Strategy & advisory
Content strategy
You stop publishing on instinct. Instead you get a topic map tied to real search demand, briefs specific enough to hand to any competent writer, and a calendar sized to the time you genuinely have.
The short version
Content usually fails for one of two reasons. Either nobody is searching for what you published, or the right things get published for two months and then stop. A strategy fixes the first by starting from demand instead of from ideas, and the second by sizing the plan to the hours you actually have rather than the hours you hoped for. It also decides what not to write, which is where most of the savings sit.
What is included
- A content inventory of everything you already have, flagging pages that are decaying, pages competing with each other for the same query, and pages worth rewriting rather than replacing.
- A topic map of pillar pages and the clusters beneath them, each entry labelled with search intent and with the stage of the buying decision it serves.
- A query set carrying monthly search volume, difficulty and an honest note on how long ranking is likely to take given your current domain strength.
- Eight ready-to-use content briefs, each naming the target query, the entities and subtopics to cover, the internal links required, the format and a word count.
- A 6-month editorial calendar with a named owner and a publish date in every slot, set at a cadence you can hold for all 6 months and not only the first.
- A repurposing plan turning each anchor piece into the social, email and video assets it can support, plus the measurement sheet the whole programme reports into.
How we work
Our approach
The stages this work runs through, in order. Every one of them ends in something you can see or sign off.
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Step 01
Audit what you already have
New content is the expensive option, so we start with your library. Every URL gets checked for traffic trend, the query it actually ranks for, and whether two of your own pages are competing for that same query. Cannibalisation and decay are where we look first for cheap wins, because rewriting a page that already has links and history beats publishing from zero. Anything with no traffic and no purpose gets marked for deletion or redirect.
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Step 02
Map demand to decisions
Then we build the topic map out of what people actually type, grouped into clusters that each link up to a pillar page. Every entry is tagged with intent, because a comparison query and a how-to query want different pages and only one of them sits near a purchase. We also weigh difficulty against your current authority. Chasing a head term you have no realistic chance at this year is how content budgets get spent with nothing to show.
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Step 03
Brief it properly
A brief is where quality gets decided, not the writing. Ours name the query, the intent, the subtopics and entities a credible answer has to cover, the internal links in and out, the format, and the single action the page asks for. That's what makes a piece commissionable to any competent writer, in-house or freelance. It also turns editing into a check against a spec rather than an argument about taste.
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Step 04
Set a cadence you can hold
One good piece a fortnight, sustained for a year, beats eight in January and silence until June. So the calendar is built backwards from your real capacity, including who reviews and who signs off, since approval is the bottleneck far more often than writing is. Each slot gets a named owner and a date. We plan the refresh cycle up front too, because a cluster needs revisiting roughly twice a year to keep the positions it earns.
Before you ask
Questions we get asked first
How long until content actually does anything?
The strategy itself takes 3 to 4 weeks. The results take considerably longer, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. Expect 4 to 6 months before a cluster starts pulling meaningful non-brand traffic, longer in a competitive category or on a young domain. That's exactly why the plan front-loads the two things that pay faster: rewriting existing pages already sitting on page two, and the commercial pages that convert the traffic you have today.
How is it priced?
The strategy is a fixed price in pounds, scoped by how many clusters we map and how many briefs you want written. Production is separate and optional, priced per piece or as a monthly volume, so you can run the plan with your own writers if you have them. We price them apart deliberately. One figure covering strategy and production would reward us for recommending more articles than the map actually needs.
What do you need from us?
Search Console and analytics access, your CMS, and an hour a fortnight with someone who knows the product properly. That last one isn't optional. The difference between content that ranks and content that also sells is the specific detail only your team has, and no amount of desk research replaces it. If you sell through a sales team, we'll want their most common objections too, because those make the highest-value pages on the map.
How do we measure whether it's working?
Per cluster, not per post. Each cluster reports non-brand organic sessions, the ranking positions of its mapped queries, assisted conversions, and how often it gets cited when an AI assistant answers those questions. Early on the honest indicators are coverage and movement: whether the pages are indexed, and whether positions are climbing from nowhere into the top 20. Revenue attribution comes later, so we wire the tracking up at the start rather than when you first ask.
Want this scoped for your situation?
Tell us the goal and the deadline. You get an honest read on whether this is the right service, a fixed price if it is, and a straight no if it isn't.
Or email [email protected] directly. We reply within one working day.