In this article, you're going learn the 7 step content development process we use to get around 130,000 visitors and 7,500 trials per month.

Content Development

Almost all of it comes from SEO content.

You'll get an inside view of how we consistently produce content that ranks in the top 3 of Google and generates sales.

You’re going to learn how to come up with content ideas, how to create content that ranks on page 1 and how to promote the content.

By the end of this article, you'll have a content creation strategy that will allow you to consistently create quality content that generates traffic and leads.

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    What is Content Development?

    Content development is the process of understanding your ideal customer’s pain points, doing keyword research, creating amazing content, and promoting it to your audience.

    Content development is the key to a successful content marketing strategy, no matter what business you’re in.

    Here are the 7 Steps to a killer content development strategy.


    Step 1:  Identify Your Target Audience

    Chances are, you have multiple buyer personas for your product or service.  

    Some of your content will be “catch all” to appeal to your entire demographic and other content will be extremely niche to appeal to certain segments.

    Identify the Niche or Vertical You’re targeting

    The first thing you want to do is identify the niche or vertical that you want to target with the article.  

    Almost every product or service appeals to multiple industries.

    For instance, with Time Doctor, we write “catch all” articles for all verticals we appeal to. 

    Let me show you what I mean with a few case studies: 

    Hiring Remote Teams

    Our catch all content is around the topic of hiring remote workers and virtual assistants. They also need to use employee onboarding software to streamline the hiring and onboarding process for remote employees. 

    Every entrepreneur managing a remote business, no matter what vertical they’re in, needs to hire employees or assistants. They also need to use employee scheduling tools to optimize productivity and collaboration in a remote setting.

    Time Doctor is a software that helps entrepreneurs and business owners who run remote teams manage their employees.

    It’s also important to use tools to carry out comprehensive tax calculations when working with remote team members, whether they are permanently employed by the organization or recruited on a freelance basis. This ensures compliance with relevant regulations, as well as taking the complexity out of what is traditionally a complex process.

    Content Development Case Study Virtual Assistants

    Now, I’ll show you examples of some content that is geared toward a specific demographic in mind.

    Digital Marketing Agencies

    One of our buyer personas is marketing agencies and social media agencies.  Among other use cases, they use our software to help manage the many freelancers they work with.

    So we created and article about how agencies are using outsourcing to grow their business.

    Is there some overlap with other articles?  Absolutely.

    However, the nuances of the outsourcing strategies makes this article very interesting to agencies. 

    Content Development Case Study Marketing Agency Post

    Call Centers

    Just to show that we have a wide variety of businesses using our platform, the last article we wrote is for entrepreneurs who run call centers.  

    Yup.  Call centers. 🙂

    So we create articles just for that specific industry.

    Content Development Case Study Call Center

    What’s Their Experience

    Some people are going to be brand new to your market.  And others are going to be seasoned vets.

    And you’ll have everything in between.  The key is to make content for each experience level that you’re targeting.

    (Note:  If you’re not targeting beginners, or if you’re not targeting seasoned vets, then you can just omit that content from your development process.)

    But at Time Doctor, we target everyone. 🙂

    Content for Beginners

    Someone just getting started in our space is basically a new entrepreneur or business owner looking to hire their first employee.

    So, we’ll create a few articles like this.

    Content for beginners

    Content for Seasoned Vets

    On the flip side is entrepreneurs who are already fully staffed and are trying to retain their employees.  

    So, we created content that would appeal to them.

    Content for Experienced Customers

    Other questions to ask before creating content

    You may want to ask:

    •  - Is this content for men or women?
    •  - Is there an age you’re targeting?
    •  - How much money do they have to spend (budget)?

    The more specific you are creating your content, the more effective it will be in converting readers into customers.

    Step 2:  Find pain points 

    Now that you have some idea of who you want to write for, it’s time to find some pain points.

    In other words, what do those people want to read (as it pertains to your product or service)?

