Learn More
About
the Authors
Truth is, you don’t always need
a team of designers or developers
to create interactive content for your brand. That's why platforms like Ceros exist: to attract more clicks, convert more visitors, and ultimately, unlock your brand’s creativity.
© 2020 Ceros Inc. + Conductor. All Rights Reserved.
Ready to start building
interactive content with
a peerless, code-less
design tool?
check out ceros
Ready to level up your organic marketing strategy? Our best-in-class SEO platform provides deep insights and unparalleled services to help your team achieve its SEO and content goals.
check out Conductor
Though you may not think of SEO and design as a natural fit, in terms of visibility and performance they are two sides of the same coin. Both are integral to the mission of creating the content for meeting the needs of what your audience is searching for and optimizing its performance of your content.
Your marketing team will achieve better agility, executing more efficiently
and effectively.
Your team will develop more creative concepts with harmonious design and messaging.
SEO will become a pillar of your content, optimizing its reach and performance.
You will be able to effectively measure and report on your content performance.
There are a multitude of benefits to bringing together your SEO and design team members at the outset of your content ideation.
Conclusion
Work with your key stakeholders and SEO to set up a cadence to review the overall performance of your content and track your efforts against your goals. For some, the right cadence will be as frequently as once per week for some, while others prefer monthly check-ins.
During your meetings, you will:
Track progress of scheduled initiatives.
Review performance on published projects.
Identify areas of new opportunity.
Pinpoint needed optimizations.
Review overall changes in rank.
Celebrate wins.
Just like an automobile, your content strategy requires routine maintenance to ensure it is running smoothly.
The Formula for Systematic Content Measurement
Take Action: SEO platforms provide robust measurement tools to create custom
reports tailored to the insights
your various stakeholders
value most.
Chapter 4
These meetings will help track overall progress and drill down into the performance of specific initiatives. With regular measurement reviews, your team will be able to identify problems, respond in a timely manner and replicate successful projects in the future.
9. Refinement
The final and ongoing step in your content creation process is refinement. Refining your content will depend on the insights you are
able to glean from measuring its performance. This includes making adjustments to your headline, H2 tags or keywords based on performance metrics.
Take Action: For more resources on creating interactive content, download Ceros’s Starter Kit with containing templates and outlines to help guide your process.
8. Measurement
You can’t gauge the success of a piece of content until you monitor its engagement. Revisit your briefing document to review your goals and benchmark your performance.
Set up your cadence for reporting and team review cycles. Don’t forget to work with your SEO to report on your content’s keyword performance and wins like capturing answer boxes and outranking competitors.
7. Review + Distribute
A thorough review cycle is imperative to
a seamless launch. Before publishing your content, make sure you’ve completed the
items on the checklist below.
Content Pre-Publish Checklist:
SEO review. Ensure your meta description and all header tags are accounted for.
You’re ready to publish!
Design review. Check your rendering on desktop, mobile and in a variety of browsers.
Copy edit. Enlist someone other than the copywriter who composed the content for a fresh set of eyes.
Set up staging. This will allow you to preview your live content and make design adjustments.
Next Step
6. Content + Design Collab (Execution)
Collaboration is at the core of creating experiential content successfully. Writing copy and sketching out a wireframe should be done in tandem, with one informing the other. While the copywriter and designer work on their tasks, they’ll check in with each other to make sure the direction and copy length fit within the wireframe and adjustments accordingly.
As an example, this is the process we use
to write and wireframe our experiential
content projects:
As designers begin to build out the final piece
of content based on the established wireframe,
it is important that the collaboration with the copywriters continues, to ensure the content fits the design seamlessly.
Now that you’ve defined your team and established your goals, it’s time to get together to brief and scope your project.
At this kickoff meeting, you will:
Outline your main objectives. and goals
Define your target audience.
Establish your message.
Set your timeline.
At Conductor, we have found these meetings to be helpful in both recognizing potential roadblocks and identifying areas of opportunity to incorporate and cross-promote content.
