How to Search Engine Optimize Your Blog Content- SEO case study

SEO case study :- This is a step-by-step process to create an SEO-optimized article that will rank in SERPs and outperform its competitors.

This is a simple, detailed process focused on the main areas of SEO-optimized content writing using only the essential and free tools.

Tip: Try to follow along with me on your own computer and be free to explore more yourself.

This SEO case study features Hive, an e-commerce automated fulfillment solution based in Germany.

Hive wanted to publish an article on creating a sustainable supply chain for their e-commerce partners and companies looking for sustainable supply chain providers.

Here’s what you will find in this article:-

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. Research company product
2. Content Research-
   • Keyword research
   • Headline, Format, Content type
   • Competitive analysis
3. Building links
   • External links
   • Internal links
4. Creating draft
5. Adding visuals
6. Finalize

Step #1: Understand the company product

The very first step in writing any blog post or article is to research the company one is writing for.

I analysed Hive’s website, its products and services. The aim was to understand Hive’s unique selling proposition so that I could highlight it in my article. I checked their existing blog posts and sorted out the ones that I could use for my article.

The point to be noted here is that the goal of our article is to generate traffic for Hive that ultimately converts to leads therefore, we need to highlight the product’s benefits to their readers.

Step 2# Research

Since I am not an expert in the supply chain area. I needed to explore it to gather valuable information about the topic.

I also checked other blog posts on “sustainable supply chains” found on the first page of Google. These are the competitors of Hive who are creating similar content.

Keyword research

Once I had a fair idea of the topic. My next step was to search for keywords.

• Keywords are those words that users are typing in search engines to find results. These keywords are included in the content so that when a user searches for that particular keyword, the website is visible. I used Google Keyword planner for this task.

First, I searched online for the short tail keywords relevant to the topic: “supply chain,” “sustainability,” and “sustainable.”

If you put each of the keywords in Google, you might see the same website ranking on the first page of SERP repeatedly as all of the high-ranking websites have optimized their content for each of the different keywords (which means that they have included these keywords in their website content). So, we need to include all of those keywords in our article too.

Here by entering the keywords in the search bar, I got results which provided me with the list of keywords that I would need to include in my article, along with other data such as their monthly search volume. I filtered the data according to their search volume, starting from the highest volume to the lowest volume.

Keeping in mind that the keywords I select must be relevant to the company’s product and topic, regardless of search volume.

*Although as a beginner in SEO to keep it simple, I ignored other data such as bid, competition, YOY change etc for now, as I can always go back and update the article accordingly in future.*

The important data for me are the KEYWORDS people are searching for. In the picture above, those keywords are “logistics management”, “eco-friendly packaging” etc.

Now, there are some keywords which are not relevant such as “2030 agenda”, “sustainable fashion”, “sustainable agriculture”, “sustainable tourism” etc. I would not want the search engine to display my article if these keywords are typed in.

The reason is- I want my article to be relevant to the audience we are targeting. If this article is also shown to people interested in other topics, the probability of them converting is very low but the cost of clicks would still occur to Hive.

To copy all the keywords, checkmark the boxes with the right keywords and click on COPY or you can also export them with EXPORT option in the top right corner.

Choose Headline

After gathering a list of short-tail keywords, the second step is to search for the long-tail keywords, users are looking for, in Google. For that, type in your keywords in Google and add the questions in the section “People also ask” to your keywords list. These questions become the sub-topics of the article.

On the right-hand side, is the Keywords Everywhere tool which provides additional information on what users are searching for.

These keywords provided a fair idea of how to structure my headline as well. I had several options to chose a headline-

1. List- “7 ways to create a sustainable supply chain” or “Top ways to create a sustainable supply chain” I wanted to create a detailed guide, so I decided to use lists as a sub-topic in my article.
2. What or How- I checked in Google Keyword planner for the long tail keyword for “what is sustainable supply chain” and appeared this result.

The most relevant result for my article was “What is sustainable supply chain” but the competition was medium which means the chances of ranking on Google are slim.

I searched for another headline “How to create a sustainable supply chain”. The monthly search volume was low but there was no competition at all which means there are no other ranking websites using this exact headline at the moment.

You can also check it here by yourself. All of the high-ranking blogs start from a list or have different keywords in their headlines, like “ways,” “steps,” “build”, “manage”.

So if a searcher types in the keywords “how” “create” “sustainable” and “supply chain” then the chances of getting ranked would be high for my article.

Next, I wanted to check what kind of content is ranking for a sustainable supply chain. As you already checked in the link above that almost all of the sites are ranking for blog posts. Therefore, it was worthwhile to go ahead with the article.

Note- Let’s say if the ranking content types were all videos, then, trying to rank an article for the same keywords will not work.

Next up in the research, was gathering insights from the competitive blogs to find out what they have included in their content.

e.g. what kind of topics they have included, how long are the posts, what have they missed, what could have been made better in their blog posts etc.

My aim was to make an article that had everything the other websites had and also everything else that they did not include. So if someone wants to read about sustainable supply chains, they don’t have to go somewhere else to fill the gap. They should ideally find all the information related to that topic in Hive’s article.

Building links

After the keyword research is done, I had a fair idea of the following things:-

• What heading to choose.
• Which keywords to use.
• Type of content that ranks with those keywords
• Topics and subtopics to include

The next step in this process was to increase the relevancy and authority of the article by using link-building strategies. This can be done in two steps

• First- By adding links from sites which have high authority to let the readers know that the information is backed by data from trusted sources.

If the article links to trusted sources, Google will think of Hive’s website as trustworthy too.

My article had two references of McKinsey, and one of U.S Environmental Protection Agency, both correctly referenced in my article and highly trusted by search engines.

• The second thing to do is internal linking which is adding links of Hive’s existing blogs in my article. It is very important for the linked content to be relevant otherwise readers may not find the content helpful and may decrease the click-through rate in future.

I had linked to Hive’s blog about recycled packaging which was also relevant for my article on “sustainability”.

Creating a draft

After following all these steps, my first draft was formulated. I edited the draft until it was properly formatted, free of grammatical errors, and the article’s links were working.

Adding visuals

I used statistics, charts, and pictures in my article to make it more appealing and clean. I also added an infographic for the opening segment just after the headline.

Ultimately, I had an SEO-optimized article nourished with relevant keywords, links and quality content.

Note: A website’s rank in Google depends on several factors such as site load speed, domain authority, technical SEO etc, therefore it takes time to rank in Google, although it is possible for any niche and website with the right content and SEO strategy.