Effective Website Content Planning: Expert Tips for 2024

Website content planning is as crucial as ever — even more so today with so much information floating around. This guide will simplify the process, showing you how to create a stronger online presence, streamline content production, target your audience more effectively, and enhance user experience. I’ll also explore how content planning tools can do the heavy lifting for you.

Besides having planned the content for many websites myself, I’ve also gathered expert advice so you get plenty of tips and perspectives to help you execute your content strategy with confidence.

What is website content planning?

Website content planning is the process of organizing your website’s content publication to achieve specific goals. It involves defining objectives, researching your target audience, and creating a content calendar for the creation and publication of different types of content. This planning ensures that website content is relevant, engaging, and timely. It also streamlines team collaboration, ensuring optimal resource allocation.

Why website content planning is essential for your business

Website content planning is like creating a blueprint for a house. The work might not be visible to your audience, but without it, you cannot build a strong online presence.

Here’s why planning is essential:

• Stability and reliability. A well-planned content strategy provides a stable foundation for your website, ensuring it remains consistent over time. This reliability builds trust with your audience.
• Direction and purpose. The content plan helps you define your goals and ensure that you’re supporting business growth.
• SEO benefits. When keyword research informs your content strategy from the beginning — versus being an afterthought, you can significantly improve your website’s search engine ranking, making it easier for people to find you.
• Improved user experience. Efficient website planning ensures a smoother user experience. When visitors can easily navigate your pages, they will engage more and be more likely to convert into customers.

Now let’s lay the groundwork for a successful website.

Key elements of an effective website content plan

The key elements of creating an effective website haven’t changed much over the years, but let’s recap and get a fresh view from experts to keep your planning up to date.

Audience analysis

Target audience research ensures you align your brand message with potential customers.

I once made the mistake of jumping into content creation for a company blog without doing proper audience research. After a few months of churning weekly articles, I discovered that our prospects weren’t on the same page with us.

As Ila Bandhiya, Senior Digital Marketer at Middleware.io, notes:

Neglecting to conduct thorough audience research and keyword analysis can lead to irrelevant content that fails to engage or convert visitors effectively.

No stellar design work or imaginative wordcraft can replace understanding who you’re talking to. Dig deep to uncover audience demographics, interests, and behavior. Here are a few tools to use:

• Market research resources, such as industry reports, competitor website analysis, and social media listening tools, help you understand your industry or niche, competitor strategies, and trends.
• Audience surveys enable you to gather direct data about your target audience’s demographics, needs, challenges, and content preferences.
• Analytics from tools like Google Analytics or social media platforms are a good source for understanding the demographics and psychographics of your existing visitors and followers.
• Customer feedback through email surveys, customer support chats, or social media polls provides valuable insights into audience pain points and preferences.

All these methods can help you create a detailed profile of your ideal customer, which will inform all the following steps.

Content goals

Establishing clear, measurable content goals ensures your team is not drifting in a sea of memes and emojis — but using them strategically to steer people in the right direction.

Content goals should align with overall marketing and business goals, whether that’s increasing website traffic, generating more leads, or successfully launching a product. For example, if your objective is to grow your email list, a content goal could be to increase sign-ups by 20% over the next quarter.

These goals should also match people’s intent. As Ashley Segura, Head of Marketing at ContentYum, explains:

When users visit a website, they have specific goals in mind — whether it’s seeking information, making a purchase, being entertained, or finding a solution to a problem. Your content should be designed to fulfill these goals while also making sense with your brand and offering. This involves creating relevant, valuable, and targeted content that answers users’ questions, provides the information they are looking for, and guides them towards the desired action.

SEO strategy

SEO puts your content on the world wide map and ensures it’s discoverable by search engines and your audience.

Here are the typical basic steps involved in creating an SEO strategy:

1. Keyword research — identify the terms your potential customers are searching for. This research helps you create pages and content that target these keywords effectively.
2. Competitor analysis — understand who your top competitors are, what works for them, and where there are opportunities to do better.
3. On-page SEO — optimize content elements like meta tags, headers, and images to improve search visibility.
4. Backlinking strategy — ensure reputable websites link to yours, enhancing your site’s authority and rankings.
5. Ongoing optimization — periodically update your keyword lists, SEO best practices, and page content.

