4 Ways An Editorial Calendar Can Help Your SEO
If you’re constantly scrambling to write a blog post just to hit the weekly quota, managing a corporate blog with multiple contributors, or planning a big product launch or running a seasonal special, you need to set up an editorial calendar. Actually, even if everything seems to be running smoothly, you still need an editorial calendar if you want to do effective search engine optimization (SEO).
A content marketing editorial calendar is where you keep track of what you plan to publish, how, where and why. It’s also a critical component of your SEO strategy, allowing you to prioritize new content topics (including keyword and competitive research notes), which will help keep you on track and ensure your SEO research is properly integrated within new content.
There are many ways to format an editorial calendar. A comprehensive content marketing editorial calendar (one that encompasses everything from ideation through writing, publishing and social promotion) is a strategic marketing tool that not only keeps your team organized and on top of things but also empowers you to be deliberate and intentional about how you are reaching and engaging with your audience.
Do you publish content regularly as part of your SEO strategy? If so, an editorial calendar can help keep your SEO efforts on track.
Here’s a look at four ways where an editorial calendar can help your SEO and content marketing strategy, including:
- Helps you stay organized across teams
- Provides consistency for your users and freshness for search engines
- Allows you to strategically plan and select high-impactful topics
- Easier to integrate with different content types
1. Helps you stay organized across teams
If you have a team of copywriters and content creators, an editorial calendar enables you to bring them to a single place to visualize and execute your shared goals.
On a good editorial calendar, you have dedicated place where team members can generate post ideas and key topics and where you can assign writing and other editorial tasks to key members of your team. If you manage multiple contributors but don’t have an editorial calendar you might see inconsistencies with publishing deadlines and overlap in content topics.
Even if you’re the only writer for your blog, an editorial calendar puts your goals front and center and offers the accountability you need to create content day after day.
2. Provides consistency for your users and freshness for search engines
Although there is no strict rule about how often you should post, research shows companies that blog more than 16 times each month earn five times as many leads as companies that only blog four times. An editorial calendar helps you create and stick to a regular publishing schedule, which is a great way to build an audience of dedicated readers.
Additionally, an editorial calendar helps ensure you are regularly curating new content or updating existing content to show that your site is “fresh” in the eyes of search engines
Compile all your ideas in your editorial calendar. Before moving into publishing, make sure your editorial calendar has a mix of subject areas. For example, maybe every Monday you publish a roundup blog post of resources your audience might find helpful or every Friday you post a collection of industry news.
3. Allows you to strategically plan and select high-impactful topics
An editorial calendar gives you a place to plan out topics in advance so you have time to do proper keyword research and create high-quality content.
Keyword research is critical if you want to align your content with the words your audience is using when searching. There are many SEO tools, such as SEMrush and MozPro, to check search volume and related keywords and to brainstorm new keyword opportunities.
Pro Tip: Use your keyword research and current ranking reports to analyze your current content. Note where you have content that answers the questions and where you do not. Existing content can be optimized, and gaps in content will need to be filled.
An editorial calendar also gives you a place to keep track of upcoming industry events and conferences, national and industry-specific holidays, and recurring and regular events. For example, if your company is planning a big product, you can align your blog content so it supports and promotes the launch.
4. Easier to integrate with different content types
Your editorial calendar will also help you think about how you’re going to diversify the type of content you post, from videos and webinars to tweets and infographics to blog posts and press releases to white papers and podcasts.
If most of your content is long-form blog posts, then you’re probably missing out on an entire segment of your audience. Instead of relying on blog posts, share a customer’s success story through a case study, deliver research in an easy-to-understand infographic or showcase a product demo in a video.
An editorial calendar can help you keep track of the assets — images, graphics, audio — who is responsible for them and when they will be published. By integrating different content types, you can increase your traffic and conversion rates.
Conclusion
Your editorial calendar is a living document. It’s meant to be fluid, so after using your calendar for a while, go back and look at your progress. Are you meeting your goals? Have you defined new ones?
Over time, you’ll find that when you create and manage an editorial calendar, you and your team will produce better content more efficiently and you’ll become more consistent with your publishing, which should lead to a steady increase in traffic and allow your content team to be more effective with SEO.
Kristan is an independent consultant with 15 years of experience in the SEO industry. Kristan previously founded the award-winning SEO agency Conifr. She’s worked in agency and in-house SEO leadership positions, most notably as the SEO Director at Zillow Group, overseeing a channel that received over one billion web visitors a year. Kristan is a freelance SEO consultant who built and sold a seven-figure agency and now enjoys helping others develop their freelance business.
