Most advice on strategy stays abstract, so you finish reading and still face a blank page. This article gives you an example content strategy for a fictional small business, filled in line by line, so you can copy the structure and swap in your own facts. It also covers the parts that rarely get airtime: the site health underneath the plan, how AI answers change the picture, and what you can hand off without losing control. Treat it as a worked page rather than a lecture.
One caution before we start. The company in this example is invented, and the figures are placeholders, because your own baseline decides what is realistic. So read the structure closely and the details loosely.
A content strategy turns business objectives into content that has a clear job. Moz defines it as the ongoing process of developing a comprehensive plan to ideate, create, share and promote content that fits your brand and is measured against specific goals. The word ongoing carries weight, because a plan you write once and file away stops helping within a season. For a small team, it mostly answers one question: which page or post deserves your next working day?
Writing it down seems to matter. In its guide to building a content marketing strategy, Ahrefs cites the Content Marketing Institute's annual B2B report: 64% of people who described their content marketing as successful had a documented strategy, against 19% of those who did not. That is a correlation, so a document alone will not create success. But a written plan does help new writers start faster, and it keeps you from publishing pieces that have no purpose.
Moz also separates strategy from content marketing. Strategy covers vision, audience and governance, while marketing covers the calendar, creation and promotion. In a company of ten, the same person often does both, so the split works best as a reminder to decide first and produce second. The example content strategy in the next section follows that order.
Imagine a regional heat pump installer with a small office team. One person looks after the website part-time, and the customers are mostly homeowners plus a few housing associations. The one-page version below shows what that company might write. Each row answers a question that a new writer would otherwise ask you.
| Element | Example entry | What it decides |
|---|---|---|
| Business goal | More qualified quote requests from the home region | Which content earns a place in the plan |
| Content goals (three at most) | Quote requests from organic search; fewer repeat pre-sales questions; visibility for local searches | How you judge each piece |
| Audience | Homeowners comparing options before they buy; housing association managers who need technical detail | Tone, depth and examples |
| Where they look | Google search first, the company's own site second, video later | Channel and format |
| Main content type | Plain-language guides and cost explainers on the website | Production effort |
| Topic groups | Choosing a system; running costs and subsidies; installation; maintenance | Which pages link together |
| Voice | Calm and specific, no pressure, says when a system is not suitable | Editorial guidelines |
| Cadence | Two substantial pieces a month, prepared a quarter ahead | Team capacity |
| Measures | Quote requests from organic search, clicks on target topics, pages losing traffic | What the report shows |
| Review rhythm | Light monthly check, quarterly review of key pages | When the plan changes |
Notice what the page leaves out. There is no brand manifesto, no list of fifty keywords and no promise of a traffic figure. It names one business outcome, three content goals and a rhythm for checking them. That restraint is deliberate, and the sections below explain each row.
The example starts with quote requests because they sit closest to revenue. Search Engine Journal's eight elements of a content strategy begin with goals and name common ones: brand awareness, traffic, email list growth, leads, new customers, retention and upselling. The article also warns that not all content works for every objective. So the installer picks three, and each gets its own measure. Moz suggests three to four goals, which is a sensible ceiling for a team of one or two people.
Ahrefs takes a plainer view: the high-level aim is to influence buying decisions by showing how your product or service solves problems. If you want one sentence for your own plan, that is a good draft. Then add the outcome your finance lead would recognise, whether that is quote requests, bookings or shop orders.
The audience row of this example content strategy names two groups, and each has a different need. Homeowners want plain-language comparisons before they spend money. Housing association managers want technical detail they can forward to colleagues. Ahrefs makes a useful point here: a pet food brand does not target all pet owners, only health-conscious ones, and a narrow audience makes every later decision easier.
You rarely need a formal persona study to begin. Moz suggests asking your customer service team about the most common issues and concerns, and the same applies to your sales inbox and phone calls. Write down the questions people ask before they buy, in their own words. Those questions become your first topic list.
Ahrefs advises publishing where your audience spends time and then choosing the format to match. For the installer, buyers search before they call, so written guides on the company's own site come first. Ahrefs cites a 2019 BrightEdge report that attributed 53.3% of all website traffic to organic search. That figure is several years old and varies by industry, so check your own numbers in Google Search Console and your analytics tool instead of borrowing someone else's.
Ahrefs also recommends starting with one content type and adding others once the first works. Video, podcasts and social posts can wait. A small team that spreads itself across five channels tends to find that none of them gets enough attention.
The example sorts topics into four groups that follow the buying journey: choosing a system, running costs, installation and maintenance. Each group gets a main guide plus supporting pieces that link back to it. Moz suggests comparing what you have with what competitors cover to find gaps, and a gap can be a missing subject or an existing page that is simply weak. If you want a sense of what search investment involves, our breakdown of what SEO costs a small business sets realistic expectations.
Only then comes the calendar. Search Engine Journal advises working a few months ahead, which gives you room to react when an opportunity or an emergency appears. The example's pace of two substantial pieces a month is a capacity decision, not a benchmark. Choose the rate your team can sustain for a year, since a steady cadence beats a burst followed by silence.
Content only earns traffic if search engines can find, read and load it. Even a well-written example content strategy fails when the site works against it. Common causes include pages blocked from indexing by mistake, slow templates and old addresses left to break after a redesign. Before you commit a year of writing budget, ask someone to confirm that your existing pages are crawlable, indexed and reasonably fast.
Core Web Vitals, Google's measures of loading speed, responsiveness and visual stability, belong in that check. So do sitemaps, redirects and duplicate pages. None of this needs a developer's vocabulary to discuss. You need answers to three plain questions: can Google reach each important page, does it choose to keep it, and does the page load acceptably on a phone?