Deborah Oyewole, SEO Analyst for B2B SaaS and Cybersecurity, explains her SEO workflow:

Usually, I start with brainstorming the kind of keywords I want my brand to be known for, such that when my potential customers go to Google to search, I want my website to show. Which other words are my audience using that I’m not aware of? This leads me to competition analysis to see keywords that are driving traffic to competitors’ websites. During this process, I’m looking for inspiration as regards website structuring, navigation, layout, and gaps my website content can fix.

Content calendar

Here’s where things start to take shape. I love it when I put all my ideas on paper and organize them to create a useful and enjoyable customer journey.

I start by identifying key topics that are relevant to the business and the audience. I also add important dates and upcoming events to the list.

 

Then, I work with clients and other collaborators (for you, it might be your content team) to generate a list of specific content ideas, which I then schedule regularly, whether that’s daily, weekly, or monthly, to maintain a consistent posting rhythm.

Content planning tools are essential in this process, allowing everyone to contribute, track progress, and provide timely feedback. A well-organized content calendar keeps your team on track, ensures deadlines are met, keeps all stakeholders updated, and makes adjustments easier to implement.

Steps to create a website content plan

Whether starting from scratch or updating an existing content creation process, let’s go through the steps to help you craft an actionable and efficient plan.

1. Conduct a content audit

A content audit evaluates existing content to identify strengths and gaps. It should be the first step in your content marketing efforts because it helps avoid redundancy, replicate successes, and eliminate underperforming pages.

Follow these steps:

• Make a centralized list of all your content. Leverage content planning tools to create one source of truth that everyone on the team can access and collaborate on.
• Assess content quality and relevance using KPIs like organic clicks, impressions, CTR, and conversions. Use tools like Google Analytics to understand which pages perform best and which need improvement.
• Conduct competitor analysis to see what’s working for competing websites and where there are opportunities to stand out.
• Decide which content you need to update, optimize, or remove from the website. Make a plan for action.

As Laura Vaduva, an In-house SEO Specialist and Freelancer, advises:

Prior to content prioritization, it is important to do an internal audit as well as a competitor analysis. For the internal audit, we should look at what pages are performing well for the target audience. The KPIs I recommend to monitor are: organic clicks, impressions & CTR (Google Search Console), on-site conversions (internal BI tools), users, views, and engagement (Google Analytics 4). For the competitor analysis, I suggest picking the top 5 direct competitors and looking at: their site structure, top keywords, organic traffic, backlinks (Ahrefs), content quality, E-E-A-T signals, and Share of Voice.

After the initial audit, continue measuring the same KPIs and re-evaluating the performance of your pages on an ongoing basis.

2. Define your content strategy

A content strategy includes definitions of content pillars, formats, tone of voice, and style. The strategy is important to ensure consistency, relevance, and goal alignment.

As Lashay Lewis, Content Strategy Advisor at Authority Plug, warns:

The biggest mistake to avoid is not understanding the company’s goal before you begin creating a strategy. For example, if a company wants to focus more on brand awareness then you’d create a content plan based on driving top-of-funnel demand vs if a company’s goals were to drive attributable pipeline, you’d then focus on a bottom-of-funnel strategy.

Coordinate with stakeholders and understand where your business is headed and how content can support its priorities.

After establishing clear goals, turn to your audience research and extract the most relevant content themes. Match them with your business goals, and you should get three to five pillars that will form the basis for your content creation.

At the intersection of your brand personality and target audience preferences, you’ll also find the best tone of voice that is true to your values but also resonates with ideal clients.

Define all these elements in a clear, accessible document.

3. Generate content ideas

Based on the content pillars and themes identified in the previous steps, you can start mapping out content ideas.

Here are several ways to generate plenty of fresh, creative ideas for your editorial calendar:

• Brainstorming sessions. Get the entire marketing team involved and create a long list of ideas. This can happen offline if you’re all in the office, but you can also collaborate online.
• Competitive analysis. Look at what’s working for your competition and put a different spin on it. Don’t only look at direct competitors, but take inspiration from favorite brands or creators that attract large audiences.
• Keyword research. Analyze what people are looking for to get direct insights into their problems, needs, and questions. Google Trends and similar tools are useful to see what topics you should include to stay relevant.
• Groups and forums. Social media groups or platforms such as Reddit or Quora are great resources for identifying burning questions and hot topics for your target audience.
• Social listening. Pay attention to conversations in social media around your brand and industry to have a timely grasp of people’s perceptions and shifting preferences.
• Industry news and research. Jump at the occasion to have an informed point of view on important events and developments in your field.
• Events and conferences. Offline events are a great resource for ideas for your content. From inspiring keynote speeches to conversations over coffee during the break, make sure you have your notepad handy.

