TAL .010: How to Prioritise Your SEO Content

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Content Writing SEO The Arete Letter

Choosing which content topics to target first can be hard. Here’s a framework to simplify it.

In this letter, you’re going to find out how to prioritise topics for SEO content creation.

1. The Problem

Coming up with content ideas for your brand’s blog is easy (relatively).

You can crunch keywords, talk to customers, ask ChatGPT, or work logically through topics.

But, because ideation is so simple, you run the risk of getting too many ideas.

Which often ends in a ‘pray and spray’ approach as teams try to hit every part of the buyer’s journey across every one of their 10 topic areas.

Diffused power = minimised impact

Attacking a huge number of topics with no real strategy is a good way to hamstring your SEO efforts.

2. The Solution

Organise your editorial approach with a content prioritisation framework.

Two of the most common frameworks: content clustering (cluster your topics, pick a cluster, and work down from general to specific) and BoFu to ToFu (start with content for buyers deciding between providers, then work your way backwards).

Here’s a third option: solution proximity.

I first heard about a similar idea from Gaetano DiNardi on the Content and Conversation podcast.

It works by grouping your content ideas/queries based on how well they match the solution your brand offers (unlike content clustering, which is based on topical authority, or BoFu to ToFu, which is based on the buyer’s journey funnel model).

Each topic is assigned a score from 0–3:

  1. 3 = Your offering is a perfect-fit solution to the topic problem/query.
  2. 2 = Your offering is one of several possible solutions to the topic problem/query.
  3. 1 = Your offering is a partial solution to the topic problem/query.
  4. 0 = The topic problem/query relates to an adjacent problem that your offering doesn’t currently solve.

By targeting the search queries most closely aligned with your offering, it’s easier to turn that traffic into revenue.

The bonus: because of that proximity, your topics are all likely to be clustered around a single topic area anyway, which helps build topical authority.

3. Implementation

Tech Needed: Spreadsheet software like Airtable, Google Sheets, or Excel

Ease of Uptake: Very Easy

  1. Put all your content topics into a spreadsheet.
  2. Make sure you have at least four columns: Topic Name, Topic Area, Journey Stage, and Proximity Score. Feel free to add columns more as needed.
  3. Fill out the first three columns for each topic.
  4. Assign each topic a proximity score from 0–3.
  5. Sort by score (highest to lowest).
  6. Then apply a secondary sort based on Topic Area. You can easily do this in Airtable by adding another sort below your first sort. Start with whatever topic area is the highest priority for your brand.
  7. Your content ideas are now prioritised.

By Duncan Croker

Duncan is a copywriter with a background in editing and storytelling. He loves collaborating with brands big and small, and thrives on the challenges of hard marketing.