What separates a strategy from a list of topics
A strategy prioritizes, makes trade-offs and gets measured. A list of topics just fills a calendar, which is why it rarely survives the third month.
- A numeric goal tied to revenue
- Topics chosen for value, not volume
- A production pace that is sustainable, and sustained
- The calendar that never says why these topics
- Search volume as the only criterion
Timeline: 3 to 6 months before first results Review every quarter
Key takeaways
- A content strategy answers four questions: what goal, for whom, what content, in what order.
- Start from revenue, not traffic: working back to the number of qualified visits you need makes the goal concrete.
- Pick a topic for its value: a hundred searches from buyers beat ten thousand searches from the merely curious.
- Production capacity is the real constraint: two pieces a month kept up for a year beat eight a month abandoned in month three.
- In an SEO content strategy, updating often pays off more than publishing: pages sitting on page two are the richest seam.
Most of the content plans I take over fail for the same reason: they list topics without ever saying which ones make money. They produce an active blog, sometimes traffic, and almost never leads. The method below flips the logic: it starts from the goal, then works back to the topics.
What is a content strategy?
A content strategy is a document that answers four questions: what business result you are aiming for, which people you need to reach and with which questions, what content answers them, and in what order to produce it with the resources you have. It covers creating, distributing and updating content, across every channel the company uses.
It differs from three related notions that are often confused with it:
| Notion | What it decides | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Content marketing | The discipline: attracting customers with useful content rather than advertising | "We want our customers to find us rather than us chasing them" |
| Content strategy | The plan: goals, audiences, topics, channels, priorities, measurement | "Twenty pieces in six months, starting with renovation quotes" |
| Editorial line | The tone, the angles, what the company talks about and what it doesn't | "Real figures, never a promise of results" |
| Editorial calendar | The when: dates, formats, owners | "Tuesday the 14th: article on the cost of insulation" |
The test that separates a strategy from a wish list fits in one question: does your plan let you turn a topic down? If any reasonable topic can get in, it is not a strategy yet. Mine always starts with the criterion that excludes, not the one that includes.
Digital content strategy: which channels?
A digital content strategy spreads content across the channels where your audience is. Each one plays a different role:
- The website and blog (SEO) capture demand that already exists: the person searches, your page answers. Content that ranks well keeps getting found months after it was published.
- Social media creates or sustains attention nobody asked for. Its effect lasts a few days, but it builds the brand and recycles in-depth content into short formats.
- The newsletter speaks to people who already know you. It is the channel that turns an audience into leads.
- Video shows what text describes poorly: a hands-on task, a before-and-after, a demo.
For a small business, there is no need to be everywhere. One channel that captures demand (SEO, most of the time) and one channel that keeps the relationship going are enough to start. The rest of this page focuses on the first.
How to create a content strategy: the 7 steps
Seven steps, in this order. Skipping one costs you later, usually in month three, when the calendar is running on empty.
1. Set a numeric goal, starting from revenue
Work the chain backwards, from money to visits. How much do you want this channel to generate over twelve months? Divide by your average order value: you get a number of sales. Divide by your close rate: a number of leads. Divide by your pages' conversion rate: a number of qualified visits.
A fictional example: a renovation company is aiming for €120,000 in additional revenue. Its average job is worth €6,000, so it needs 20 jobs. It wins one quote in four, so it needs 80 leads. Its service pages turn 2% of visits into leads: it needs 4,000 qualified visits over the year, a little over 330 a month.
Three hundred and thirty visits a month on commercial pages is a concrete goal. Phrased as "we need more traffic", the same project would have produced thirty generic articles and zero sales. This chain of divisions often shows that the goal is either modest or out of reach with the planned resources: both are worth knowing before you start.
2. Define the audience and its questions
Not a four-page "persona", but a person in a situation: what they have already tried, what they fear, what they are trying to achieve, and the questions they ask before buying.
The best source is free: your latest conversations with prospects. Open your emails, your meeting notes, the questions sent to support. Write the questions down exactly as they were phrased, clumsiness included. In an hour, you get a list of real intents, in your buyers' own words, that no tool would have given you.
3. Audit what exists before producing
Two checks, before you write a single line.
