What if your blog could help the right people find you, trust you, and understand why they need your services — before they’re even searching for the exact service you offer?
That’s one of the biggest reasons I look at stages of awareness in marketing before I ever start researching keywords for a client’s blog.
Because your ideal client isn’t walking around thinking about your offer all day. What she’s thinking about is her problem.
This seems like the perfect time to tell you, in fact, that your readers are self-centered. (We love them, but it’s true.) Not only are they thinking about their problem, the lens they bring to any page or post on your site is this: “What’s in it for me?”
Your reader is likely noticing frustrations around this problem. She’s also asking questions. Maybe she’s looking for ideas, trying different solutions, forming opinions, or comparing options. Eventually, she may decide she wants help.
That is completely different from someone with commercial intent who already knows she wants to hire someone like you and is simply looking for the “best,” the closest fit within her price range, or simply the right vibe.
So what your reader thinks about — and what she searches for — changes throughout that process, from vaguely aware that something isn’t working all the way to ready-to-buy.
And when you understand those different stages, you suddenly have a much bigger pool of strategic blog topics than whatever happens to come up when you type your service into a keyword research tool.
You can create content for the person who knows something is annoying the crap out of her but hasn’t really identified the problem yet. You can create content for the person looking for ways to solve it, the person comparing solutions, and yes, the person who already knows what she wants and is deciding who she wants to hire.
All of that content can lead back to the same business and the same offers.
It’s just meeting the same potential client at different points along the way.
And that is where stages of awareness get really useful for your blog strategy.
Why I Don’t Start a Blog Strategy With Keywords
When most people think about SEO blogging, they think about keywords: find a keyword, write a post about it, optimize the post, hope it ranks.
But there’s a problem with building your entire strategy that way.
Just because you can write a blog post about something people are searching for doesn’t necessarily mean you should. A keyword might get search volume without attracting the people who are likely to become your clients. A topic might be related to your industry without helping you become known for the work you actually want to do.
And sometimes, the best opportunities aren’t obvious until you understand what your ideal client is thinking before she realizes she needs your particular service.
If your blog only speaks to people who are already searching for the exact thing you sell, you’re only talking to one portion of your potential clients: the ones who already know what they need.
What about the person who has the exact problem you solve but doesn’t know what the solution is called yet? Or the person who thinks she needs one thing when, from your expert perspective, you know the real issue is something else?
Those are opportunities for your content to meet her where she is.
Which is why, before I start digging around in SEO data, I like to back way up.
Step 1: Start With What You Want to Be Known For
Before we research what people are searching for, we start with you.
I want to know about your offers, your expertise, your ideal clients, and the problems you want people coming to you to solve. I want to know what you want someone to associate with your name and business after reading several of your posts.
Because if we skip this part and go straight to keyword research, it’s really easy to end up asking, “What keywords could I rank for?”
That’s not a useless question. Obviously, I want to know what you have a realistic chance of ranking for. But I don’t want that question driving your entire strategy.
The better question is:
“What do I want the right people to find me for?”
That distinction matters because your blog shouldn’t exist just to generate traffic. It should support your business.
It’s really no different from views and engagement on social media. You could have a Reel go viral and get thousands of views, but if it has absolutely nothing to do with your offer or the problems you solve, you could get all that visibility without gaining a single new client.
Visibility is great. I’m certainly not going to complain if 100,000 people suddenly want to see my face on Instagram. But visibility without intention can very quickly become content for content’s sake.
It’s the inspirational quote you post because you need something to post today. The obscure awareness day you turn into a graphic because it happens to be on the calendar. The Reel that gets a ton of views because it’s funny or trendy but has very little connection to what you actually want people to hire you for.
And the same thing can happen with your blog.
If hundreds of people find a post but none of them are interested in your perspective, expertise, or services, that traffic isn’t doing nearly as much for you as it could. I don’t just want to find topics that can bring people to your website. I want topics that make sense for your actual business and attract the kinds of people you actually want in your world.
Because the goal isn’t just more eyeballs.
It’s getting the right eyeballs on the right ideas.
So first, we figure out the territory you want your business to own. Then we look at that territory from your client’s perspective.
Step 2: Understand What Your Client Is Thinking at Each Stage of Awareness
This is where we get into the stages of awareness in marketing.
Think about what happens before someone hires you. There’s usually a progression, even if your client isn’t consciously thinking, “Ah yes, I have now entered the solution-aware portion of my buyer journey.”
She experiences a problem or frustration. She starts asking questions about it. She learns that there are different ways to solve it. She develops preferences and objections. At some point, she starts considering whether she wants to keep figuring it out herself or get professional help.
And at every point in that process, she knows something slightly different, which means she searches for something slightly different, too.
So, What Are the Stages of Awareness in Marketing?
The simplest way to think about stages of awareness is that they describe how much someone currently understands about her problem, the possible solutions, and your specific offer.
