As 2024 comes to a close and the new year looms, many business owners are turning their thoughts to planning for the year ahead. For service-based businesses, now is the perfect time to take a step back and assess your website’s content strategy, so you can start 2025 with a clear plan that engages your audience and supports your business goals.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 60% of the most successful marketers have a documented content strategy. Planning your website blog and marketing content in advance gives you the structure and flexibility you need to stay consistent and relevant throughout the year, while freeing up time for other business activities. It also means you’re not scrambling to come up with ideas at the last minute, which often leads to rushed, ineffective content.
After severely lacking on doing this myself in 2024, I've been using the slight downtime I've had over the last festive few days (I don't advise big changes to websites over the two weeks pre Christmas, which means this is my quiet time!) to begin planning out my own 2025 content strategy. This can look different for everyone, but my own attempts inspired me to write this blog post and share my top tips to help you plan ahead for the new year to ensure your website remains fresh, relevant, and engaging all year round.
5 tips for planning your website content strategy for 2025
1. Set clear goals for 2025
Before diving into content planning, it’s important to define what you want to achieve in the year ahead. Are you focused on growing your audience, increasing sales, or improving engagement? Your content strategy should align with your business goals, ensuring every piece of content serves a purpose.
Take a look at your current website analytics to see what’s working and what’s not. Are certain pages driving traffic but not converting? Are there sections of your site that are underperforming? Use this data to inform your content decisions.
For example, if your goal is to increase leads, focus on creating lead-generation content like downloadable resources, webinars, or blog posts with strong calls to action. If improving customer retention is a priority, create educational content that adds value, like tutorials, FAQs, or industry insights.
Both Wix and Squarespace offer built in analytics, enabling you to understand which blog posts, pages and products are performing well. Review your 2024 data, and use these insights to plan for your future content.
2. Create a website content calendar.
A content calendar is your best friend when it comes to planning out website content for the entire year. Start by mapping out key dates such as holidays, seasonal events, and industry trends that are relevant to your business. Then, break this down by quarter, month, and week to create a structure for your content.
Be sure to include a mix of evergreen content (topics that are relevant all year) and seasonal content (posts tied to specific events or promotions). This way, you’ll have a steady flow of content that engages your audience no matter the time of year.
For example, if you run a wellness business, you could include homepage marketing messages and blog posts on evergreen topics like 'the benefits of yoga on your mental health', as well as seasonal topics like 'summer wellness retreats'.
If you're using Wix, the Wix Blog app allows you to schedule posts in advance, helping you stick to your content calendar. On Squarespace, use the Scheduling tool to plan your posts, ensuring they go live at the right times throughout the year.
3. Focus on SEO-friendly content
A key part of your 2025 content strategy should be optimising your website content for SEO. As Google’s algorithms continue to evolve, it’s essential to keep SEO at the forefront of your content planning. Research the keywords that are most relevant to your industry and ensure your content includes them naturally.
Planning ahead allows you to align your content with seasonal keyword trends too. For example, in the lead-up to summer, you can optimise your content around searches like “summer home cleaning services” or “outdoor yoga sessions.”
For example, a service-based business in the beauty industry might target keywords such as “bridal makeup services” in the spring or “Christmas party makeup” in November. Creating blog posts or landing pages around these topics will help improve search visibility and attract relevant traffic.
Use the Wix SEO Wiz tool to get personalized SEO suggestions based on your business goals and content strategy. Or, on Squarespace, leverage their built-in SEO settings to optimise page titles, descriptions, and images for search engines.
4. Refresh existing content
You don’t always have to start from scratch. One of the most effective ways to plan your content for the year ahead is by updating and repurposing existing content. Take a look at your top-performing pages and blog posts from the past year—could they be refreshed with updated statistics, a new angle, or additional visuals?
Not only does this help you save time, but it also boosts SEO. Google rewards websites that regularly update their content, so a quick refresh can improve your rankings and keep your content relevant.
Need inspiration? If you have an old blog post about “Summer Skincare Tips,” you can update it with the latest trends, new product recommendations, or customer testimonials. Add new images or videos to make the post even more engaging.
For Wix users, head into the Blog Manager to easily update and republish existing content with new information. Squarespace users can use the same functionality within the Blog section of their dashboard.
5. Incorporate UGC (user generated content)
As you plan your content for 2025, consider integrating user-generated content (UGC) into your strategy. This could include showcasing customer reviews, social media posts, or testimonials directly on your website. UGC not only helps build trust with potential customers, but it also provides fresh, authentic content without the need to create everything yourself.
Not sure how to do this? Both Wix and Squarespace allow you to integrate social media feeds and customer reviews directly onto your site, making it easy to pull in user generated content.
Start planning your website content for 2025 now!
With the new year approaching, there’s no better time to get your website content strategy in place for 2025. Need help planning your content strategy for the year ahead? Get in touch today, and let’s make 2025 the best year yet for your small business!