5. Content Brief
Now it’s time for your copywriter and SEO to collaborate on a content brief. Include your briefing doc and takeaways from the brainstorm meeting. Your copywriter will put together an outline with relevant background information and resources, and your SEO will contribute title suggestions, meta description, H2 suggestions and keyword recommendations.
Step 5: Check SERP Rankings.
Step 4: Conduct competitive keyword research.
Step 3: Find Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Keywords.
Step 2: Bucket these based on keyword intent across buyer’s journey stages.
Step 1: Create a list of relevant keywords relevant to your business.
Sidebar: How to Conduct Keyword Research
4. Brainstorming
A good team brainstorm is one of the most important parts of the content creation process. You will notice an immediate difference in the level of creativity of your projects possess by implementing this fun
and collaborative step.
Formula for a good brainstorm:
Share briefing doc in advance. Allow team members to ruminate on the audience and goals and come to the meeting with ideas and examples.
+ Set up space for creativity. Whether in -person or remote, provide resources like whiteboards or digital mood boards to encourage collaboration.
= Creative Direction and Content Format
Once the team has come to a consensus, outline next steps and assign out tasks.
Creative Direction and Content Format
Once the team has come to a consensus, outline next steps and assign out tasks.
Set up space for creativity. Whether in-person or remote, provide resources like whiteboards or digital moodboards to encourage collaboration.
Share briefing
doc in advance.
Allow team members
to ruminate on the audience and goals
and come to the
meeting with ideas
and examples.
Formula for a good brainstorm:
Next Step
Next Step
At Conductor, we have found these meetings to be helpful in both recognizing potential roadblocks and identifying areas of opportunity to incorporate and cross-promote content.
At this kickoff meeting, you will:
Outline your main objectives. and goals
Define your target audience.
Establish your message.
Set your timeline.
Now that you’ve defined your team and established your goals, it’s time to get together to brief and scope your project.
3. Kickoff Meeting
2. Set Your Goals
Define your project goals at the beginning. Your goals can influence the shape your content takes. Now that you have defined your team, your goals will be more inclusive of all project stakeholders. Think about the audience you want to reach. What they are searching for? How can you help answer their questions? Can you provide them with relevant content? What, specifically, do you want them to do next? Document these objectives and align them to your goals to help measure your performance.
Example: Your marketing goal may be lead generation. If your SEO is involved early on, they can identify opportunities to help your page capture an answer box or rank for a particular query towhich will drive more organic traffic and help fulfill your goal of lead generation.
1. Define Your Team
Giving SEOs and designers a seat at the table starts here. Before even kicking off a project, it’s important to define your team, establish each member’s contributions, and determine who your key stakeholders are.
We recommend the following team structure:
Designer
SEO
Copywriter
UX Designer / Developer
Digital Marketer
Step 7-9
Step 4-6
Step 1-3
The Outline for a Seamless Content Creation Process
Changing the way your team approaches content may seem daunting
and time consuming, but this step-by-step process is sure to create more agility and produce better results by bringing together all stakeholders at the start of a project.
Chapter 3
The Skills Needed to Create
a Content Masterpiece
Content Creation Process
Ideal State
Design and SEO are brought in at the outset of a project with goals understood by all stakeholders. SEOs contribute well-rounded ideas rooted in audience research and suggest subjects with high monthly search volume. Team members collaborate to develop highly creative themes that unite content and design.
Designers provide suggestions on formats that fit the length and format of the content piece, suggestions like when to create an infographic
vs. a listicle.
SEO now plays a proactive role, providing suggestions for headlines, meta descriptions, keyword suggestions and provides a final QA on content before it publishes to ensure that it aligns with SEO best practices.
Less-than-Ideal State
In less- than- ideal scenarios, teams work in silos, handing off finished content to creative and
SEO teams to design and execute keyword research after content has already been written.
This “Frankenstein” approach” rarely yields the cohesive and polished outcome that is achieved
when all stakeholders are consulted early in the content creation process.
Designers have to “fit” content into formats and templates, and work with established themes that often lack creativity.