For our purposes, we can think about five stages:
Unaware → Problem Aware → Solution Aware → Offer Aware → Most Aware
Someone at the beginning might only recognize an annoying symptom. Someone further along knows what the problem is and is actively looking for ways to solve it. Further still, she knows what kind of solution she wants and is evaluating her options. And at the most-aware end, she already knows about you and your offer and is deciding whether it’s right for her.
Here’s the thing: that can all be the same person.
She didn’t suddenly become your ideal client when she reached the bottom of the funnel. She may have been your ideal client the whole time. She just wasn’t ready to search for you yet.
But what I love about blogging is that you can capture the person who didn’t even know she needed what you offer as soon as she walks in the door.
Good marketing is often some version of: “I didn’t even know I needed this!”
It’s basically the HomeGoods experience. I can walk in with absolutely no intention of buying throw pillows — maybe I wasn’t even thinking about throw pillows — and suddenly there’s a perfectly cute, perfectly affordable one sitting there making a very convincing case for why my couch needs an update.
I didn’t go looking for the pillow. But once I saw it? Oh. Apparently I need that.
Your future client is doing her version of wandering through HomeGoods every time she’s surfing the internet. She may not be looking for you yet, but she is looking for something.
Maybe it’s an answer to a question. Maybe it’s a frustration she’s trying to fix. Maybe she knows something isn’t working but hasn’t figured out what the actual problem is yet.
Your blog gives you a way to meet her there.
Now obviously, this analogy has its limits. Some niches have a heck of a lot more at stake than my impulse HomeGoods purchases. I worked with a therapist, for example, whose potential clients were searching for answers around much more personal and consequential problems.
But you get the idea.
People don’t always start by searching for the service you offer. They start with what they know right now.
And this is one of the places where your blog can do something the rest of your website isn’t necessarily built to do. Your homepage, services pages, and even your about page usually speak more directly to someone who has at least some idea of what you do or what she needs.
Your blog gets to cast a much wider net.
You can write for the person who knows she wants your service, sure. But you can also write for the person who has the problem you solve and has absolutely no idea yet that your thing might be part of the solution.
She doesn’t have to search for your offer to find you. She can search for the frustration she’s experiencing, the question she can’t answer, the thing she keeps trying to fix, or the result she wants and doesn’t know how to get.
Then your words get to do the connecting.
Let’s use my own business as an example because it makes this much easier to see.
I help service-based business owners create SEO-backed blog content and turn those blogs into anchor content they can use across their marketing. But most of my ideal clients aren’t waking up one morning and immediately searching for an “SEO content strategist.”
They have to get there.
Unaware: “Why does creating content take me so long?”
At this point, she knows something about her marketing isn’t working, but she hasn’t necessarily identified the bigger problem yet.
Maybe creating content takes forever. She’s constantly staring at a blank Google Doc wondering what to say. She spends way too much time on Instagram creating posts that get a little engagement and then essentially disappear. Every platform needs something different, every week needs new ideas, and she’s starting to wonder how other people keep up with this.
She’s frustrated, but she probably isn’t searching for an SEO-backed blog strategy because she doesn’t know that’s a potential solution yet.
So if I want to reach her here, my content needs to meet her at the problem she actually knows she has. I might write about why creating content from scratch every week takes so much time or why relying entirely on social media can leave you feeling like your marketing never gets ahead.
I’m helping her understand the problem.
And ideally, she finishes that post thinking, “Ohhhh. THAT’S why this feels so hard.”
Problem Aware: “How do I figure out what to post on every platform?”
Now she knows she has a content problem. She’s tired of making everything up as she goes, so her searches become more practical: How do I figure out what to post? How do I come up with content ideas for my business? How can I plan my content in advance?
I can answer the question she came with while also introducing her to a different way of thinking about the problem.
Maybe the answer isn’t figuring out how to come up with more and more ideas for every single platform.
Maybe she doesn’t need more ideas. Maybe she needs to make her best ideas work harder.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Solution Aware: “How do I create a content strategy?”
At this point, she knows there are systems and strategies that could make marketing easier. She’s moved past “What the heck do I post tomorrow?” and is looking for a better way to organize and plan her content.
This is where I can create content around content strategy, SEO blogging, evergreen content, anchor content, repurposing, and the differences between relying on social media versus building a searchable library of content on your own website.
She’s exploring ways to solve her problem.
My job isn’t to immediately scream, “Hire me!” It’s to help her understand her options and, in the process, show her why I believe an SEO-backed anchor content strategy makes a heck of a lot of sense for a service-based business owner who wants to be discoverable online without having to live online.
She came looking for a solution. My content gives me an opportunity to teach her about mine.
Offer Aware: “Who can help me do this?”
Now she knows the type of solution she wants, so the search changes again.
