Using a Google sheet for content marketing planning and SEO management is one of the most effective ways you can keep your strategy on track.
It’s true that there are tons of powerful technology tools out there for different content marketing needs. But Google sheets should not be underestimated among them. Google sheets provide a free, centralized, collaborative place where you can have total control over how you build your tracking systems and manage your content.
Plus, you don’t have to start from scratch if you want to make Google sheets part of your content marketing management system. There are tried-and-true templates available for all kinds of content marketing and SEO needs, and this article puts some of the best ones all in one place.
Quick Takeaways
- Strategy-minded templates like data dashboards and goal trackers keep your content marketing efforts focused and on track.
- Content calendars help with day-to-day management of content publishing. They can be used for single channels like social media, or cover multiple channels in one sheet.
- Google sheet templates can also be used for SEO-centric efforts like keyword research, pursuing featured snippets, and identifying content gaps.
10 Google Sheet Templates for SEO and Content Marketing
Content Strategy
MIG’s Content Strategy Dashboard
I’ll start with the tool we use at Marketing Insider Group. I developed this Google sheet template over time to cover all of the most important components of your content strategy. It aims to keep all of your initiatives — strategic and executional — in one place. Sheets on this template include:
- SEO Audit – Know where you rank compared to your competitors for your most important keywords.
- Metric Benchmarks – Track key content marketing KPIs before and after content marketing initiatives.
- Ideation – Track article ideas by keyword, category, and level of priority.
- Editorial Calendar – Maintain a detailed publishing schedule that also outlines keywords, CTAs, category, and content type.
- Analytics Dashboard – Monthly tracking of key KPI metrics.
Growth Machine’s Wiki Strategy Spreadsheet
I like this template for its incorporation of goal tracking. Setting well-defined goals and tracking their progress is one of the surest ways to keep your team accountable and your efforts focused.
Effective goal tracking also helps you recognize when certain strategies aren’t working and it’s time to pivot, or when you need to do more of something that’s proving successful.
This template has three sheets:
- Goal Tracking – set your sales, conversion, and traffic goals to be calculated monthly
- Article Ideas – list ideas based on keyword research from tools like Ahref’s or SEMRush
- Guest Posters – track who will guest post on your site to help earn backlinks and greater visibility
Builtvisible’s Content Strategy Discovery Tool
This unique tool pulls data from the world’s biggest news and content sources to help you track what’s trending across the web and find topic inspiration related to your content niche. This template is also comprised of three sheets:
- Ideas – See the most successful existing content related to your topics. This sheet pulls content from sources like Reddit, YouTube, Google News, Hacker News, Yahoo Answers, Data.gov and more.
- Source & Place – Learn more about influential bloggers and content creators related to your topic. This information gives you an opportunity to consider guest post requests and other content partnerships.
- Trending – What are the overall biggest topics on the web right now? This is helpful for considering how your content can connect with current events.
Content Calendars
Hubspot’s Editorial Calendar
Image Source: Hubspot
Hubspot’s editorial calendar template is used by more than 140,000 marketers. This single-sheet template is simple, but it covers all the right bases and is effective for tracking deadlines, topics, authors, keywords, and target audiences.
ClickMinded Editorial Content Calendar
This template from ClickMinded is great for simple, no-frills but effective editorial calendaring. It tracks content deadlines, authors, topics, details, channel, and keywords.
You can use this simpler template separate from your larger content strategy templates if you want to keep your day-to-day scheduling in a separate place and/or share it with a larger content team who may not have access to strategy documents.
Vertex 42 Content Calendar
Image Source: Vertex
This content calendar template from the Excel and Google Sheet gurus at Vertex 42 is a good option for teams that are heavily collaborative with content creation and publishing. It gets specific about project status, person responsible, deadlines, and priority level.
If content accountability is at the top of your priority list, this could be the template for you. Other features include multiple calendar views and a hashtag organizer.
Hootsuite Social Media Editorial Calendar
Hootsuite is one of the most popular software programs used by content marketers for social media management. They offer this free template for anyone to use to plan and track their social media posting schedule. This is an especially useful template if your brand is posting a lot of content across several platforms.
The Google sheet tracks your activity by week and month, noting the title, author, and deadline to keep your team accountable for on-time posting. The Hootsuite tool itself allows you to automatically schedule your posts so nothing falls through the cracks.
SEO Strategy
SEO Monitoring Dashboard from Distilled
This SEO monitoring dashboard template from Distilled covers some of the most important SEO metrics you should be tracking, including a map of your current rankings, rank changes over time, and page CTRs. It’s beneficial because it puts your day-to-day tracking data and long-term KPI metrics in one place. Here’s the detailed, step-by-step guide on how to use it.
Content Gap Finder
Content gaps are keywords or topics that your brand is not ranking for that they should be. This helpful Google sheet template works together with Google Search Console to help you identify your content gaps and build new strategies to fill them. The tool works by using Console to identify keywords and queries for which you rank 20-100+. It organizes them using CTR data so you can pursue the highest-potential opportunities first.
Once you know where your content gaps are, you can take actions like creating more content, updating old content, pursuing long-tail keywords, and refocusing your strategy in other ways to eliminate the gaps.
Featured Snippet Opportunity Finder
Featured snippets appear at the top of SERPs to quickly answer user questions and inquiries. They’re especially common for searches that use question words. Featured snippets take up about half of a user’s screen after making a search and are a sure way to increase traffic and gain an advantage over your competition. Earning the featured snippet position for searches related to your brand should be an active part of your SEO strategy.
This complete guide and Google sheet template from Overthink walk you step-by-step through the process of finding featured snippet opportunities and earning that top spot.
Taking Your Content Calendar Template to the Next Level
Content marketing is a long game. It requires a commitment to producing great content. Templates can certainly help, but sometimes that’s not enough. In cases where you simply can’t do it all, you need to find a partner that can keep your content flowing. We’re here to offer that help.
If you are ready to get more traffic to your site with quality content published consistently, check out our SEO Blog Writing Service. Set up a quick consultation, and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books. Get started today and generate more traffic and leads for your business.
The post 10 Google Sheet Templates for SEO and Content Marketing appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.
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