    I’ve found a few methods to really help me with this.

    Get on the phone

    The phone, or Skype, is one of the most important tools in the content marketer's tool belt. Getting on the phone with your customers is absolute best method to find out what pain points your customers have is to get on the phone with them.

    One of the cool things about this is people LOVE to share their problems with you.  And these problems can easily be turned into a ton of new content for you to publish.

    You can just probe them with open ended questions.

    •  - What is the greatest challenge with regards to hiring/managing employees?
    •  - How big of a pain is that?
    •  - What do you love about your business?
    •  - What do you hate?
    •  - When was the last time you hired an employee who didn’t work out?
    •  - What went wrong?
    •  - How important is retaining employees?
    •  - What qualities are essential for executive compensation consultants

    We’re going to get into some other methods as well.  But one amazing thing about getting on a mobile or home phone or Skype call with your customers is you can hear how much “pain” they’re in. 

    The verbal cues that you pick up are absolutely priceless when it comes to understanding where the conversation should go and what is most important to them.  Another helpful tactic is to calculate the employee Net Promoter Score to get feedback on how to increase employee satisfaction.

    Use your welcome email

    When someone signs up for your list or purchases a product, you probably send them a welcome email.

    The welcome email is by far the most opened email you’re ever going to send.

    In fact, I’ve had welcome emails open at over 70%!

    email-open-rates

    When someone opts in to your list, you can send an email like this:

    welcome-email-sample

    The key to this email is saying:  “Hit reply to this email and tell me one thing you’re struggling with right now.”

    And when I would send this email, I’d get a TON of replies like this:

    welcome-email-reply

    This is just one example of someone telling me what their challenge is.  I can then turn this into a useful piece of content.

    Check out the Groups You Belong to

    I belong to quite a few marketing groups.  Some of them are around SEO, others are for selling online courses.

    In one of the Facebook  groups I belong to, I started to notice a pattern.  People were talking about Kajabi.

    First Facebook Group Question Kajabi
    Second Facebook Group Question
    Third Facebook Group Kajabi Question

    Not only were people talking about it, but those posts were among the most highly commented on posts in the group.

    Now, I’ve never actually used Kajabi (a platform to sell your online course), but it seems to be a hot button topic among the course creators in the group.

    Solving their Kajabi challenges would make a great blog post in the online course niche.

    Use Quora

    The question and answer site, Quora, can be a goldmine for finding challenges that your audience faces.

    After you log in to the app, simply enter in your topic.

    For instance, let’s say we want to see what people are saying about Kajabi (the online course platform). 

    We would simply type in Kajabi into the search box.

    Quora Search Box

    This returns a series of questions people have asked along with the answers they’ve provided.

    Quora Responses

    Now you can scan the questions to get specific topics for your new blog post.  Each of these questions represents a “real” person wanting more information on how to do something.

    Analyze the Pain Points

    Now that you’ve done your research, it’s time to analyze the pain points and put them into buckets.

    Let me show you what I mean:

    If you look at some of the comments in the Facebook group, people are asking for feedback related to features:

    “Should I keep my membership site on the platform”

    “Should I use the email functionality”

    “Can I pause my account?”

    Things like that.

    And if you look in the Quora answers, I’ll find things like:

    “Comparing Kajabi and Teachable (competitor)”

    “Comparing Kajabi and Thinkific (competitor)”

    "Comparing Kajabi and Its Alternatives"

    I like to keep these pain points in mind while I’m searching for keywords… which brings us to Step 3. 🙂

    Step 3:  Keyword research

    Now that you have your pain points, it’s time to do some keyword research.  This is the heart of all of our successful content.

    When we create SEO focused content, we want to make sure that each blog post we write has some search value. 

    I’m going to show you how to do this in a tool called Growthbar.

    First thing you’ll do is head over to the keyword research tool and type in “Kajabi”.  I typically like to start with a broad search and narrow in as needed.

    kajabi keyword reasearch

    Once you click the blue button, you're going to see a list of keyword ideas around the term Kajabi that people are searching for.  