The technical foundations. Are your pages indexed, is the site fast, is there any blocker that makes the work pointless? Publishing on a poorly indexed site is like printing posters and leaving them in a box. If in doubt, see what an SEO audit example looks like.
Content already published. List it with its performance in Search Console. Spot the pages ranking on page two: they are a few improvements away from results, whereas new content starts from zero. Also spot pages competing for the same query: they need to be merged.
4. Map the demand
Turn the questions from step 2 into a map of your market:
- Broaden with Google: autocomplete, the "People also ask" box, related searches at the bottom of the page.
- Check the volumes in a keyword tool, to find out which phrasing of each question gets searched most.
- Use Search Console: queries that already show your site without a click are topics on which Google considers you relevant.
- Group by topic, not by keyword: twenty phrasings of the same question justify one well-made page, not twenty pages.
These groups form your pillars: a broad topic, covered by a reference page, surrounded by more specific content that links back to it. At the end, you have a map with covered areas, poorly covered areas and empty areas.
5. Sort topics by value, not volume
This is the step that separates a strategy from a list. For each topic, three questions:
- Value: can the person searching for this become a client?
- Legitimacy: do you have something to say that others don't?
- Feasibility: can you beat the pages already at the top, with your site's current authority?
A topic that fails any of the three leaves the plan, whatever its volume. That is how I end up choosing a query with one hundred and eighty monthly searches typed by buyers over a query with ten thousand typed by students. Volume measures an audience, not value.
6. Choose the formats and size the production
Four types of content make up a solid plan: pillar pages that cover a whole topic, conversion content (pricing, comparisons, concrete cases), thought leadership content that only you can write, and updates to existing pages.
How many can you really produce each month, editing and images included, counting the weeks when nobody will have time? Take that number and cut it by a quarter: that is your real capacity. The planner below splits it across the four types according to how mature your site is.
7. Plan, produce, measure
Produce what is closest to the money first: commercial pages and updates to pages that already rank. In-depth content comes next. Starting with a big guide delays the first encouraging signal by several months, and many projects stop before it arrives.
Then turn the plan into an editorial calendar (date, topic, format, owner), and each piece into written instructions: that is the job of the SEO content brief. The writing itself follows its own method, detailed in how to write a blog post.
For measurement, three indicators are enough, read page by page rather than across the whole site: rankings on the target queries, which move first; qualified visits to commercial pages, which follow; and leads attributed to those pages, which move last and are the only ones that count. A quarterly review compares what was planned, what was produced and the result.
SEO content strategy example: a three-month plan
To make the method concrete, here is the plan it produces for a fictional business: a landscaper working around Nantes, in western France, with a site launched two years ago, about fifteen pages and one person who can produce three pieces of content a month.
Goal. Twenty additional landscaping jobs over the year, which means about 80 quote requests and, at a 2% conversion rate, 4,000 qualified visits a year.
Audience. Homeowners who want to redo their garden, are unsure about the budget and worry about a project that runs over. Their questions: how much does it cost, how long does it take, wood or composite, what to do with a small garden.
Map and priorities:
| Pillar | Related content | Type | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Garden landscaping | Service page to rework; cost of garden landscaping; before-and-after projects | Conversion, thought leadership | 1 |
| Decking | Wood or composite decking; decking price per square meter | Comparison, pricing | 2 |
| Small gardens | Designing a small garden: ideas and plans; low-maintenance garden | List, guide | 3 |
| Maintenance | Garden maintenance contract: what it includes | Conversion | 4 |
Calendar for the first three months:
| Month | Content | Why in this order |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | Rework of the service page; cost of garden landscaping; one before-and-after project | Closest to the quote request |
| Month 2 | Wood or composite decking; decking price; update of the best existing page | Second commercial pillar, plus a quick win |
| Month 3 | Designing a small garden; maintenance contract; quarterly review | Grow the audience, then measure |
This plan explicitly turns down popular topics such as "which plants for a balcony": lots of searches, few buyers of a landscaping project. Social media posts reuse each project as photos, with a link to the matching page.
SEO content strategy: what changes when Google is the channel
An SEO content strategy applies the same method, with five specifics.
The demand already exists. Topics are chosen from what people type, not from what the company wants to say. One page per intent, in the format Google already shows for that query.
