Content Strategy
Deciding what to publish, before anything is written
Content strategy is the work of deciding what an organisation should publish and why, based on the questions its buyers actually ask, the topics it can credibly own, and the commercial outcomes it needs. It happens before writing, and it is the difference between a content programme that compounds and one that produces a steady stream of pages nobody reads.
In an AI-mediated search environment the stakes changed. Volume strategies worked when the goal was to rank for many long-tail variations. When an assistant answers the question directly, thin coverage of many topics is worth close to nothing, and deep, genuinely authoritative coverage of a defined set of topics is worth considerably more.
OMAV’s approach starts from questions rather than keywords. Keyword tools report what people typed into a search box; they systematically under-report the longer, more conversational questions people put to an assistant, which is where a growing share of commercial research now happens.
Method
How the strategy is built
A strategy engagement produces a plan, not an opinion. Each step below generates an artefact the client keeps.
Commercial framing
Which services carry margin, which deals are contested, which objections lose them. Content priorities follow revenue, not traffic potential.
Question research
Real prompts from sales calls, support tickets, forums and AI assistants themselves, alongside conventional keyword data. The output is a ranked question inventory.
Entity and topic map
The topics the organisation can credibly own, mapped against what it already publishes and what competitors dominate.
Share-of-answer baseline
For the priority questions, what AI systems currently return and who is cited. Establishes where the achievable gaps are.
Editorial plan
Question mapped to page, page mapped to format, format mapped to owner and date, with the commercial reason each page exists stated explicitly.
Principles
The rules we apply when deciding what to publish
One question, one page
Splitting a question across several pages divides authority and gives retrieval systems no obvious best source. Consolidating usually outperforms expanding.
Depth over coverage
A genuinely comprehensive page on a topic you can own beats twelve shallow pages on topics you cannot. This is more true now than it was five years ago.
Publish only what you can defend
If the organisation has no real expertise on a topic, publishing about it produces content that reads as generic and gets treated as such. The honest answer is sometimes to write less.
Formats follow the question
A comparison question needs a table. A procedural question needs numbered steps. A definitional question needs a definition. Forcing everything into a 1,500-word blog post wastes the format.
Refresh beats republish
Updating an existing page that has accumulated authority almost always outperforms publishing a new one on the same topic. The editorial plan schedules refreshes as first-class work.
Measure answers, not just traffic
A page that gets cited by an assistant may generate few clicks and considerable influence. Reporting only on sessions will systematically undervalue exactly the pages doing the most work.
Deliverables
What you receive
- Question inventory: ranked buyer questions with source, estimated demand, commercial value and current coverage status.
- Entity and topic map: the topics you can credibly own, with existing assets and competitive positions marked.
- Share-of-answer baseline: verbatim AI responses to priority questions, recorded and dated.
- Content gap analysis: where competitors are cited and you are not, separated into achievable and unrealistic.
- Editorial plan: twelve months of prioritised work with owners, formats, dates and the commercial reason for each item.
- Consolidation and retirement list: existing pages to merge, refresh, redirect or remove, which is often the highest-return work available.