Content Team – FatRank

Great content in isolation isn’t great content.

In my personal experience, creating scalable high-quality content is one of the most significant challenges that an SEO agency, lead generation company, affiliate marketer or rank and rent business encounter.

In September 2022 all the biggest affiliate marketers and SEO agencies understand topical authority is key to success.

But the common question asked in SEO Masterminds is “How Do You Create a Team of Content Writers for Your Business?”.

The goals of your content team need are to find ways on how to produce content faster and to higher information gain scores.

How can you accelerate your content creation velocity?

How can you publish more content and publish fearlessly?

Business owners have the knowledge that feeds great content. But the CEO is not going to be writing the content so the task is how can the content team create compelling copy that reads as industry expert-level content.

So we will dive into how to build an effective content team.

What is a Content Team?

A content team is responsible for the ideation, creation, optimisation and distribution of all content strategies.

An effective content team is an integral part of the growth of new copywriting being published and existing content optimised.

The content marketing success will depend on the quality of your SEO content writers and training on what creating high-quality content looks like.

Content Team Roles

Here are the most common content team positions.

Content Strategist

The content strategist is the brains behind content marketing success.

A content strategist controls the content roadmap and how the company will use grow the topical clusters on the website.

The content strategist role manages the team of content writers, editors, and designers.

The content strategist core roles are being responsible for assigning tasks, supporting writers, receiving deliverables, and managing project workflows. This person also creates and maintains the process documents with the help of the CEO or a business owner.

Some businesses outsource the actual content creation and the content strategist needs to make sure the auditing the freelance writers work is checked before uploaded.

Some content teams name this role “content operations manager”, “senior content manager”, or “Editorial Content Director”.

Senior Editor

Senior editors main duties are driven by “How can we improve our quality and how can we produce more content”.

Consistently looking to improve the systems and training for your content team.

Weekly calls with the editors and content writers a must to motivate, discuss pressing problems and providing solutions with training.

It worth noting in many companies a senior editor and an editor is merged into one job role position.

Editor

Editors should be reading every single word published by the proofreaders and looking at how to improve.

Common mistakes should be logged and updated on the standard operating procedures.

An editor is responsible for copy editing tasks, this role will manage ongoing improvements and tweaks to existing content published. This role can be very helpful for producing highly polished content.

Some content teams name this role “content editing”, “content cleaner”, “reviser”, “progressive optimisation expert”, or “Editorial Assistant”.

It worth noting in many businesses an editor and proofreader carry out both roles in the same position.

Proofreader

Proofreaders review every article created to analyse quality assurance.

A proofreader will grade and feedback to content writers where they can improve.

Proofreading every piece of content created is essential before hitting publish.

A proofreader also takes the responsibility of formatting and publishing content.

Some content teams name this role “content uploader”, “website uploader, or “content publisher”.

It worth noting in many companies a proofreader and an editor is merged into one job role position.

Content Writer

A content writer creates the copy following the content outlines and content briefs.

Following internal documents and content plans the heavy lifting of the content creation is produced by the content writers.

Most content team roles start out in content writing before being promoted to editors and content strategists.

Some content teams name this role “freelance writers”, “creative copywriter”, “content creator”, or “digital copywriters”.

Content Team Tasks

There are many tasks for the content team to carry out as indicated below.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of mapping out what keywords is relevant to your website and trying to cover all these within your content strategies.

Many content marketers see this task only for new website build-outs.

But keyword research is never-ending and consistently trying to find gaps in your content on a page-level is important for content expansion techniques. A single page has the ability to rank for thousands of keywords within the same corpus.

Then domain level gap analysis will show pages you are completely missing off your website. Covering the topic in its entirety is important to boost your topical authority scores.

There are many amazing keyword research tools like ahrefs and semrush that allow you to research, organize, and prioritize your best content opportunities faster than ever.

Keyword Clustering

Keyword clustering quickly groups your keywords into clusters to determine what topics are covered on what page.

We tested all the keyword clustering tools on the market and found keyword cupid to be the best for value, quality and speed.

The grouping of keywords is important to avoid a single website targeting the same keyword on multiple pages.

The keyword clusterisation, now allows your content team to start to create the content outline and content briefs for each individual page being written.