Here’s another idea from Krishnapriya Agarwal, Content Marketing Manager at SpotDraft:

If there isn’t any brand positioning, I simply try to speak with customer success folks to understand the most common question or problem they’ve heard from the customers they are handling and map out how we fix it. By doing this exercise over and over again and marking out differences between my company’s solution and my competitors’ solutions, I can arrive at a USP. This will be my hook or leverage throughout the website copy.

Keep your ears open and you’ll never run out of useful ideas for blog articles, social media content, ebooks, and other branded assets.

4. Develop a content calendar

Time to organize and schedule the big list of ideas you generated.

First of all, decide on publishing frequency. This depends on your resources and goals. Be realistic and start small rather than overpromising and stressing your team (or yourself) out.

Second, arrange your content in such a way that you ensure a variety of themes and formats to avoid monotony. What I like to do is create a weekly template for things to post, which gives structure to the entire calendar. For example, Mondays can be for new blog articles, Wednesdays for newsletters, and Fridays for fun polls on social media channels.

Also take into account important days and events and mark them in your calendar so you can prepare content for them in advance.

Use content calendar tools like Planable to have foresight, manage deadlines, and collaborate with your team efficiently. Scheduling posts in advance will help you be consistent and track progress toward goals.

A well-structured calendar is key to keeping you on track. Even for small operations, where things are seemingly simple, it can get chaotic really fast. Create a calendar that offers clarity and you can scale as your business grows.

5. Create content

Time to get crafting! The daily grind of content creation involves a multi-step process that includes writing, editing, optimizing for SEO, and, in most cases, web design.

Whether writing copy for landing pages or in-depth blog articles, focus on clarity, relevance, and engagement. Keep sentences concise and ensure your message is easy to understand. Write with your ideal customer in mind, always trying to be helpful. Weave your brand’s message naturally within content.

Editing is what makes good writing great. Review your content for grammar, consistency, and flow. Use tools like Grammarly to help you quickly refine your writing or work with an editor.

Not last, don’t forget to optimize your content for SEO. Use relevant keywords where they fit, include meta tags, and structure your content with headings, subheadings, and bullet-point lists.

However, always prioritize the end user over search engines. Laura Vaduva emphasizes:

With the end user in mind, I design the homepage by prioritizing the user’s main need (why they came to my homepage) and the desired conversion points. I avoid content overload and I keep the design clean, intuitive, and responsive. In other words, I optimize first for the end user, not the search engine. And, of course, I optimize with the mobile version in mind.

To keep things running smoothly and avoid bottlenecks, use content collaboration tools that streamline collaboration, centralize content creation, and allow real-time editing and feedback.

6. Audit results and optimize

A mistake that many content teams make is to keep coming up with new ideas and publishing relentlessly — half-ignoring results and optimization.

However, this final step is essential to having a successful online presence. Monitor website performance closely and use data to decide what’s working and what needs improvement.

Key metrics to monitor include traffic, bounce rates, and conversion rates.

It’s not just about getting content out there but seeing results. Optimize your conversion rate by experimenting with different elements on your site, such as headlines, images, and CTAs.

As Ila Bandhiya explains:

Use clear and intuitive navigation menus, strategic placement of CTAs, and compelling internal linking to guide users seamlessly from the homepage to conversion-focused pages. Test and optimize these elements regularly to enhance user journey and conversion rates.

Regularly testing and optimizing elements on various pages ensures a smoother user journey and higher conversion rates. It also ensures your website is updated and not stuck in a moment (you can’t get out of).

Common challenges in website content planning and how to overcome them

Website content planning comes with challenges, but understanding and addressing them leads to more effective content strategies. Let’s review some best practices for getting over obstacles.

Maintaining consistency

Consistency is one of the most common challenges. As the initial enthusiasm wears off and as the team gets bogged down with requests, it’s easy to lag on content creation.

To ensure regular output, establish a clear content development workflow that outlines each step from ideation to publication. A content calendar is a real life-saver here as it ensures things aren’t left last minute.