    You will see the keywod, the monthly searches, and the cost per click of that keyword if you were going to buy ads on Google.

    keyword ideas

    You can then scroll down to find keyword ideas that fit the pain points that we uncovered before.

    For instance, one of the pain points we uncovered centered around Kajabi Competitors. 

    kajabi competitors

    Competitor articles are one of my favorite types of articles to write for 2 reasons:

    1.   They typically attract people who have money to buy your product or service.  If you're looking for a competitor to a product, chances are you want to buy something.

    2.  They are typcially fairly easy to rank... meaning we'll have to acquire a lot less links than we would if we were going after a highly competitive keyword.

    I know it "only" gets 50 searches per month.  But in my experience, these types of posts convert like gangbussters.  And afterall, we want customers, not just traffic.

    (Note:  If you’re new to content focused SEO, you might be tempted to go after the keywords “Kajabi” and “Kajabi Login”.  Those are branded keywords. And even though it says it’s “easy” to rank for them, you won’t get any traffic. People searching for Kajabi will click on the Kajabi website.)

    Now, we want to see the difficulty score of the keyword "Kajabi Competitors."

    Keyword difficulty is an approximation of how hard it will be to rank in the top 10 for a given keyword. (0 being easy, 100 being almost impossible).

    As you can see in the image below, the keyword difficulty score is 22, meaning the Keyword "Kajabi Competitors" is fairly easy to rank in the top 10.

    kajabi competitors difficulty

    With this particular keyword, we can write a list post naming all of Kajabi's competitors, as well as the features, benefits, and price points.


    Step 4:  SERP analysis

    Now that you have your keywords, it’s time to do a SERP analysis.  Again, if you’re unfamiliar with SEO, SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page.  (Basically page one on Google)

    Our goal with the SERP analysis is to identify what type of content we need to write in order to rank in the top 3, see how many links we’ll need to build, and how hard it’s going to be to compete with the incumbents already ranking.

    Look at Domain Authority

    The very first thing I do is look at the domain authority of each post ranking in the top 10. 

    To do this, I'm going to use Growthbar's Google Chrome Extention (free with the app).

    (Note:  if you have a popular blog or brand, you can probably skip this step.  You’ll be able to compete with anyone.)

    First thing you want to do is check out your own domain authority. 

    In Site Inspector, enter in your domain and the result will be the overall health of the site.

    contentguppy domain authority

    In Ahrefs, DR stands for Domain Rating, which is the equivalent for Domain Authority.  (Each platform has their own notation.)

    Content Guppy's DR is 35.  This is a relatively new site, so that’s not that high.  We’ve got some traction, but there are some limitations on what types of keywords we can compete with.  I’ll show you what I mean in a second.

    Now that we know what our domain authority is, it’s time to see how we stack up against those on the first page.

    Go back over to the keyword research tool and enter in the keyword you want to analyze.  In our case we’ll enter in “Kajabi Competitor”.

    kajabi competitors domain authority

    And I would go through all of the domains on the first page to see where Content Guppy stacks up.

    While most of the domain rankings are higher than Content Guppy, as is expected, there are a few of them that are right in our range.  Including the number 3 spot! 

    That’s a great sign for us.

    This post is going to take some work, but it’s not impossible for me to rank it in a relatively short amount of time.

    Let’s compare that with another keyword.  For instance here’s the domain rankings for the term “keyword research”.

    All of these posts are from huge brands with extremely powerful domains.  If I were to write the single most amazing post on keyword research, it would take me years to compete with these sites.

    Once we have an idea of how realistic it is to rank the post, let’s move on to the number of links we’ll need.


    Analyze the Content

    While analyzing the content for the keyword “Kajabi Review”, I found a few things that we can use to make sure our content is better.

    Improve the user experience

    First up, almost all of the content on the first page contains affiliate links..  This means that these posts aren’t reviews so much as they are sales pages.

