Hi there, Something that doesn’t get talked about enough is prioritisation.
And more specifically, how to prioritise.
So today, I’m sharing the framework I use to help prioritise content creation and/or optimisation as an SEO.
It’s a simple way to prioritise against what matters the most; commercial outcomes. And to answer the question that many get stuck at; “what content should I create or improve next/first?”
Let’s get stuck in.
I think about content as fitting into one of three groups:
Content that helps a user convert
Content that helps a user consider
Content that helps a user discover
And think of this more as types of content rather than keywords; given that keywords map to a type of content anyway.
Using the framework is easy.
Work through one group at a time; starting with convert and moving down to discover.
Convert
Content in the convert group will always be your highest priority. It’s the content that’s going to lead to a conversion; obviously including PDPs and PLPs and service pages, but also ‘brand’ pages like discount codes other types that are searched for just before a conversion happens.
Make sure these all exist and are optimised before moving down the framework. Without these, you’re missing out on opportunities to rank for the terms that are closer to conversions.
If new page opportunities come up in the future (new products or services), drop them straight in as your highest o priority, above any consider or discover grouped content.
Think of these as bottom of the funnel in a traditional sense. A lot of these might be more competitive and harder to rank for, but they’re basically the end goal (assuming you’re focussed on commercial outcomes like sales and revenue, not vanity metrics like traffic).
After you’ve created content to close gaps and improved existing pages where needed from the convert group, move down.
Consider
Content types grouped under consider are often overlooked; and I’m never really sure why.
People do run searches to compare brands, products and services, and these types of content also heavily surfaced by LLMs right now.
I place “Best of…” listicles in this group, too. And whilst there’s lots of debate as to whether or not you should be creating these to compare your own brand to others to influence LLMs (and always placing your brand at the top), creating this type of content if you’re an eCommerce brand or travel brand, for example, to shine a light on the best products or destinations, is something I really recommend.
Think a beauty retailer rounding up “10 of the best face creams for dry skin” or a travel agent rounding up “10 of the best places for families to stay in Italy.”
Don't overlook these; if you're the brand helping someone consider and can funnel that traffic through to your conversion pages, you're more likely to get that sale or lead.
Discover
I'm not saying this group of content isn't important, but it's the types of pages and posts that are the furthest away from your conversion content.
In other words, if you've not got the pages (or they're not good enough) to rank for the terms that are going to make you money, why would you put resources into prioritising this type of content?
It doesn't make commercial sense. It might drive traffic, but not drive the commercial outcomes you need.
These, to me, help you to increase awareness right through someone's buying journey, and as well as building topical authority that helps your conversion pages to rank.
But if those conversion pages don't exist...
See where I'm going here?
But there's one exception; there's often times when you would want to run some level of discover content (usually in the guise of digital PR) side by side with consideration content creation and optimisation. If you've got a content team and a digital PR team, let's say, this becomes a given.
Again, it's often a balancing act based on what a site needs to grow; and I'm never an advocate of 'leaving link acquisition work until later on.' So long, of course, as the main conversion pages are in place.
But for the biggest impact from digital PR work, anyway, you need those conversion pages to exist and be good enough to compete.
Some sites will have way more consider content they could create than others; I'll let you decide how to balance the consider and discover groups based on your industry and scope of opportunities.
This works at category-level, too...
Don't think you always need to adopt this approach site-wide, it works brilliantly at category-level too.
That is, get all your conversion content in place across a category you're focusing on before moving down to consider and discover content.
Whether you view this site-level or category-level really depends on your current benchmark of what's in place, what improvements need to be made and the scope of content opportunities in your sector.
Figuring this out is part of what strategy is.
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If you learned something from this issue or it’s made you think about SEO a little differently, please consider forwarding it to someone else on your team.
I’m on a mission to make sure more SEO investment actually has an impact on real business metrics.
Appreciate you making it to the end; same time next week?
- James Brockbank
P.S. If you ever need expert support with SEO or digital PR and want to drive results that actually matter, I’d love to chat. Let’s talk.
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