SEOs provide keyword recommendations that are tacked onto pieces (also referred to as keyword stuffing) as an afterthought rather than being the foundation and research that informs content from the jump.
Not Ideal
Ideal
Not Ideal
Ideal
SEOs and designers have at least one pain point in common: both are sometimes the last stop before a piece of content is published. Designers are often handed finalized copy to transform into an artful piece. SEO is tasked with providing key words and ensuring the piece it ranks well on search engines. Neither is set up for success. There is no opportunity for collaboration, feedback, or adjustments.
Giving SEOs and designers a voice in the planning process creates an environment primed for success. Once the subject of a piece is established, SEOs can suggest keywords with high monthly search volume, provide competitive insights and help with technical recommendations along the way. Designers help with creative development and are given the chance to create a visual language that ties the whole piece together. Designers work in parallel with the writing process so that editing happens collaboratively and in real-time. They help with creative development and are given the chance to create a visual language that ties the whole piece together.
Chapter 2
SEO and Design are two disciplines that are often tacked onto the end
of the content creation process as an afterthought. It is not uncommon for marketing teams to fall victim to working in silos. In Chapter 1, you learned the benefits of incorporating SEO into your content strategy. Now we’ll dive into the benefits of infusing SEO and design into the early stages of creating that content.
Take Action: Collaboration doesn't always have to happen in a formal meeting setting. Engage with your SEO and design teammates by grabbing coffee or setting up Zoom brainstorms.
Formulating your goals helps your SEO identify opportunities at various stages of the funnel and make suggestions based on persona. They will help identify opportunities for creating new content, optimizing existing content and making suggestions on which content to sunset. Instead of looking at SEO as a step that comes at the end of your content creation process, try starting out with it. SEO delivers ideas and recommendations that are rooted in research and data that should inform your strategy and ideation process. By shifting your focus to SEO at the beginning, the foundation you are laying is rooted in optimizing your content for SEO.
Every great content strategy starts with a deep understanding of your audience and goals. Your goals aren’t created in a vacuum, independent of inputs like marketing KPIs, web metrics or business objectives. SEO and content should come together at the outset in order to align internal teams, increase efficiency and develop a deep understanding of your audience with the common goal of elevating your content performance.
Take Action: Is there anyone in your business responsible for SEO? Talk to them about your digital marketing KPIs, target audience and goals.
How to optimize content for search engines
SEO not only helps determine content opportunities, but also can inform the format your content takes.
Investigating the SERP will help you glean what content Google (and people searching for that keyword) finds most valuable. If the differences between your content and the content that’s ranking are small or superficial, you can modify your article to better align with the type of content that appears in the SERP. If the high- ranking results on the SERP are vastly different from your content, consider using this information to inform the gaps that exist and ideate net-new content.
This is also an area where design plays a key role. SEO can help identify how your audience prefers to consume a particular topic; your design team has the knowledge and expertise to transform that experience into a user-friendly and easily scannable masterpiece.
Listicle Infographic Quiz E-book Video
Content Types to Consider
1. Research the Customer Voice
SEO not only helps determine content opportunities but can also direct the form your content takes. Investigating the search engine results page will help you glean what content Google (and people searching for that keyword) finds most valuable. If the differences between your content and the content that’s ranking are small or superficial, you can modify your article to better align with the type of content that appears in the SERP. If the high-ranking results on the SERP are vastly different from your content, consider using these findings to inform the gaps that exist and ideate net-new content.
2. Uncover Competitive Opportunities
You can also find information about how your competitors use SEO by looking through the SERP. Has a competitor implemented a particularly creative strategy that has led them to rank for that keyword? If so, what lessons can you learn from their strategy and how can you improve upon its effectiveness?
Many content marketers and SEOs rely on SEO technology to keep an eye on their competition in the SERPs. Understanding where your competition is outranking you on the SERP will help you determine which content you can use to outperform them and identify areas where your business has low visibility and needs to ramp up.
3. Determine the Best Content Types
SEO can help identify how your audience prefers to consume a particular topic; your design team has the knowledge and expertise to transform that experience into a user-friendly and easily scannable masterpiece.
