The editorial plan is an indispensable tool for organizing the publications of a blog, magazine or online newspaper. Through establishing a good calendar of titles, the ideal result can be achieved. That is, creating interesting posts for users and increasing traffic.
This is done both by ranking on Google and through sharing on social media. Without creating the annoying cannibalization of content. Because this is the key point.
The editorial calendar of a blog or digital newspaper helps to plan your online presence over time but it is not enough, it is not enough. At the base is always the planning of the activities to be carried out.
That’s why today we’re tackling this topic that is so useful for both web copywriters and those who need to implement good on-page SEO optimization.
What is an editorial plan, definition
An editorial plan is a programmatic and fluid document, therefore capable of adapting and shaping itself, that allows organizing the publications of a project. That can be web and print.
We usually speak of an editorial plan for corporate and personal blogs, online newspapers and digital magazines but it can also be set up for newsletters, Facebook pages, LinkedIn profiles and Instagram accounts.
Blogging allows us to create an infinite number of articles, and the desire to be featured to improve SEO performance drives us to set up an editorial plan based on abundance.
The more I publish, the greater the opportunities to be found. In reality, it doesn’t work that way: there is a need for organization of the content marketing, writing and article publishing process.
Must-read: what checks before publishing an ecommerce
What the editorial plan is for
The role of the editorial plan is to figure out what needs to be published on a blog, following what order and intercepting a certain number of topics. Specifically, it serves to give concrete form to keyword research. And especially its informational soul. That is, the one that intercepts queries made by users without a clearly commercial or transactional search intent.
Informational (or informational) keywords account for the majority of searches made by online users and help build user loyalty, not only increasing traffic but allowing potential customers to intercept your brand. This is why investing on effective editorial plan is good.
The importance of a good editorial plan for web writing gains more value when we consider that the work done allows you to create a publishing calendar capable of increasing traffic and avoid the overlap of different content such as articles, pages, tags and categories.
How to make an SEO editorial plan
Let’s move on to the practical aspect of this topic dedicated to content management: how do you structure an editorial plan? The steps to create a good document and get your publications in order:
- Analyze the brand you are curating.
- Identify the tone of voice.
- Define goals and KPIs.
- Study the target audience while doing keyword research.
- Create an editorial calendar.
- Check the evolution of the plan.
The first point to emphasize is brand analysis. We need to embrace the set of values that underpin the business we want to explore. In this way, it is possible to generate a tone of voice-the communicative style to be followed for the blog and articles-that will serve as the background for the writing.
Define the goals of the blog
Without tone of voice your editorial project will not go far, it will not be recognizable among the many online competitors. The same goes for goals: you need to identify the needs, the wants, the usefulness you can achieve through the presence of a content stream. For example:
- New visits, perfect for a site that makes money with display ADV.
- Leads to turn into prospects through an email funnel.
- Potential customers requesting a quote for a consultation.
- Buyers for your ecommerce of real or digital products.
- Users who need to download free infoproducts.
The combinations are endless, and the need to be met is just that: to identify the standards to be achieved by thinking about KPIs. That is, the indicators to be monitored so as to set possible targets on Google Analytics. Then we move on to the work of defining the audience.
Organize target audience and reader personas
The target audience analysis phase goes hand in hand with keyword research. Tools such as Semrush and Seozoom allow you to discover interesting nuances of people to reach with articles.
Articles that are organized to meet needs of what are the personas. That is, ideal-typical representations to be created (thanks in part to tools such as FlowMapp) so as to have all the characteristics, needs, and requirements of the audience divided by macro-cluster.
The importance of the editorial calendar
You reach the goal: from the keyword research comes the list of useful titles to gather the goals defined upstream. In this document you can define the rhythm of publications, the tasks of the various bloggers and web writers, operational details such as categories to be added and title tags to be filled in.
What are the best tools for creating a writing calendar? In most cases you can rely on a good Excel file but there are complex editorial projects that need space to manage more information. So it is easy to have the need to lean on tools such as Asana, Google Calendar and Trello that offer great potential especially for editorial teams of bloggers and journalists.
Relationship between copywriting and SEO
The reasons for creating an editorial plan go beyond good organization of headlines. Any self-respecting SEO strategy needs good content, and the editorial plan allows you to create clear rules to avoid major problems and take advantage of all the resources of a continuing process:
- Publishing.
- Review.
- Optimization.
As already suggested, the editorial plan allows you to avoid titles that may compete with other publications, perhaps by checking with Filippo Jatta’s handy JFactor tool that relates two serp with different queries to find out if there are similar results.
In addition, the compilation of an editorial calendar makes it possible to assess the presence of recurring themes, topics that always return at the same times of the year. This makes it possible to assess the possibility of creating a single piece of content and constantly updating it to avoid unnecessary photocopy publications that would only increase the list of content capable of cannibalizing itself.
Example: managing a recurring topic
The topic is that of the baccalaureate exam. Every year, interest in this topic always resurfaces during the same period. So, does it make sense to publish an article every year devoted to how to pass the baccalaureate exam? Perhaps it is better to update the old one, rewrite it and republish it.
Perhaps reinforce it with a series of internal links coming from articles dedicated to the news of the year in question that can also have great space on Google News and the Discover section.
Reflections like these are fundamental to advanced, I would say strategic, on-page optimization. But it is impossible to operate in this direction without an editorial plan. That’s why you need to develop it as best you can.