Content mapping for online success

Online success relies on effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and content creation is an important part of this. However, content shouldn’t be simply generated at random. Themed topics and structured content plans are essential for getting the most out of the content you create. Content mapping can be highly effective for this. But what is this? And what are the important factors for content mapping for online success?

What is content mapping?

So first of all, what exactly is content mapping? Well this is a term used to describe the specific process of mapping your content to the search intent, and the requirements, of your potential customers or clients. This involves creating a content plan to align your content with the needs, and interests of your audience, at every stage of their journey, from initial information and fact finding, to finding a reputable company to buy from or book with. As such, this typically involves:

• Defining buyer personas- by creating detailed profiles of your ideal customers based on demographics and behaviour patterns, you can better understand your customers and their requirements, allowing you to better tailor your content to their needs.
• Understanding the buyer’s journey- this process involves mapping out the stages a customer goes through from, awareness and information gathering, to consideration, comparison and deciding to purchase. These journey stages are what you need to create content for, for effective results at each stage of the process.
• Content categorisation- different stages of the buyer’s journey may require different content for the most effective results. As such, you may want to categorise your content so that the type of content can better correspond to each stage of the buyer’s journey, such as blog posts, case studies, and product pages.
• Keyword research- Finding the right keywords to match the specific search intent of users at different stages of their journey can be important for creating useful and relevant content.

Overall, the aim of content mapping is to deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time. But how does this improve SEO?

How does content mapping improve SEO?

Content mapping is a process that can improve your SEO in a number of different ways. These include:

• Improving the user experience- By creating and delivering content that is specifically designed for your target audience, at different stages of their journey, you will significantly improve the user experience on your website, with users finding what they are looking for quickly and easily. This helps to improve user engagement and reduces bounce rate, both of which help search engines to determine the usefulness, and relevance of your website, helping to improve rankings.
• Improved keyword targeting- creating a full content plan is a great way to improve your content overall, but content mapping plays an important role in identifying and making use of the right keywords. This is particularly important when creating content for different stages of the buyer’s journey, as this ensures that your content is optimised for the specific, relevant search queries, helping to secure top rankings in the search results.
• Increased content relevance- relevance is one of the important ranking factors used by search engine algorithms. By using content mapping, you can ensure that content you produce and release is as relevant as possible to the search query, helping to improve your content performance.
• Improved content organisation- by creating a content map you can ensure that your content is structured logically and coherently. This improves site navigation and makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your pages.
• Internal linking- internal linking is an important part of SEO as this helps to improve the page authority, an indicator of quality. Content mapping provides lots of opportunity for internal linking, grouping pieces of content that relate to each other.

How to use content mapping for online success

So with all that in mind, how can your company use content mapping for online success? Well there are a number of steps you should take, including:

• Understanding your audience
• Focusing on content
• Measuring performance
• Understanding your audience

One of the first steps to take when planning to use content mapping is to really understand your audience. This can be broken down into different areas, including:

• Researching your audience- as a business, you should have a good grasp of who uses your services and looks for your products. Understanding the demographics, interests and online behaviour of your audience can help you to create content that is more in line with their needs and requirements, for optimal performance.
• Understanding the buyer’s journey- Whether you sell products or services, your customers will all move through a series of stages from the awareness stage, where they are looking for more information about a product or service, to the decision stage, where they are ready to make a purchase and are now looking for a reputable company. Understanding this journey means that you can create content that will be highly effective for each stage.

Focusing on content

Following on from your audience understanding, you should then focus on the content itself. This will include:

• Identifying keywords- choosing the most specific and relevant keywords for content at different parts of the buyer’s journey can help to elevate your content and boost success online.
• Creating a content calendar- this is a plan that should outline the content you will produce, when it will be published, and which buyer stage it targets. This can help keep your content on target and help your website feel more organised.
• SEO- it’s important to consider the on page SEO and ensure that each piece of content is optimised for the target keywords. This will help improve the ranking position of your content, and ensure that your carefully crafted content is shown to searchers looking for it.

Measuring performance

Finally, you will need to measure the performance of your content and assess this to find areas to improve and adjust. This can include:

• Measuring bounce rate- if people leave your content quickly, this tends to indicate that the content does not match the keyword that it is ranked for. Measuring the bounce rate, and trying to make sure that this is as low as possible, is an important factor for success.
• Search engine rankings- it’s important to make sure that your content ranks highly for the specific keyword and this is something you should monitor over time, as rankings adjust with new algorithms and new content.

For more information or advice about content as part of your SEO strategy, we are the experts for you here at Pumpkin Web Design. Why not get in touch today to find out more?