Maybe she’s searching for an “SEO content strategist” or “SEO blog writer.” Or maybe she found me through one of those earlier searches, read a couple of posts, signed up for my email list, and is now poking around my website trying to figure out exactly what I do and whether she wants my help.
This is where process-focused content, case studies, examples, and posts connected more directly to my services become important.
She isn’t just asking, “How do I solve this?” anymore. She’s figuring out who she trusts to help her solve it. Does she like the way I approach the problem? Does my process make sense for her business? Do I seem like someone she’d actually want to work with?
By the time she gets to my services page or inquiry form, she may have already spent quite a bit of time learning how I think.
Most Aware: “Is Anchor Content Right for Me?”
Now she knows who I am. She understands the problem, my approach, and my Anchor Content offer.
Her questions are much more specific. How does Anchor Content work? What will I have to do? What do you handle? Is this worth the upfront investment? What happens after my blogs are written? Can I really turn these posts into content for the rest of my marketing?
That’s where FAQs, objection-handling posts, proof, client examples, and more sales-focused content can help her make a decision.
And look at how far we’ve traveled from the original search.
We went from “Why does creating content take me so long?” to “Is Anchor Content right for me?”
Same ideal client. Completely different search.
But there’s another piece of this that I think is really important: whatever stage of awareness she came in on is, in theory, not the same stage she leaves with after reading a really freaking good post.
Because your job isn’t just to meet her where she is and answer the exact question she typed into Google. You have expertise she doesn’t have yet. You can help her understand why she’s having the problem, see something she hadn’t considered, or connect her original question to a bigger issue.
So maybe she comes in searching, “Why does creating content take me so long?”
I absolutely need to answer that question. That’s what she came for.
But by the time she leaves, maybe she understands that the real problem isn’t that she’s slow at creating content. It’s that she’s creating everything from scratch, for individual platforms, with no larger system connecting any of it.
She came in vaguely aware that content was taking too damn long. She leaves understanding that she has a strategy problem.
And maybe she still isn’t ready to hire me. That’s fine. I don’t expect every person who reads one blog post to immediately pull out her credit card.
But I do want my content to help her understand her problem differently than she did when she arrived.
That’s part of what I mean when I say you want to become the answer.
Meet her where she is. Answer what she came for. And then use your expertise to help her see what comes next.
This Is Why Stages of Awareness Matter for Your Blog Strategy
Now, if I only researched keywords directly related to my service, I might focus on phrases like “SEO content strategist” or “SEO blog writer.”
Those topics can absolutely have a place in my strategy. But I’d miss the person searching “Why does creating content take so long?” or “How do I figure out what to post?” or “How do I create a content strategy?”
All three could be the exact kind of person I want to work with. They’re just at different stages of awareness.
So instead of only asking what keywords relate to your service, we can ask: What does she know right now? What is she struggling with because of it? What would she actually type into Google? What does she need to understand next? And where does my expertise naturally fit into that conversation?
Because the point isn’t to write about every random thing your ideal client might Google. We’re still building a strategy for your business.
Which brings us back to SEO research.
Step 3: Find Where Her Searches Overlap With Your Expertise
Now we do the SEO research.
We know what you want to be known for, and we have a much better idea of what your ideal client might be thinking, questioning, wanting, and worrying about at different stages.
Now I want to know: are people actually searching for these things?
This is where I look at the language people use, related searches, search intent, and realistic opportunities for your site. But I’m not handing the strategy over to a keyword research tool and letting it tell us what your business should talk about.
The keyword informs the strategy. It doesn’t dictate it.
What I’m really looking for is the overlap between:
What you want to be known for × What your client cares about × What people are actually searching for
That’s the sweet spot.
Now we have a business reason for creating the content, we understand why the reader cares about it, and we have search data supporting the idea that people are actually looking for it.
That gives us a much stronger starting point for the actual post.
Step 4: Create One Really Freaking Good Piece of Anchor Content
Once we’ve identified the right topic, the goal isn’t to stuff a keyword into a generic 700-word blog post and call it SEO.
I want to create the definitive version of your answer.
Obviously, we need to answer the question the person came looking for. But we can also teach what you know, share your perspective, address the next questions she’s likely to have, and help her understand the problem more clearly. And somewhere in there, when it makes sense, we can naturally show her where your service fits.
We’re not just creating content that can rank. We’re creating content that has a job to do once someone actually gets there.
Because if we did all that work to get the right person to your site and then gave her a generic article she could have read anywhere else…what was the point?
You don’t just want to find what people are searching for.
You want to become what they’re searching for.
And when you do that well, your blog can start doing some of the jobs you’re currently asking social media to do every day. It can educate potential clients, build trust, introduce them to your approach, answer objections, and softly sell your offers — all in the background long after you publish the post.
Which is already pretty great.
But this might be my favorite part.
