If you’re concerned about your website’s standing on the search engine results pages, you’re definitely not alone. Webmasters all over the Internet devote tons of time to search engine optimization (SEO) in hopes of moving their site just a few spots up the list of search results for the keywords that matter most to them. If you want to produce some powerful SEO results, an organized system for generating content can really help. Here’s how to get started:

First of all, you should think for a moment about what gets a web page ranked highly by the search engines. Keywords appearing in its content are important, of course; so are off-site links that point to the page. (These would be the two most common SEO recommendations you’d hear, of course.) One factor that you might not have taken into account is timeliness, though. Because search engines gauge the amount of interest that a page receives, (measured by visits and links to that page) the earlier you get a page up for a particular topic, the better it will perform.

How should you use this information to shape your content? You need to focus on timely material in order to post first and get a leg up on your competitors. Concentrating on trending topics and fresh news is easy if your site has something to do with current events, but you may be wondering how timely you can be if you’re trying to optimize, say, a plumbing website. This is where organization and a little creativity can really pay off.

To speed up content generation and really take control over it, the first thing you have to do is slow down, ironically. Take a little time away from writing new content and use it to expand your topics, instead. Indulge in a brainstorming session or two and generate some ideas that really push the boundaries of your site’s niche. Don’t worry about fleshing out these ideas immediately; what you want to do is build up a large supply of novel ideas to generate content with later.

Once you have that store of interesting topics ready, your content-generating system is almost complete. All you need to do is to let the news and the calendar drive your creation of new content. Each time you want to add something new to your website, start by scanning the news and taking a look at upcoming events. If you’re working on a site that has little to do with the news, like the plumbing example above, concentrate instead on seasonal holidays, local events, and special offers. Once you’ve picked a trending topic or an upcoming event, grab one of your pre-created ideas and write some new content. The odds are good that your website will be one of the first in your niche to address this particular topic, and if your idea makes for a really novel approach, you’ll capture a lot of attention from visitors.

Search engine optimization is a very wide field, and there are more optimization strategies for you to pursue than there are hours in the day. If you want to do some really effective SEO work, use a novel technique instead of the same keyword-stuffing and link-building everyone else is doing. Give the content-generation system outlined here a try!