Thanks to the pandemic, it's devastating impact on the US economy and the fact that thousands of people have lost their jobs since the start of 2020, many people have started their own online businesses. With remote companies becoming legitimized overnight, many of those who have found themselves without a job since the pandemic began have opted to take the opportunity of starting a company from home.

Unlike twenty years ago, there is lots of information online and many mentorships and government schemes available to help you get off the ground and enable you to have a goal and a direction.

However, the best practices, when it comes to online marketing, are constantly changing and evolving with every Google algorithm update.

This article will examine how to get started with content marketing. The process will look at how to create content ideas primarily for a company blog. It is suggested that blog posts be reformatted and edited to be used to create social media posts and YouTube videos. So while it takes a lot of effort to create content, blog posts can help populate and build marketing campaigns for all of your organic (free) online channels.

Keyword Research

While content marketing aims to create a following both on social media and for your blog, a great place to start when it comes to deciding what to blog about is keyword research. By creating content and posts that target what people are searching for, you can also use your blog as a key tool for your SEO efforts.

SEO is the art, process and science of ranking at the top of Google's search results for relevant search terms or "keywords."

A great place to start finding keywords is to brainstorm, ideally with someone else, what people would search for when looking for your business and the service or products you offer.

Write down a list of what you think people might search for. Then head over to Google and search for those keywords. After each search, scroll down to the bottom of the results page and make a note of any relevant "related searches."

Take shorter keywords that consist of one, two or three words, and type these into Google or a Google Chrome address/search bar. Add a space at the end of the keyword, and see what Google suggests or predicts you will search for. Make a note of any relevant keywords.

Next, type in your keyword and add an "a" at the end - for example, if your main keyword is "phone answering," type in "phone answering a," and again, see what Google predicts and make a note of any relevant keywords.

Repeat this process for "phone answering b," up to "phone answering z."

Do this A to Z process for all of your main keywords, and make a note of any relevant keywords that Google suggests or predicts you search for. These keywords are predicted because they are what people are searching for, indicating that they have a significant search volume.

You can also take your shorter keywords, with one or two words within them - and search for them on AnswerThePublic.com. This website will give you a list of questions that people search for - again, make a note of any that are relevant.

Finally, go to the Keyword Planner or a free keyword tool and get the search volume for each keyword. Keep in mind that the most searched keywords will tend to be the most competitive, so if you are starting, it can be best to write posts on "long tail" keywords, which tend to contain four or more words and be highly specific.

Pillar Posts & Cluster Content

A great way to organize blog content is to create pillar posts around your main, most searched Search Engine Optimization (SEO) keywords, and then shorter, more specific cluster posts which link back to the pillar post.

For example, if you run a telephone answering service and the main keyword is "phone answering service," then an in-depth guide to phone answering services could be the topic for a 2,000 word+ pillar post.

Cluster posts are shorter, more specific blog posts that link back to the central pillar post. Cluster posts are optimized for longer, less searched for keywords such as "247 call handling service", "How to hire a virtual receptionist," and "The benefits of an automated answering service."

Target Audience Research

As well as keywords, it's important to know the pain points, problems, and questions specific to your target audience. If your target audience is small business owners, head over to Reddit and any relevant Facebook Groups and see what people are talking about.

Small business owners on the relevant forums on Reddit, for example, commonly talk about how to set up and optimize social media adverts and posts. While social media-related posts might not attract people with "transactional" intent, who will buy from you straight away, creating great blog posts that address the problems your target audience is facing. Creating useful, educational and helpful content is the best way to build your brand online and build trust and authority with those people who matter to your business.

Competitor Research

Any way to discover blog topics to write about is to use a tool such as ahrefs, SEMRush or UberSuggest to see which blog posts that your competitors have created drive the most traffic for them.

In Ahrefs, enter the name of a competitor into the main bar/search bar at the top, then click on "top pages" in the side menu and filter by URLs that contain "blog" - if the competitor uses "blog" in the URL for their blog posts (some websites use terms like "resources" in their blog post URLs and some have that at the root domain level).

Make a note of the titles and the keywords that the posts rank for. If you target these keywords with a post of your own, make sure that your post is more in-depth and generally better than your competitor's. You want people to link to your blog post because it is the best one on the topic, and in turn, you want Google to rank it at the top of its search results pages.

Copywriting & OnPage SEO Best Practices

When it comes to writing the blog posts, there are several things to keep in mind. First of all, longer content tends to rank higher than short content, although not always. Aim for around 1,500 words for an average blog post.

Unique research that provides statistics is a great way to attract links from other websites. Links are key when it comes to ranking high on Google. You can research using a tool such as Google Surveys and then present your findings in an infographic or a table. You can also create unique research and figures by simply doing the leg work yourself and finding statistics and facts. You can use a website selling campervans, for example, to find the average price of a second-hand campervan per area and compare that to last year using archive.org. You could also use Amazon to find information regarding specific products, for example, punch bags - and present the comparison in a table. In the punch bag example, you could have a column in the table for "manufacturer", "height", "material", "warranty", "average review", "price".

It can also help to put your keyword in the blog URL and in the main heading. This allows Google to understand what the blog post is about. With Google's "Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust" update, it can also help to add your contact details to the blog and the website. With Moneypenny's phone answering service, you can get a toll-free or landline number, which you can then display prominently on your website, even if you only have a mobile phone. Having an address, registered company number and other contact details lets Google know that you are a genuine business and blog.

Creating author pages can also be a great idea. Be sure to list any credentials and expertise on each author page to show Google that you know what you are blogging about!

Reviewing Live Content

When your content is live, review, amend and update it. Putting it live is often only half of the work. You can use Google's Search Console to check which keywords a specific blog post is ranking for.

If, for example, you have a post about "The Best Heavy Punch Bags" and it ranks 20th for the keyword "6ft standing punch bags," it is probably worth creating a post about 6ft standing punch bags. Search Console is an excellent source of keywords and blog post ideas.

See what keywords each post is ranking for, and decide whether you can further optimize a given blog post for each keyword or create a new blog post.

You can also use SEMRush or ahrefs to see which keywords you rank for in the top 10 with "featured snippets" on the results page. See what type of snippet each keyword has and see if you can create a better, more specific paragraph, table or image that explains the question that's contained in the keyword.

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