    Serp analysis affiliate link

    Immediately, we can provide a better user experience by presenting Kajabi in an honest, straight-forward way.

    Create a Video

    While all of these posts have images on them, it doesn’t seem like there are any videos.

    One very obvious way to make our post better is to have a video on how to create an online course in Kajabi.

    This will show your readers how easy (or difficult) it is to do!

    Address the pain points 

    Finally, you can address the pain points uncovered in step 2.  I guarantee that NONE of the posts in the top 10 actually do this.  

    Take Note of SERP Features

    SERP features are the things at the top of the first page.

    For instance, for the keyword “content development”, there is a featured snippet answering the question “What is content development?”

    content development featured snippet

    Because of this, it’s no accident that this post opens with the question “what is content development?”

    This doesn’t guarantee that I’ll get the feature snippet, but it does give me a chance.

    Step 5:  Create a Content Outline

    Now that you’ve got your pain points and did your serp analysis, it’s time to create a content outline.

    This is where we think about the headline and subheadlines.

    For me, the headline is the <h1> and the subheadlines are <h2>.  I will also add <h3> subheadlines as needed. However, I rarely go below that.

    If you’re writing a “how to” post like this one, then the subheadlines will be the steps needed to take to complete the task.

    If you’re writing a list post, then the subheadlines will be the topics that you’re going to talk about.

    Here’s what my original outline looked like for this blog post.  

    content development outline

    While this is straight forward, one thing that I want to mention is that I try to squeeze some valuable keywords into my subheadlines.

    For instance, the fourth step in this post was originally “Analyze the SERPs”.

    So, I used AHREFs to see if there was any search volume for the phrase “Analyze the serps”.  And here’s what came up:

    analyze the serp volume

    Zero. Nada.  Nothing.

    My gut told me that people were going to search for a term like this.  So, I decided to dig around a bit and see what I could find.

    This is a bit of a guess and check, but after doing some digging, I was able to determine that the keyword SERP Analysis has some signfiicant monthly search volume.

    serp analysis volume

    It gets 590 searches a month.  Which isn’t tons, but hey, I’ll take whatever qualified traffic I can get.

    I know what you’re saying, “Greg, does this actually work?”

    Yes it does!  And I’ll show you!

    On one of the Time Doctor posts called Timesheet Templates, one of our headlines is “Weekly Weekly Timesheet Template Free”.

    timesheet template case study

    The keyword Weekly Timesheet Template gets 4,400 searches per month.

    weekly timesheet template analysis

    This post on Time Doctor ranks 3rd for the keyword “weekly timesheet template”

    weekly timesheet template ranking

    And over the past 3 months, this keyword alone is responsible for 169 clicks.

    weekly timesheet template clicks

    Not bad for adding the keyword into the subheadline.

    Step 6:  Create Great Content

    Now comes the hard part of every content strategy:  Creating great content.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about how to show you “how to create great content.”  I mean, it’s super subjective.

    So, instead, I’ll share a few keys that I think makes our content work.

    Post Thoroughness

    According to a study by Backlinko, the average word count for blog posts in the top 10 is 1,890 words.

    Because of this, most experts will tell you that you need to write long blog posts.

    But “long” posts don’t mean good or even great blog posts.  They just mean that the post has lots of words.

    Instead, I want you to strive to create the most thorough blog post you can.

    (I think this blog post is pretty thorough.  But I’m biased. 🙂 )

    Tell the reader step by step exactly what has to be done… so they can replicate it for themselves.

    User Experience

    Everyone hates popups.  

    Even me.  

    However, they work.  (I know, it’s totally cliche.)

    Anyway, I still want to capture email addresses. So instead of blasting my readers with annoying popups, I use exit intent only.  

    This helps capture email addresses for people who are about to leave.

