How to plan SEO content that actually ranks

Creating SEO content that ranks well on Google isn’t just about writing words—it’s about thoughtful planning and strategic execution. According to Tim Soulo from Ahrefs, 90% of content online receives no traffic from Google, which highlights the importance of planning your SEO efforts properly. To ensure your content ranks and drives qualified traffic, follow these expert tips and best practices.

1. Set Measurable SEO Goals

Before creating any content, define clear, measurable goals. Aja Frost, Head of English SEO at HubSpot, emphasizes the importance of setting goals that go beyond traffic. You want to drive outcomes like leads, appointments, or purchases. Here’s how to approach it:

Step 1: Define Demand Goals

Start by identifying your demand goals. These goals represent the results you want to achieve from your content, like acquiring leads or generating sales. This helps you determine the type of content you need to create.

Step 2: Calculate Traffic Goals

Once you have your demand goals, back them into traffic goals. You can do this by dividing your demand goals by your historical or expected conversion rates.

Demand Goals ÷ Conversion Rates = Traffic Goals

For example, if you aim to get 100 leads and your conversion rate from organic traffic is 2%, you would need 5,000 visitors to meet that goal.

Step 3: Calculate Monthly Search Volume (MSV) Targets

Frost suggests performing a CTR curve analysis to estimate the monthly search volume (MSV) required to hit your traffic goals. By calculating search volume for specific positions in the search results, you can identify how much traffic you need from each rank to meet your goals.

2. Conduct Keyword Research Based on Personas

Keyword research is the backbone of any SEO content strategy. However, it’s crucial to first define your target personas to ensure you’re targeting the right keywords.

Understand Your Personas

Develop detailed personas by answering key questions such as:

• What industry is your persona in?
• What tools and resources do they need for their job?
• What are their biggest challenges?

By understanding your target persona’s needs, you can create a list of seed keywords that directly relate to them. For example, if your target is in the hospitality industry, “hotel management software” could be a seed keyword.

Tools to Use:

• Ahrefs, Moz, and Semrush are standard keyword research tools, but Frost also recommends Keyword Keg, Bing’s Keyword Tool, and Seedkeyword for unique insights.

Once you have your list of keywords, filter and categorize them into relevant themes based on persona needs. This ensures that your content targets the most relevant search queries.

Categorize Keywords by Intent

• Informational: Users are looking for answers (e.g., “What is hotel management software?”)
• Transactional: Users are ready to buy (e.g., “best hotel management software 2025”)
• Navigational: Users are searching for a specific brand or product (e.g., “HotelPro software”).

3. Build a Detailed Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar helps you stay organized and ensure you’re hitting all the SEO targets you’ve set. Whether you use tools like Trello, Asana, or Google Sheets, Frost recommends tracking the following:

• Target Keyword: Identify which keyword each piece of content will target.
• URL Structure: Optimize URLs for readability and relevance.
• Headers and Subheadings: Ensure each piece of content has optimized headers for better SEO and readability.
• Internal Linking Opportunities: Identify relevant products, services, or pages to link to from within your blog.
• Content Effort: Determine how difficult a keyword is to rank for based on search volume and competitor quality.
• Expected Traffic: Estimate traffic potential by multiplying the search volume by the click-through rate (CTR) of your target position.

By grouping related keywords and tracking how much search volume you’re targeting for each theme, you can create focused content that aligns with your SEO goals.

4. Create High-Quality, Engaging Content

Once you have your research and planning in place, it’s time to write content that truly stands out. Follow these tips to make your content more engaging:

• Provide value: Content should solve a problem or answer a question your audience has.
• Use original data: Unique insights or case studies can differentiate your content from competitors.
• Add a strong point of view: A clear, unique perspective can help your content resonate with readers and stand out in search results.
• Ensure readability: Break up text with bullet points, images, and headers for easier consumption.

5. Optimize Content for Search Engine Findability

Content optimization goes beyond keyword placement. Ensure your content is easy for search engines to crawl and index:

• Optimize on-page elements: Include relevant keywords in titles, headers, URLs, and meta descriptions.
• Add alt text to images: Help search engines understand the content of your images.
• Use schema markup: This can enhance the appearance of your content in search results, improving click-through rates.

6. Measure and Adjust

SEO is a long-term game, and monitoring your content’s performance is key to success. Use tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Ahrefs to track your rankings, traffic, and conversions. If a piece of content isn’t performing as expected, tweak it:

• Adjust the focus keywords.
• Optimize the title, meta description, and header tags.
• Add internal links to improve navigation.

By continually analyzing and adjusting your strategy, you can ensure your SEO content remains relevant and effective.

Conclusion: Execute a Strategic SEO Content Plan

Planning SEO content that ranks involves setting clear goals, understanding your audience through personas, performing comprehensive keyword research, and creating high-quality, engaging content. By following these steps, you’ll be well on your way to driving targeted traffic to your site and improving your search engine rankings.

Key Takeaways:

• Start with demand goals, then back them into traffic goals.
• Use personas to guide your keyword research.
• Build an editorial calendar to stay organized.
• Optimize content for search engine findability.
• Monitor and adjust based on performance.

By taking a strategic, data-driven approach, you’ll improve your chances of ranking higher on Google and achieving your business objectives. Happy content planning!