SEO content strategy: what to publish so your business ranks

What is an SEO content strategy?

An SEO content strategy is a plan for what to publish on your website, and in what order, so that you appear in search for the questions and products your customers look for. It decides which pages you need, which searches each one targets and how they support each other.

Most businesses need three layers of content:

1. Pages that sell: product, category and service pages that answer “where can I buy” and “who can do this for me” searches.
2. Pages that help buyers decide: guides, comparisons, pricing explainers and FAQs that answer the questions people ask before they buy.
3. Evergreen reference content: in-depth pages on your core topics that keep earning visits and links over time.

Google’s guidance is to create content for people first. Its own self-assessment questions warn against producing lots of content on many different topics in the hope that some of it ranks, and against writing to a set word count, because Google has no preferred length. Content that shows first-hand experience and real expertise is what it aims to reward.

The same applies to Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google says there are no special requirements to appear in them: pages that follow normal SEO best practices can be shown as supporting links.

How you group and link these pages matters as much as what they say. Our guide to site structure and internal linking covers silos, topic clusters, hub-and-spoke and cornerstone content.

SEO content for products vs services

The content that ranks for a shop is different from the content that ranks for a service business, because the searches are different. People searching for products often know what they want and compare options; people searching for services want to know who can help and whether they can trust them.

	Selling products	Selling services
Main pages	Category, sub-category and product pages	One page per service, plus location or sector pages where genuinely different
Supporting content	Buying guides, comparisons, size and care guides, product reviews	How the service works, what affects the price, FAQs, case studies
Google features to use	Product structured data, Merchant Center feed, Shopping tab	Google Business Profile and reviews
What earns trust	Clear specifications, delivery and returns information, honest reviews	Evidence of expertise, real projects, who does the work

If you sell products

Your category and product pages are your most important content. Give every category page a short introduction that helps people choose, and link it directly to every product in the category. Write your own product descriptions rather than copying the manufacturer’s, so your page offers something other stockists don’t.

Share your product data with Google in two ways: product structured data on your pages, and a product feed in Google Merchant Center. Google recommends both, and Merchant Center is required for your products to appear in the Google Shopping tab. Our guide to Google Shopping in Ireland covers setting it up.

Then build buying guides around the questions customers ask before they choose: which size, which material, how two products compare. Link each guide to the products it mentions.

If you sell services

Give each service its own page, rather than listing everything on one “services” page. Each page should say who the service is for, what it includes, how it works, what affects the price and what happens next. Those are the questions people type into Google and ask AI assistants.

Then show why someone should trust you. Google’s guidance asks whether it is clear who created the content and whether it demonstrates first-hand expertise. Name the people who do the work, describe real projects in detail (with the client’s permission) and answer the hard questions honestly.

If you sell both

Treat products and services as separate sections with their own structure, and link them where they genuinely connect. A kitchen showroom, for example, can link each kitchen range to its design and fitting service, and the service page back to the ranges.

Local SEO content: reaching customers near you

Local SEO content helps you appear when people search for a business in their area, such as “plumber in Galway” or “bakery near me”. For most local businesses the most important piece of content is not on your website at all: it is your Google Business Profile.

Google says local results are based mainly on three things:

• Relevance: how well your profile matches what someone searched for.
• Distance: how far your business is from the person searching (Google estimates this if they haven’t shared their location).
• Prominence: how well known your business is, including links from other websites and your reviews and ratings.

Google also says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. What helps is a verified profile with complete, accurate details (address, hours, categories and attributes), photos and videos, and replies to your reviews. Our guide to Google services for Irish businesses covers setting up a profile.

On your website, make it clear where you are and where you work. Mention the towns and counties you serve, describe local projects and answer the questions local customers ask.

Do you need a page for every town?

Only if each page has something genuinely different to say. Google’s spam policies list “having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page” as an example of doorway abuse. A set of near-identical pages that swap in a different town name is exactly that.

A location page earns its place when it carries real local content: the address and hours of a branch, the team there, projects completed in the area, or local prices and rules.

International SEO content: selling outside Ireland

International SEO content means creating versions of your pages for other countries or languages and telling Google which version is for whom. If you sell to the UK, the EU or further afield, you need to decide how to structure those versions before you write them.

Google sets out the main options for structuring a site for several countries:

Structure	Example	Advantages	Disadvantages
Country-code domain (ccTLD)	example.ie, example.co.uk	Clear geotargeting; server location doesn’t matter	Can only target one country; separate sites to run
Subdirectories on a generic domain	example.com/ie/, example.com/uk/	Low maintenance, one site to run	Single server location; versions harder to separate
Subdomains on a generic domain	ie.example.com, uk.example.com	Easy to set up; allows different server locations	Visitors may not recognise the target country from the URL
URL parameters	example.com?loc=ie	Not recommended by Google	Hard to separate versions by URL

Google says a country-code domain such as .ie is a strong signal to users and search engines that a site is meant for that country. To register a .ie address, the .ie registry checks that you have a real connection with Ireland; a business can show this with its CRO number, VAT number or Revenue correspondence.

Whichever structure you use, follow Google’s guidance for multi-regional sites:

1. Give every language or country version its own URL, rather than switching content with cookies or browser settings.
2. Use hreflang (in the page code, HTTP headers or your sitemap) to tell Google which version is for which language or country.
3. Don’t automatically redirect visitors based on their location, as this can stop people and search engines seeing all your versions. Offer a clear language or country switcher instead.
4. Translate the main content, not just the menus and buttons.
5. Adapt the content, not only the words: prices and currency, delivery and returns, and spelling for each market.

Evergreen content

Evergreen content is content that stays relevant and useful long after it is published, because it covers lasting topics, core concepts and questions customers keep asking. A guide to choosing a product or explaining how a service works is evergreen; a post about this year’s trends or a seasonal offer is not.

Trending content can bring a burst of attention, but interest fades as the news moves on. Seasonal content works around a particular event or time of year and then goes quiet. Evergreen content can keep ranking, attracting visitors and earning links from other sites for years, which makes it one of the best returns on the time you spend writing.

Evergreen does not mean “publish and forget”. Prices, rules, products and best practice change, so review your evergreen pages regularly and update anything out of date. Make real updates when the facts change: Google’s guidance specifically asks whether sites change the date on pages to make them seem fresh when the content hasn’t substantially changed.

To create evergreen content that lasts:

1. Research the questions that don’t go away, using your customers’ enquiries, your competitors’ content and keyword research.
2. Cover the topic completely, with practical advice and examples from your own experience.
3. Avoid details that date quickly in the main text, or put them in a section you can update easily.
4. Set a review date for each page and check it against current facts.

How to build your SEO content plan

Build your plan from your business goals and your customers’ questions, then work through it in order of value. It is the same approach we take when planning content in our search engine optimisation work.

1. Set your goals. Decide what the content must achieve: enquiries, online sales, bookings or awareness in a new market.
2. List your customers’ questions. Collect them from sales calls, emails, reviews and your team.
3. Research keywords to find how people phrase those questions and how often they search. Our SEO process guide covers keyword research in more detail.
4. Map each search to a page type. Buying searches go to product, category or service pages; research searches go to guides and FAQs.
5. Start with the pages that sell. Make sure every main product category or service has a strong page before you write supporting articles.
6. Plan your supporting content in clusters around each main page, and link them together.
7. Measure and adjust. Track impressions and clicks in Google Search Console and enquiries or sales in Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and update pages that are close to ranking well.

For turning content into sales once people arrive, see our guide to content strategies that increase sales.

Frequently asked questions