    And for everyone else, I usually place a simple form somewhere in the middle of the content in order. Solid content modeling plays a role here too, ensuring the layout is user-friendly and information is accessible. I usually add a table of contents or jump links at the beginning of every post to help people navigate to the section that interests them most.

    I usually add a table of contents or jump links at the beginning of every post to help people navigate to the section that interests them most.

    And finally, I don’t have a lot of distractions.  My posts are single column, without a sidebar, and dark letters on white background.

    Relevant Images

    Last but not least, I have relevant images.

    On this blog, I don’t have a lot, if any, stock images.  Nothing against stock images. On Time Doctor we use them all the time.

    However, I find that blogs with the most relevant images that show data and make a point lead to the absolute best blog posts. 

    Step 7:  Content Promotion

    After you create content that is unique and valuable, it’s time to get people to read it and generate inbound leads.

    I know you're going to share it on your social media feeds, so I won't get into that.

    Here are three of my favorite promotion strategies I’ve been using to promote my content.

    Promote in Facebook Groups

    I actually just stumbled upon this strategy with a post I published called Evergreen Funnels.

    I always heard people talking about promoting in Facebook groups, but until this post I’ve never done it.

    I became friends with Amy Crane, the founder of Social Lab Marketing and wrote a post where I break down her funnel.

    Amy then promoted the post in her Facebook group.

    Promote in Facebook Group

    And this definitely drove a bit of traffic.

    Facebook Group Traffic

    Again, not a huge amount.  But it didn’t take a whole lot of work to do.  

    Promote in Forums

    Lately, forums have been my number one way of getting traffic to my blog posts.

    If you look at my top channels, you’ll see that the form “Growth Hackers” occupies 3 of the spots.

    Forum Traffic

    Here’s how to do it:

    Step 1:  Find a forum

    Almost every niche and industry has them and they’re pretty easy to find.

    All you have to do is search “niche/industry and forum” into Google.

    For instance, I searched for “coffee and forum” and came up with a fairly decent list of forums. 

    Forum Search

    Step 2:  What Content works best?

    If the forum posts statistics, or some quantifiable metric (like upvotes), then take a few minutes to scan each post and see which types of posts work best.

    Step 3:  What are the rules?

    Some forums won’t allow you to post a blog post without first being an active contributor first.  

    So before sharing your post with the group, take a few minutes to understand the dynamic and what is expected of newcomers.

    A quick note about forums:  Obviously some niches like marketing and fitness are going to be a lot more fruitful than something like coffee.  However, if you’re just starting out, it makes sense to give forums a try.

    Blogger Outreach

    I recently published a post called 108 Blogging Tools to Grow Your Blog Fast.

    Blogging Tools Headline

    In this post, I link to about 90 different blogs and companies when I mention their tool. (I used some duplicates.)

    This gives me a GREAT excuse to reach out to 90 different people.

    I usually just use this email script:

    Hey (first name)

    I just wanted to let you know that I mentioned you in my latest blog post about blogging tools.

    You can check it out here.

    Greg

    Some people will simply say “thanks”.  Some people will ignore it. But you’ll also get quite a few people to share it.

    Leadpages Tweet

    At the time the screenshot below was taken, this was the only real way we promoted this post.  (We did email our list and that got us 15 or so visitors. The rest came from this outreach strategy.)

    blogging tools traffic

    Not too shabby for getting a brand new post off the ground. 🙂

    In order for this strategy to work, make sure you’re generous with building external links to your content.

    I like to have 5-10 links for every 1,000 words I write.  That way for a 3,000 word post, I have 15-30 influencers to reach out to.

    Now it’s your turn…

    When creating effective content, every content developer needs to have a stepby step process that they can replicate over and over again to churn out good content.

    This is our 7 step process to churn out SEO focused content on a regular basis.

    This is the exact same process that we use at Time Doctor to grow our blog to over 130,000 visitors per month.

    And it’s the same content development process I’m using to grow Entice. 

    I can’t wait to see what type of content you produce using this process.