Content Types to Consider
Listicle Infographic Quiz eBook Video
Here are three steps to build out your strategy:
page 2
Chapter 1
A Holistic Approach to
Content Strategy
Chapter 4
The Formula
for Systematic Content Measurement
Chapter 3
The Outline
for a Seamless Content Creation Process
Chapter 2
Infusing
SEO + Design
into the content creation process
Chapter 1
A Holistic
Approach
to Content Strategy
Let's start from square one.
What is SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization and it is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
back
What Is SEO?
In terms of SEO, you want to look at the quality and quantity of your web traffic. Do your website visitors click through because you are a resource for the subject matter they are looking for? If so, this is considered quality traffic. The more quality traffic your site drives the better. The Search Engine Results Page (or SERPs for short), consists of a variety of different results. Ads make up a significant portion of many SERPs. Today, we are going to focus on organic marketing. Organic traffic is any traffic that you don't have to pay for.
Google is constantly changing its algorithm, and SEOs spend their careers updating their strategies based on rank fluctuations. Good news? We know that no matter how many changes Google makes to their algorithm, they are moving toward a single goal: providing the best experience for the searcher. The practice of SEO is not about "gaming Google" by trying to crack algorithms or stuff content with unrelated keywords. SEO is about understanding what your audience is searching for and creating content that meets those needs. In order to practice good SEO, you need to understand your audience's intention, what they are searching for and where they are looking for. Therefore, matching your content with the language your customers use when they search is the best way to ensure that your content is optimized for search engines.
Great content is not created in a vacuum. You are likely
to work with a team of digital marketing experts, but fall
victim to working in silos. It's not uncommon for teams to perform core steps in the content creation process without consulting or brainstorming with colleagues—even ones
that have the expertise to transform your content strategy into the performance engine your business needs.
The secret to exceptional content creation is to unite
your SEO, content, and web design teams. It not only strengthens your content, but also increases the agility
of your team. This guide describes the steps you can take
to break down these silos and integrate both design and SEO expertise into the content creation process to
increase the reach of your content.
Introduction
What Is
SEO?
The Art & Science of Content Collaboration
The Art & Science of Content Collaboration
Content Collaboration
of
Science
&
Art
The
+
Why great storytelling
starts with SEO,
Design and Content.
Submit your info below to access the rest of our guide.
Unlock Guide
Getting Started with Interactive
Content
Truth is, you don’t always need a team of designers or developers to create interactive content for your brand. That's why platforms like Ceros exist: to attract more clicks, convert more visitors, and ultimately, unlock your brand’s creativity.
© 2020 Ceros Inc. + Conductor. All Rights Reserved.
Ready to start building interactive content
with a peerless, code-less
design tool?
check out
ceros
Ready to level up your organic marketing strategy? Our
best-in-class SEO platform provides deep insights and unparalleled services to help your team achieve its SEO and content goals.
check out Conductor
Though you may not think of SEO and design as a natural fit, in terms of visibility and performance they are two sides of the same coin. Both are integral to
the mission of creating the content your audience is searching for and optimizing it’s performance.
SEO will become a pillar of your content, optimizing its reach and performance.
Your marketing team will be able to achieve better agility, executing more efficiently
and effectively.
Your team will develop more creative concepts with harmonious design and messaging.
Your develop more creative concepts with harmonious design and messaging You will
be able to effectively measure and report
on your content performance.
There are a multitude of benefits to bringing together your SEO and design team members at the outnset of your content ideation.
Conclusion
Work with your key stakeholders and SEO to set up a cadence to review the overall performance of your content and track your efforts against your goals.
Track progress of scheduled initiatives.
Review performance on published projects.
Identify areas of new opportunity.
Pinpoint needed optimizations.
Review overall changes in rank.
Celebrate wins.
During your meetings, you will:
Take Action: SEO platforms provide
robust measurement tools to create custom
reports tailored to the insights your
various stakeholders value most.
Just like an automobile, your content strategy requires routine maintenance to ensure it is running smoothly.
