Content strategy for SMEs

For SMEs, content is rarely a writing problem; it's almost always a prioritisation problem: what do you write about, and what should you deliberately ignore? Without defining this, you'll spend a year publishing pieces nobody was searching for in the first place.

Below is the framework I use, along with the order in which I build these pages and how I maintain existing content.

Every service you want to sell needs its own dedicated page detailing: what you do, who it's for, what it costs (or pricing starting from), how the process works, and who actually does the work. No vague fluff about quality, just concrete details that help someone make a decision.

This is the tier that generates revenue fastest, yet it's the one most often neglected. That's why I always start here, not with the blog.

Between 'I have a problem' and 'I'm hiring this company' lies the comparison phase. This is when people search for prices, differences between providers, and what they could tackle themselves. For this stage, you create pricing pages, comparisons, and pages that honestly state when you are not the right fit.

These pages perform remarkably well because most competitors don't dare to publish them. They are also cited most frequently by AI assistants because they provide direct, explicit answers.

Only then do explanatory articles come into play. Their primary goal isn't an immediate enquiry, but proving you know your craft and providing solid material for search engines and AI assistants to pull from. One comprehensive article per topic, with the direct answer at the top and accurate facts throughout.

Pick topics straight from your day-to-day practice: the questions you find yourself explaining in conversations time and again. It's easier to write, sounds more authentic, and is far harder to copy than generic industry topics.

Moving an existing page from position twelve to the top five is usually much faster than building a brand new page from scratch. Yet most businesses choose the latter, simply because 'new' feels like progress.

Review your pages in Search Console every quarter: which ones get impressions but no clicks? Which are outdated? Which are competing with each other? Rewriting, merging, and updating content is the most profitable content work you can do.

A new page without links from other pages remains weak, no matter how good it is. Link from your explanatory guides to the corresponding service page and vice versa, using anchor text that clearly describes what lies behind the link.

For each topic, I stick to a tight cluster: one core service page at the centre, with three to five supporting articles that all link to it. For SMEs, this is far more effective than a scattered collection of blog posts.

For the average SME website, one new or thoroughly rewritten page per month is enough, provided that page answers a genuine search query. Churning out four rushed posts a month delivers less value than one that hits the mark.

What you should do every month: measure which pages are gaining traction, and decide whether the following month should focus on creating a new page or maintaining existing ones.