It doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting out in SEO, or you’re decades-deep—these battle-tested content marketing templates will give you a headstart on your next project.
I’ve been in marketing for coming up to ten years now (*internal scream at the passing of time*) and, while I like to think I have a bit of savvy when it comes to content marketing, I still sometimes find myself hunting for the kinds of content templates I used in back in 2015, when I was all but an SEO baby.
Whatever level you’re at—a bit of ‘best practice’ never goes amiss!
Below, you’ll find our gold standard content templates— some for blog post creation, some for SEO reporting, and some for everything in between.
Each one has been specially developed by our team and the Ahrefs community to save you time, and help you create content that actually works.
So, get your bookmark buttons at the ready…
If your job is creating content, then I’m sure you’ll have hit one or two creative walls in your time.
Content templates can pull you out of that rut, giving you ideas on the formats your audience expect to see when they’re searching certain kinds of queries.
We’ve put together six blog post templates to help you move past the blank-page. Unless you’re writing a free-flowing think piece, or a piece of deep-research, chances are your content will follow a certain kind of format.
Having a keyword strategy is critical for staying on task, and not getting caught in choice overload. Take it from someone who does a lot of keyword research. Josh has got you covered with a simple keyword strategy template that will keep you on top of the most important metrics.
When you keyword map, you group keywords into topics and assign them to pages. It’s like the content mapping we covered earlier—only through the lens of SEO.
Grab our content template, where you can map your keywords, record your actions, and tag in your team mates to collaborate.
Creating an SEO strategy is another one of those tasks that can be intimidating to tackle–even for marketers that have been around a while. Download our template, and follow along with our blog for tips on how build your SEO strategy from the ground up.
My favorite part about this competitor analysis template is the “Ghost shopping” element. In a former job, my colleagues formed a team and went undercover to demo competitor products and create comprehensive “battle cards”. It was full-on SaaSpionage.
You don’t have to go creating a fake name or backstory like my ex-colleagues (that last bit was most definitely unnecessary), but periodically updating this information can help you fill the gaps, and get ahead of the market.
Every piece of content should be created with a promotion plan…with every piece of content, you need to have some concept of how it’s going to get traction. If it’s not search, it should be something else. Not every topic is being searched for. But with whatever you’re making, don’t wait until it’s live before you start thinking about how to promote it. That’s too late.
I think we can all agree that distribution is also one of the hardest parts of marketing. For that reason, we’ve tried to simplify things for you with the following two content marketing templates.
This content marketing template makes it easy to create a professional press release with a clear, structured format that covers all the essentials—from headline to boilerplate. It also helps you share your news in a no-nonsense way, with a template and example outreach email, which will grab the attention of both media outlets and your audience.
Our link prospecting template will help you keep on top of your SEO outreach efforts. You’ll have the name, email, domain rating, and campaign on file so you’ll know as and when to check back in with collaborators.
Good SEO reports give you clear insights and a logical summary of the work. After reviewing and discussing SEO reports from consultants, in-house teams, and agencies with experts in the Ahrefs Insider community, the Ahrefs team created an SEO report template. It’s designed to be a solid starting point that you can tweak and expand to fit your needs.
Creating an SEO reporting dashboard is often an easier way to share your SEO performance results than a text-heavy SEO report. Here are three live Looker Studio templates you can rely on to communicate the positive impact of your content and SEO.