Keeping track of your content is also crucial, especially for larger sites or frequent publishers. As Franzi Dietrich, SEO and Content Writer and Strategist at Franzify SEO, advises:

I always recommend having a content inventory, especially if you publish a lot of content or have a large site. It doesn’t have to be something super fancy. Just add the most important ones.

According to Franzi, the basics that you need to track are:

• Topic
• URL
• Date it was published
• Search intent/funnel it serves
• Who wrote it
• Is it seasonal – if so, add when to go in refresh
• Assets (like is it an infographic, video, interview, or similar)“

Measuring performance

Do you know what helps with motivation and consistency? Results. However, here, we encounter another challenge.

Marketing teams often deal with various data streams, lack of centralization, and little time and resources to extract insights.

Leveraging the right tools can make a real difference. What I’ve found most useful is centralizing all data into one platform — and if that’s also your tool for content creation and collaboration, even better.

For example, Google Analytics is a powerful tool for monitoring key metrics related to your website and it can easily integrate with a content management system. Generate reports and use data to inform your content planning and creation.

For more focused SEO improvements, Jojo Furnival, Marketing Manager at Sitebulb, suggests the following:

If you’re looking for quick SEO wins, it’s worth reviewing which pages are already performing well (page 2) in Search Console but with a bit of improvement could be boosted to page 1. You might also consider performing a keyword gap analysis comparing your website to a competitor website to identify any core search terms for which your website isn’t currently ranking. If relevant, these could be priority pages to add.

Coordinating with teams

You have a great plan in place. And then, different people enter the picture. The content writers who need briefing and coordination. The freelancer who takes on the extra load. The stakeholders who want updates. The design agency that needs to sync with the writers. Am I making you anxious? Sorry.

Fortunately, effective collaboration is possible. Tools like Planable streamline this process by providing a centralized platform for managing the content workflow and enabling seamless communication.

Planable’s approval software allows team members to review, comment on, and approve content in one place, ensuring everyone is aligned before publication. This saves time, reduces the risk of errors, and ensures consistent and high-quality output across the board.

Best tools for website content planning

Speaking of tools, let’s review some that will reduce the burden of creating content.

1. Planable – best website content planning tool with collaboration features and content calendar

Planable is an all-in-one content planning tool designed to streamline collaboration and scheduling for teams that helps solve the challenges related to website publishing.

Its Universal Content feature allows users to collaborate on various types of content, making it easy to maintain a consistent brand voice across their website and other channels.

The platform’s collaboration features include real-time feedback, discussion threads, clear content approval processes, and approval layers that get teams on the same page — literally.

My favorite Planable feature is the content calendar due to its intuitiveness and great visual organization. I know first-hand how much it helps to be able to plan, schedule, and track content across multiple platforms in one location. Its different views and filtering options are very helpful.

Planable also offers direct social media scheduling, so you don’t have to switch platforms. On top of this, it integrates AI in its content editor, making it easier to optimize copy and produce high-quality content consistently.

2. Trello – best project management tool

Trello is a versatile tool that can support website content planning, using a visual approach to manage tasks and projects.

Use Trello to organize work through boards, assign tasks, and keep track of progress. Within each board, you can create customizable lists. For example, I find it useful to categorize lists according to stages such as “Ideas”, “In Progress”, and “Completed”. Cards within these lists represent individual tasks or pieces of content.

Each card can be customized with due dates, checklists, and attachments from various platforms, such as Google Docs or Slack. Team members can comment, facilitating team collaboration.

Trello’s visual layout and flexibility help with content planning and execution, though it lacks content editing and scheduling features that marketing teams may find useful.

3. Google Docs – best free tool for content writing

Google Docs is a popular and accessible tool for content collaboration.

Part of the Google Workspace suite, Google Docs allows real-time collaboration, making it easy for teams to brainstorm, edit, and review content together.

Its version history feature is useful to track changes and revert to previous versions if needed.

Additionally, Google Docs is accessible from any device, ensuring you and your team can update and review content from anywhere. These features make Google Docs a good choice for efficient, collaborative content writing and editing.

However, it lacks project management and content publishing features, making it an affordable yet basic tool.

Get started with website content planning today

The best time to plan website content was before the website was even live. The next best time is now. Apply the strategies and steps outlined in this article to effectively map out your content in a way that meets both audience expectations and business goals. And don’t be a hero and go at it without tools. Let Planable streamline collaboration and publication so you can focus on more strategic moves. Try it now for free.