The most successful content marketers out there share one thing in common: they write with intention.

While business blogging and social media marketing may seem like a waste of time to some, it can produce powerful results for your business if you have a game plan in place for each piece of content that you create.

The internet provides you with an enormous amount of data to come up with content that is relevant to your audience and what they’re searching for online. By carefully conducting keyword research, using the right content format, and being strategic in the way that you approach content topics and ideas, you, too, can experience tremendous results that will greatly benefit your search strategy.

Here are 3 areas that you must focus on with your search strategy:

1. Keyword Research
We recently dedicated an entire article to the importance of keyword research and how to go about it.

You’ve probably heard a thing or two about long tail and short tail keywords. In addition, here are 4 more types of keywords that you need to know about if you want results:

• Brand phrases: Any terms relevant to your brand name or product name
• Product phrases: The terms people are using in reference to your products and services
• Buyer-intent keywords: Your conversion keywords. Examples could include “buy” or “compare.”
• Related keywords: Terms that are related to your business and have a lot of search volume.

So now that you’re familiar with the types of keywords that you should be thinking about, how do you go about building a keyword list for your business?

One way to accomplish this is to take advantage of Google Suggested Searches by typing in your main keywords into the search query and taking note of the suggestions at the bottom of the page. These suggestions are what people are typing into search engines to find businesses such as yours.

Another effective tactic is to take note of the titles and meta descriptions that appear on the first page of Google when you type in your identified keywords.

You can also turn to Google AdWords to see which keywords are used in ads higher up on the page.

These are all free keyword research resources that can give you some powerful insight into which keywords your targeted audience is typing into search queries.

2. Content Research
Once you know which keywords you should be focusing on, another important step is to identify the types and formats of content that are most appealing to your target audience.

There’s a great tool called Buzzsumo that will let you analyze the types of content that perform the best for a certain topic. Even more, you can use this tool to analyze how your competitor’s content is performing.

Here’s what this research tool reveals:

• The most shared content by keyword
• When to publish content based on your industry
• The types of content that perform best with your target audience
• The optimal number of words that your posts should be

3. Developing Strategic Content Ideas
A critical skill that you need to master is to be able to come up with engaging content titles AND stay on subject.

Using a content calendar can help make sure you’re executing your strategy effectively by producing content regularly and incorporating a healthy mix of content with targeted keywords. Also, it will do wonders in reducing the amount of time that you spend thinking of what to write about.

Focus on these 3 key areas to not only produce more relevant content, but rank better in search results as well.