These meetings will help track overall progress and drill down into the performance of specific initiatives.
With regular reviews, your team will be able to identify problems, respond in a timely manner and replicate successful projects in the future.
The Formula for
Systematic Content
Measurement
Chapter 4
9. Refinement
The final and ongoing step in your content creation process is refinement. Refining your content will depend on the insights you are able to glean from measuring its performance. This includes making adjustments to your headline, H2 tags or keywords based on performance metrics.
8. Measurement
You can’t gauge the success of a piece of content until you monitor it’s engagement. Revisit your briefing document to review your goals and benchmark your performance.
Set up your cadence for reporting and team review cycles. Don’t forget to work with your SEO to report on your content’s keyword performance and wins like capturing answer boxes and outranking competitors.
7. Review + Distribute
A thorough review cycle is imperative to a seamless launch. Before publishing your content, make sure you’ve completed the items on the checklist below.
Content Pre-Publish Checklist:
(if we want to keep this short and sweet we can keep the bold items only and remove supplementary copy)
SEO review. Ensure your meta description and all header tags are accounted for.
Design review. Check your rendering on desktop, mobile and in a variety of browsers.
Copy edit. Enlist someone other than the copywriter who composed the content for a fresh set of eyes.
Set up staging. This will allow you to preview your live content and make design adjustments.
You're ready to publish!
Next Step
Step 7-9
6. Content + Design Collab (Execution)
Collaboration is at the core of creating successful experiential content. Writing copy and sketching out a wireframe should be done in tandem, with one informing the other.
As designers begin to build out the final piece of content based on the established wireframe, it is important that the collaboration with the copywriters continues to ensure the content fits the design seamlessly.
5. Content Brief
Now it’s time for your copywriter and SEO to collaborate on a content brief. Include your briefing doc and takeaways from the brainstorm meeting. Your copywriter will put together an outline with relevant background information and resources, and your SEO will contribute title suggestions, meta description, H2 suggestions and keyword recommendations.
Sidebar: How to Conduct Keyword Research
Step 1: Create a list of relevant keywords relevant to your business.
Step 2: Bucket these based on keyword intent across buyer’s journey stages.
Step 3: Find Latent Semantic Indexing
(LSI) Keywords.
Step 4: Conduct competitive keyword research.
Step 5: Check SERP Rankings.
4. Brainstorming
Next Step
Step 4-6
Next Step
Step 1-3
Now that you’ve defined your team and established your goals, it’s time to get together to brief and scope your project.
3. Kickoff Meeting
At this kickoff meeting, you will:
Outline your main objectives and goals.
Define your target audience.
Establish your message.
Set your timeline.
2. Set Your Goals
Define your project goals at the beginning. Think about the audience you want to reach. What they are searching for? How can you help answer their questions? What, specifically, do you want them to do next? Document these objectives and align them to your goals to help measure your performance.
Example: Your marketing goal may be lead generation. If your SEO is involved early on, they can identify opportunities to help your page capture an answer box or rank for a particular query to drive more organic traffic and help fulfill your goal.
1. Define Your Team
Before even kicking off a project, it’s important to define your team, establish each member’s contributions and determine who your key stakeholders are.
We recommend the following team structure:
Designer SEO Copywriter UX Designer / Developer Digital Marketer
The Outline for a Seamless Content Creation Process
Changing the way your team approaches content creation may seem daunting and time consuming, but this step-by-step process is sure to create more agility and produce better results by bringing together
all stakeholders at the start of
a project.
Chapter 3
The Skills Needed
to Create a Content Masterpiece
Content Creation Process
Ideal State
Design and SEO are brought in at the outnset of a project with goals understood by all stakeholders. SEOs contribute well-rounded ideas rooted in audience research and suggest subjects with high monthly search volume. Team members collaborate to develop highly creative themes that unite content and design.
Designers provide suggestions on formats that fit the length and format of the content piece, suggestions like when to create an infographic
vs listicle.
