their pages will rank in Google by themselves, which does not happen…
Backlinks grow when your piece is the best, the freshest, or the most useful. Make it easy to cite with data, visuals, and clear takeaways.
AllFactors gives you first-party content analytics that connect site engagement, ad clicks, and CRM events, then ties conversions to revenue.
You will see which articles and videos drive signups, opportunities, and paid plans, and what to publish next for the biggest lift.
If you take payments, AllFactors connects with Stripe to show true revenue attribution, end to end.
Pro tip: Use AllFactors to compare topics by lead quality and revenue, not only by traffic. You will find a few “quiet winners” that deserve more distribution and video support.