Sometimes the answer points to the platform itself. If every small change takes weeks, or the system limits what you can publish, the content plan will stall for reasons no editor can fix. In that case, read our guide to the signs of a legacy software system before you decide whether to patch or rebuild. A strategy built on a platform you cannot change stays a plan on paper.
A first strategy should be short, and the example content strategy above fits on a single page. Ahrefs argues that brand story, competitor research, content calendars, distribution plans, content pillars, audits and a business plan all sit outside the strategy itself. Its reasoning is that each one is easier once you know your who, what and why. There is wisdom in that, because a long document that nobody reads helps no one.
But the advice has limits. Moz treats a content audit and a competitive gap analysis as core steps, and for a company with years of existing posts that makes sense. Ahrefs makes the fair point that you cannot audit content you do not have. So the honest rule is this: a new site skips the audit, while an established site does a light inventory first, listing each page, its topic and whether it still gets visits.
The installer in our example has a few years of blog posts. Its first task is therefore a simple spreadsheet with page, topic, buyer stage, last update and traffic. Moz's audit steps suggest tagging each page by funnel stage, topic, format and whether it is out of date. Gaps tend to show up quickly once the list exists.
AI-generated answers now sit beside traditional search results, and owners rightly ask whether content strategy still pays. The mechanism is easy to describe, even if the outcomes are not. These systems draw on pages that state facts clearly, answer specific questions and come from sources that look trustworthy. Nobody can guarantee a citation, so treat visibility in AI answers as a possible benefit of good content rather than a promised return.
Practically, that favours the habits already in the example. Answer the buyer's question in the first lines of a section. Name your prices, limits and conditions where you can, and keep facts current, since an outdated page is a poor source. Structured data, which labels parts of a page for machines, can help them read it, but no markup forces a system to quote you.
The strategy page should therefore gain one line. For each key topic, name the person in the company who can supply a real fact, example or opinion. That keeps the content specific enough to be worth quoting.
An example content strategy that nobody revisits turns into wallpaper. One practitioner guide on LinkedIn, written by Liam Carnahan, suggests weekly technical checks, a monthly hunt for decaying content and quarterly reviews of primary pages. That cadence suits a small team because each task stays small. You do not need to copy it exactly, but you do need some rhythm, written into the plan.
Search Engine Journal adds a useful warning about analytics: look for the why, not just the count of clicks or shares. Did a page work on one channel and fail on another? Was the audience different, or was exposure lacking? Pick measures that match the goal, such as organic traffic, sales opportunities, ranking changes, inbound links or cost per lead.
Moz calls the strategy a living document, and that includes dropping goals. If one turns out to be unreachable, decide whether to keep supporting it or to redefine the role of content. Making that call in a quarterly review costs little, whereas drifting for a year costs a lot.
Once the thinking is done, put your example content strategy on a page or two. Search Engine Land's advice on documenting a content strategy starts with the audience: what they look like, what they do, and what interests and preferences they have. Keep that section in plain language, because freelancers and new hires will read it first. Then add goals, topics, voice, cadence and measures, in the order of the table above.
Moz recommends an executive summary so decision makers can absorb the plan quickly. It also says a strategy should cover likely situations but stay short enough that a new writer remembers the gist. A shared document works fine, as long as people can find it and update it.
Include a short voice note as well. For the installer, it reads: calm and specific, no pressure, and always say when a system is not suitable. Search Engine Journal's guidance on editorial guidelines goes further and covers formatting and punctuation, which helps when several people write.
You hold knowledge that no outside provider can replace: your customers, your products and the claims you can honestly make. Keep the final say on goals, topics and anything that states a fact about your business. Those are the decisions a strategy exists to protect. Handing them away can produce content that sounds like everyone else's.
The work that suits handing off is more repeatable. Technical checks, production at a steady monthly pace and reporting setup all benefit from specialist tools and routine. If that sounds useful, the Xerx SEO Care and SEO growth service covers technical health alongside monthly content for startups and SMEs. Whoever you choose, ask for the scope in writing, the measures they will report and how they handle your approvals.
Costs and suitability vary with your site, market and goals, so confirm the details with any provider before you commit. A good provider will also tell you when your current site, rather than your content, is the bottleneck. And if you prefer to write everything yourself, a quarterly outside review of site health can be enough.
Open a blank document this week and copy the ten rows from the table. Fill in the business outcome and the three content goals first, then the audience, using the words your customers use. Leave the calendar and measures for a second sitting. By the end you will have a draft that a new writer could follow, plus a first list of the questions your content must answer.
At minimum: a business goal, up to three content goals, the audience, where they look for information, the main content type, topic groups, a voice note, a publishing cadence, the measures you will track and a review rhythm. Most small businesses can fit this on one or two pages.
Long enough to cover the likely situations, short enough that a new writer can remember the gist. Moz recommends an executive summary on top so decision makers can read the essentials quickly.
No. Decide goals, audience and topics first, then schedule. Search Engine Journal places the editorial calendar after goals, research and targeted topics, and Ahrefs argues the calendar can wait until the strategy is set.
Yes, though the outcome is not guaranteed. AI answers draw on pages that state facts clearly and answer specific questions, so a plan built around real buyer questions and current, specific information gives your pages a fair chance of being used.
Set a rhythm you can keep. One practitioner guide on LinkedIn suggests weekly technical checks, monthly checks for decaying content and quarterly reviews of primary pages. Whatever you choose, write it into the plan and revisit goals at least once a quarter.
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