Step 5: Make That One Idea Work Everywhere
Once we’ve done all this work to find a strategic idea and create a really freaking good piece of content around it, I do not want you to publish it on your blog, share it once, and then walk away to figure out what the heck you’re going to post about tomorrow.
The blog becomes your anchor.
You can pull an email from it. A question you answered can become a social post. An opinion can become another email. A misconception can become a Reel. Your framework can become a carousel. The examples, questions, steps, sound bites, and teaching points inside one deep piece of content can keep giving you things to talk about.
So instead of your marketing looking like:
Instagram idea → email idea → blog idea → Reel idea → start over → lose mind
It looks more like:
One strategic idea → deep blog → a month of focused messaging.
Then you do it again.
That’s why I call this Anchor Content.
One well-planned blog post can give you 30 days of content. Build 12 strategic anchor posts, and now you have an entire year of ideas you can pull from without constantly starting from scratch.
And while you’re using those ideas everywhere else, the original posts are still sitting there on your website. They can remain searchable and findable, continue introducing new people to your business, and have the opportunity to gain more authority over time.
Your Instagram post might be gone from someone’s feed tomorrow. Your blog post doesn’t have to be.
So What Does Your Marketing Look Like When This All Comes Together?
Without a strategy like this, marketing can feel incredibly scattered.
You post something because you haven’t posted in four days. You send an email because you know you’re “supposed to email your list.” You write a blog when inspiration strikes. You try a Reel because everyone seems to be making Reels. Then next week rolls around and you have to figure out what to say all over again.
And underneath all of it is that annoying question:
Is any of this actually working?
When you start with what you want to be known for, understand your client’s stages of awareness, validate those ideas with SEO research, and create anchor content around that overlap, there’s finally a thread connecting everything.
Your blog gives your ideas a foundation. SEO helps the right people discover them. The content helps them understand your expertise and approach. And repurposing lets you carry those same ideas across your other platforms without inventing something new every time you sit down to market your business.
That’s the sustainable marketing system I want for my clients.
Not “publish three blogs and magically have clients knocking down your door.” And not “you’ll never have to market your business again.”
Just a clear, evergreen system where the work you do today can continue supporting your marketing tomorrow.
“Okay, But Writing Blog Posts Takes a Lot of Time…”
Yep. A really freaking good blog post takes more time upfront than throwing together an Instagram caption.
But I think we have to compare that time investment fairly.
How much time do you spend trying to figure out what to post every week? How many hours go into creating content you’ll use once? How often are you starting from a blank page?
A strategic blog post gives you something you can continue using. It can be optimized for search so people can find it over time, become the source material for emails and social content, and give you ideas you can return to again and again.
And if writing those posts yourself is the part making you think, This sounds great, but absolutely not — you don’t have to.
I have two ways I can help you build this system.
With my SEO-backed blog strategy, I map the strategy for you so you know what to write, why you’re writing it, what your ideal clients are searching for, and how those topics connect back to your business. You write the posts yourself, and I give you feedback along the way.
Or, through Anchor Content, I handle the strategy and the writing for you. I develop the SEO-backed strategy, write the blog content, and take care of the details like headlines and metadata. Then we turn those anchor pieces into content you can use across the rest of your marketing.
Yes, creating this kind of content is a bigger investment upfront.
But you’re investing in something designed to have a much longer shelf life.
Instead of constantly feeding the content machine, you’re building a library of strategic ideas you can continue using year after year while your blog has the opportunity to become more established in search over time.
Build a Marketing System That Doesn’t Require You to Live Online
You don’t need more random content ideas. You need to know what you want to be known for, understand what your ideal client is thinking at different stages of awareness, and figure out where those things overlap with what people are actually searching for.
Then create something worth finding and make that idea work harder.
If you want the shorthand version:
Know what you want to be known for → Know what she needs → Find the search → Become the answer → Repeat the message.
Understanding the stages of awareness in marketing gets you out of the mindset that your only valuable reader is someone who is already searching for the exact thing you sell.
Your future client might find you long before she knows she needs you. Maybe she finds you because she’s tired of figuring out what to post. Maybe she’s wondering why her marketing takes so much freaking time. Maybe she knows she wants a content strategy but doesn’t know what that should look like yet.
You can answer the question she has today, help her understand what’s really going on, and introduce her to a different way of thinking about the problem.
And when she gets to the point where she is ready for help?
You’re not some random service provider she found five minutes ago.
If you want help building that kind of marketing system, you can work with me through my SEO-backed blog strategy and write your posts yourself with a clear strategy and my feedback, or choose Anchor Content and let me handle the strategy, writing, SEO details, and repurposing for you.
And if you’re not quite there yet, start with my free 1 Blog → 30 Days of Content resource and see how much mileage you can actually get out of one strategic idea.
Because you probably don’t need to create more content.
You need the content you create to do more.