Content makes up for neither technical issues nor lack of authority. SEO rests on three pillars: technical (can Google crawl and understand your pages?), content, and authority (what other sites say about you, through their links). Content is the pillar you have the most control over, but it only works if the technical side holds up.
Internal linking is part of the plan. Each supporting piece links to its pillar page, and the pillar page links to the page that converts. A topic covered in full, with pages that reference each other, carries more weight than ten isolated pages on ten topics.
Updating is a line item in the plan. Content that performs degrades if nobody comes back to it. Explicitly set aside part of production for reworking existing pages.
Timelines are long. Allow three to six months before rankings move seriously, longer on a young site. A plan that promises results in six weeks targets queries with no competition, or is wrong.
There is now a sixth specific: AI answers (ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews) reuse passages from well-ranked pages. The differences between the two approaches are covered in GEO vs SEO, and writing the content itself in my guide to SEO writing.
The five mistakes that sink a content strategy
Choosing topics based on search volume. This is the root mistake, the one that produces high-traffic blogs with zero sales.
Publishing before checking the technical side. Half a day of checks up front saves six months of wasted production.
Opening ten topics at once. For fear of missing an opportunity, the plan spreads itself thin. The result: a site that talks about everything without being an authority on anything.
Never going back. A page published eighteen months ago and ranking on page two will earn more from a morning of updating than from a week of new writing.
Confusing the plan with the calendar. A calendar says when to publish; a plan says why these topics and not others. Without the second, the first becomes an obligation to fill slots, and quality collapses by month three.
Adapting the content strategy to your situation
The method stays the same; the proportions change.
- A local business works on few topics but adapts them by area. Demand is low in volume and high in intent: priority goes to service and location pages. That is the territory of local SEO.
- An online store holds most of its value in category and product pages. The blog captures searches made before the purchase and feeds internal links to the pages that sell.
- A service provider has few commercial pages, a long decision cycle and a high value per client. Content serves as proof as much as acquisition: a page that demonstrates a skill is worth several pages that merely claim it.
- A software company has to cover solution searches, comparisons with its competitors and product documentation. Three families, three paces, not to be mixed in a single calendar.
Whatever your situation, publish at least one piece per quarter that nobody else could write: your figures, your experience, your position on a debate in your field. That is what gets you cited, and being cited now matters as much as ranking. If you want a plan built on your goals, that is what I do in my SEO consulting.
Frequently asked questions
What is a content strategy?
A content strategy is the plan that decides which content to publish, for whom, on which channels and in what order, to reach a measurable business goal. It covers creating, distributing and updating content. It is neither an editorial calendar, which is its practical translation, nor a list of keywords, which is one of its outcomes.
What are the steps of a content strategy?
Seven steps, in order: set a numeric goal starting from revenue, define the audience and its questions, audit existing content, map the demand, sort topics by value rather than volume, choose the formats and size the production, then plan, produce and measure page by page.
What is an SEO content strategy?
It is a content strategy whose main channel is the search engine. Topics are chosen from what customers actually type, each page targets one intent, content is grouped into interlinked pillars, and part of the production is set aside for updating existing pages. Allow three to six months before clear results.
What is the difference between a content strategy and an editorial strategy?
The content strategy decides the goals, audiences, topics, channels and priorities. The editorial strategy, or editorial line, decides the tone, the angles and what the company talks about or doesn't. The first says what to publish and why, the second says how to say it.
What is a content strategist?
A content strategist is the person who designs and runs the content strategy: goals, topic selection, priorities, briefs, measuring results. In a small business, this role is often held by the owner, the marketing lead or an outside consultant.
How much content should you publish per month?
The right volume is the one you will sustain for twelve months. Estimate your real capacity, editing and images included, then cut it by a quarter. Two pieces a month for a year beat eight a month for three months followed by nothing, and part of that volume should go to updating existing content.
How do you build a content strategy for social media?
With the same steps: goal, audience, questions, priorities, a sustainable pace. Social media sustains attention nobody asked for, and its effect lasts a few days. For a small business, the most effective approach is often to turn the site's in-depth content into short formats, with a link to the full page.
Build your content plan
I start from your business goals, sort search intents by value and deliver a plan sized to your real capacity.
Written by
Anthony Courtin
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