As I shared with entrepreneur attendees of a recent webinar I gave with a colleague on “ensuring your website is your workhorse,” search engine optimization (SEO) is not a one and done activity. SEO should be viewed as an activity that continues as long as your business or organization does. That said, there are steps you can take to stockpile some SEO work, while knowing that you can’t fully stockpile SEO because of needing to respond to yet-unknown industry, life, world, and personal events that may impact your organization and the products, services, and solutions you offer. Think about the onset of the 2020 pandemic. None of us really saw that coming, right? And, we had to pivot and put out new information, and/or add or tweak products and services to better serve our customers in a new world/business landscape.

How You Can Stockpile SEO
Google continues to reward websites who provide fresh/current “helpful content.” This was reinforced by their August 2023 algorithm update that indicated having “helpful content” was a key factor “the king of search engines” would continue to take into consideration when deciding which websites to serve high up in search results for relevant terms.
By creating an editorial calendar that documents future blog post topics for the next quarter, or more, and then, actually writing the posts and creating or identify images for use along with the posts, you can certainly get ahead of the SEO game — by doing all you can to have content that your target audience will value queued up for several or many months. The aforementioned is particularly true if your content management system (CMS)/website platform allows you to schedule posts to be published at a future date.
Why You Can’t Completely Stockpile SEO
As expressed in our blog post intro., there will always be unforeseen circumstances that arise that will cause you to want or need to put out new unanticipated content, or to add or change product, service, and solution offerings. Here’s an example: a blog post I wrote with a colleague about how to best employ social media during the pandemic. Could I have foreseen a need for this post months in advance, and therefore, created and scheduled this, i.e., stockpiled it? No. I don’t think anyone could have anticipated the severity and length of COVID’s impact on organizations and businesses many months in advance.
In sum, you can and should take time to create an editorial calendar detailing future blog post topics and publish dates, and you can and should write those in advance; plus, use CMS capabilities to schedule them to publish on your website at the right time. But, there will always be times when you’ll need to respond immediately to unexpected events that occur — either ones that may pose a challenge to you and your customers, or provide an opportunity for you and your customers that you’ll want to capitalize on quickly.
Need Help Building Out A Blog Post Editorial Calendar?
Not sure where to begin to figure out topics for future blog posts that will provide meaningful, beneficial information to prospective and existing clients?