Content Outline

The content outline gives the writers all the following information:

• Focus Keyphrase
• H1 Heading
• H2 sub-headings
• H3 sub-topics of the h2 headings
• Questions
• Keywords to include
• Keyphrases to include
• Topics to include

MarketMuse and SurferSEO have a text editor that gives you real-time feedback on how well your content matches the topic models.

The text editors show you how to write like an industry expert and competitive data on the top search competitors for your page intent.

Content Brief

The content brief is everything the SEO content writers need to know before starting the content creation.

Some important elements to educate the writer on is:

The content brief must be read prior to content creation by the writers to make sure the search intent on the page is perfect.

The content outline works alongside the content brief to give your writers the best chances to write like an industry expert.

Content Creation

The content creation is carried out by your writers who produce the articles following the content briefs.

Creating content should be appealing and awe-inspiring content for the viewers.

Copywriters produce compelling sales copy that converts readers into potential customers. But if these articles are not SEO optimised there will be no readers to convert.

SEO content creation can rank well but without it having persuasive copy you won’t convert the viewers into new customers.

The content creation needs to be a balance between the two where it is SEO optimised and written to convert your audience.

Uploading of Content

Once articles have been created and proofread the uploading to your website needs to be formatted and structured correctly.

The uploading of content needs to be carefully crafted with sufficient structured data.

Important structured data when uploading content is:

• H1, H2, H3s
• Blockquotes
• Images
• Schema
• Numbered Lists (ol tags)
• Bullet Point Lists (ul tags)
• Internal Links

Progressive Optimisation

No matter how much experience you have in content creation or content optimisation you will look back on previous work and find ways to improve upon it.

What knowledge you have in September 2022 is more than you had six months ago and for this reason, progressive optimisation is a must for all content teams.

Google is unpredictable and the goalposts can change so the content upgradation is important to align with what the algorithms expect to see.

Our progressive optimisation team continuously optimise existing content with content expansion techniques to boost the websites opportunity to rank for keywords.

Finding the accidental keywords the pages are ranking for and adding them into the content is a great strategy used to expand the content production. But at times these accidental keywords could be highlighting content cannibalisation issues to create new pages on a topic or merge multiple posts into one webpage.

Progressive optimisation strategies also provide updated fresh content necessary to rank in any QDF (query defines freshness) topics.

For more information on progressive optimisation tricks and tips check out our guide on Progressive Optimisation SEO.

What Content Optimisation Tools Are Needed For Your Content Team?

The best content optimisation tools for your content team are:

There are other popular tools like Frase and Hemmingway App you could prefer if you need cheaper alternatives.

We have rounded up the full list of content optimisation tools in September 2022 to give your content team the best chances to create content better and faster.

Characteristics of Your Content Team

Below are a few characteristics you want from all your content team:

• Experience in SEO – Hiring an SEO-savvy writer will save you a lot of headaches down the line. This type of writer will understand the nuances of writing for search engines and will know how to utilise target keywords within the copy.
• Goal-oriented – Content writers that aim to help their clients reach their goals. Be on the lookout for freelancers who are only there for a quick paycheck and nothing more. The holy grail of content writers is proud of the output they create.
• Content marketing experience – Candidates who have more experience in content marketing or digital marketing, in general, are preferable as they will be easier to train and get up to speed with your content creation workflows.
• Proficient in grammar and spelling – You’re hiring a writer, so this characteristic is non-negotiable. I recommend testing your writers using Grammarly, a top-tier tool for evaluating one’s proficiency in grammar and spelling.
• Deadline-driven – Content marketing requires a great deal of consistency, and you can’t afford delays. Therefore, ensure that you work with writers that can adhere to the deadlines you set for them.

Note that when you aim to hire a more qualified writer, you need to be prepared to pay a higher rate. If you don’t have the budget for quality content, be prepared to take on a lot of the editing work in-house.

Summary

A motivated content team will strive to improve their content production process on a daily basis.

The content optimization tools are there to research, plan, publish, and optimize content faster.

With the right processes in place from content briefs to the writers and editors checking before being uploading, it allows you to publish with confidence that every piece of content will perform.

A vital step in any online business marketing strategy is to create a quality content team. A steady stream of fresh content is an essential element of any successful digital marketing strategy.

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