SEO now plays a proactive role, providing suggestions for headlines, meta descriptions, keyword suggestions and provides a final QA on content before it publishes to ensure that it aligns with SEO best practices.
Less- than- Ideal State
Teams work in silos, handing off finished content to creative and SEO teams to design and execute keyword research after content has already been written.
Designers have to “fit” content into formats and templates, and work with established themes that often lack creativity
SEOs provide keyword recommendations that are tacked onto pieces (also referred to as keyword stuffing) as an afterthought rather than being the foundation and research that informs content from the jump.
Not Ideal
Ideal
Not Ideal
Ideal
SEOs and designers have at least one pain point in common. Both are the last stop before a piece of content is published. Designers are often handed a finalized copy document to transform into an artful piece. Meanwhile, SEO is tasked with providing keywords and ensuring the piece ranks well on search engines. Neither is
set up for success.There is no opportunity for collaboration, feedback or adjustments.
Giving SEOs and designers a voice in the planning process creates an environment primed for success.
Chapter 2
SEO and Design are two disciplines
that are often tacked onto the end of
the content creation process as an afterthought. It is not uncommon for marketing teams to fall victim to working in silos. In Chapter 1, you learned the benefits of incorporating SEO into your content strategy. Now we’ll dive into the benefits of infusing SEO and design into the early stages of creating that content.
Take Action: Collaboration doesn't always have to happen in a formal meeting setting. Engage with your SEO and design
teammates by grabbing coffee or setting
up Zoom brainstorms. .
3. Determine the Best Content Types
SEO can help identify how your audience prefers to consume a particular topic; your design team has the knowledge and expertise to transform that experience into a user-friendly and easily scannable masterpiece.
2. Uncover Competitive Opportunities
You can also find information about how your competitors use SEO by looking through the SERP. Has a competitor implemented a creative strategy that has led them to rank for that keyword? If so, what lessons can you learn from their strategy and how can you improve upon its effectiveness?
1. Research the Customer Voice
Investigating the search engine results page will help you glean what content Google (and people searching for that keyword) finds most valuable.
Here are three steps to build out your strategy:
Your SEO will help identify opportunities for creating new content, optimizing existing content and making suggestions
on which content to sunset. Instead of looking at SEO as a step that comes at the end of your content creation process, try starting out with it. SEO delivers ideas and recommendations that are rooted in research and data that should inform your strategy and ideation process.
Take Action: If you don't have an in-house SEO,
we'll provide tips on how to start developing your
own SEO skills throughout this guide.
Every great content strategy starts with a deep understanding of your audience and goals. SEO and content should come together at the outset
in order to align internal teams, increase efficiency and develop a deep understanding of your audience with the common goal of elevating your content performance.
Is there anyone in your business responsible for SEO? Talk to them about your digital marketing KPIs, target audience and goals.
Chapter 1
A Holistic Approach
to Content Strategy
Chapter 4
The Formula
for Systematic Content Measurement
Chapter 3
The Outline
for a Seamless Content Creation Process
Chapter 2
Infusing
SEO + Design
into the content creation process
Chapter 1
A Holistic
Approach
to Content Strategy
SEO stands for search engine optimization and it is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality
of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
back
What Is SEO?
Search is the most used digital tool, with 93% of online experiences beginning on a search engine.
In order to practice good SEO, you need to understand your audience's intention, what they are searching for and where they are searching. Therefore, matching your content with the language your customers use when they search is the best way to ensure that your content is optimized for search engines.
Great content is not created in
a vacuum. You likely work with
a team of digital marketing experts but fall victim to working in silos. The secret to unlocking exceptional content creation
is to unite your SEO, content, and web design teams. This interactive guide describes the steps you can take to break down these silos and integrate both design and SEO expertise into the content creation process to increase the reach
of your content.
Introduction
What Is
SEO?
The Art & Science of Content Collaboration
The Art & Science of Content Collaboration
+
Content Collaboration
of
Science
&
Art
The
Why great content
creation starts
with SEO, Design
and Content
Submit your info below to access the rest of our guide.
Unlock Guide
+
=