Research and plan content for ecommerce

Step-by-step Playbooks
, , , , , , ,
1

Business benefits

Increase your audience and traffic through effective keyword research.

Create a spreadsheet for each keyword section as your Content Roadmap or use this template.

Conduct content gap analysis using AHrefs by selecting the Content Gap tool, entering competitor domains, exporting to CSV, and importing to your Content Roadmap Sheet.

Content gap analysis allows you to see what your competitors are ranking for but you are not. You can use the Competing Domains section in your dashboard to find competitors or enter them manually. It can be easier to outrank sites with a lower domain rating than your own.

When exporting, select Custom and choose the number of rows to export. 2,000 rows is a good number. You may also be able to discover high-intent business-critical keywords to add to your content roadmap.

Use Pain Point SEO to find keywords based on customer pain points, note keyword ideas and download Keywords Everywhere to generate keyword lists based on these ideas.

The best way to find customer pain points is through customer research such as interviews, or by scanning communities or forums where your ideal customer hangs out.

After installing the Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension, search for your noted keyword ideas on Google and gather suggested keywords that appear in the columns on the right of the page. Copy these keywords directly into AHrefs Keywords Explorer, select the search icon, export as CSV, and import them to your content roadmap sheet under a separate tab.

You can also use a competitor URL and enter it into AHrefs, then use the Organic Keywords report to find keywords and export them as CSV.

Brainstorm head keyword permutations using tools like Ahrefs and Answer The Public.

A head keyword is usually one keyword that describes what you do. For example, if you are selling kettlebells, your head keyword would be kettlebells. Using permutations of these keywords can help you build a huge backlog of topic ideas.

Using Keywords Everywhere:

  1. Search for different head keywords in Google and look at the Long-Tail Keywords section under the Keywords Everywhere Columns.
  2. Copy and paste these keywords into the Keywords Explorer tool in AHrefs and hit search.
  3. Export as CSV.
  4. Import to your Content Roadmap under a separate tab called Keywords Everywhere.

Using Answer The Public:

  1. Enter your main head keyword and select search.
  2. Download the CSV file of results.
  3. Import into Ahrefs Keyword Explorer tool to get search data.
  4. Export the results as CSV.
  5. Import into your content roadmap under a separate tab labeled Head Keyword Permutations.

Pull relevant keywords from your research and identify topic clusters.

Clustering allows you to build a topical authority and creates a good user experience. Topic clustering is based on the idea to plan, write, and link together content that covers a similar topic.

Under a new tab labeled All Relevant Keywords on your Content Roadmap Sheet:

  1. From every tab, copy the columns Keyword, Volume, Keyword Difficulty (KD), and CPC, and paste them into the new tab you created.
  2. Add columns called Relevant and Cluster.
  3. Sort the Keyword Volume column by highest first.
  4. Remove any results that have 0 search volume, or the field is blank.
  5. Identify keywords that are relevant to your business and put an X in the column Relevant.
  6. Identify cluster topics and enter the topic ideas/head cluster keyword into the Cluster column.

Once you finish, sort the Cluster column to keep all clusters together and move across to a separate tab called Clustered KW.

Map topics to your buyer’s journey to focus content on TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU stages.

  1. On the Clustered KW tab, add a new column at the beginning for Pillar KW.
  2. Add a new row above each clustered section.
  3. Select a pillar keyword from each topic cluster and add it to the top row for that cluster.
  4. Add a column at the end for Buyers Journey.
  5. Determine the buyer’s journey for each keyword using either a quantitative method or intuition.

Identify new topics for buzzworthy content using a tool like BuzzSumo.

Head to BuzzSumo, enter your topic, and select search. Identify topics that resonate with your topic clusters and add them to the Clustered KW tab, adding notes if necessary and tagging them as Buzzworthy rather than a buyer stage.

Create a content roadmap report that writers can use to create content.

The Content Roadmap Report is the finalized document and center of operations from which you run your content program. You can customize this template based on your organization’s needs.

Under the content roadmap report tab template:

  1. Enter your pillar keyword for a topic cluster under the Theme column.
  2. Enter the keywords for that topic cluster under Target Keywords column.
  3. Enter the keyword data for Search Volume, KD, and CPC, under the relevant columns.
  4. Research and fill in the Suggested Titles column.
  5. Copy the keywords to the URL Slug column, highlight them, select Find & Replace, and replace the gaps with “-”.
  6. Add keywords to the Secondary Keywords column using AHrefs Keywords Explorer to find secondary keywords.
  7. Add the Funnel Stages.
  8. Complete the Snippet Opportunities Column by using Ahrefs Keyword Explorer to search for your keyword and filter by Featured Snippets under SERP Features.
  9. Find Content to Beat by searching Google for your terms and identifying sites that shouldn’t be ranking as high, but are due to high-quality content. Fill in the column Why is This Content Better.
  10. Fill in the Relevant Offer like a PDF, Main CTA such as email list, and Relevant Product Use Cases.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T10:08:44Z

2

@hesh_fekry done with this as a draft

  1. Should the title be Create a Content Roadmap Report for ecommerce?
  2. I need access to the template document in order to take screenshots and link through the playbook.
  3. There is another lesson after that’s creating a content brief for pieces of content, I didn’t think this was relevant to this playbook, but would like to get a second opinion. (Lesson 13).