You can download a dozen content strategy templates in five minutes. Nearly all the ones ranking on Google are blank documents. They ask for your goals and personas, then leave you to decide what to publish first, which is usually the hardest part of planning content.
This template helps you make that decision. It’s a free Google Sheet that ends in a ranked 90-day publishing list. You start with the words your customers use, list the searches buyers make right before they choose a tool, and the sheet sorts them for you. Make your own copy here.
I’m a content strategist at Breaking B2B and a B2B SaaS writer, and this is the process I use when I plan content for clients and my site. It covers written content for Google and AI answers like ChatGPT. It doesn’t plan social posts or video.
| Template snapshot | |
| What it is | A content strategy template for B2B SaaS teams |
| Format | Google Sheet with six tabs |
| What it produces | A ranked 90-day publishing list, a page checklist, and a measurement plan |
| Time for the first pass | About an afternoon |
| Price | Free. Make a copy and it’s yours |
What’s in the content strategy template
Each tab does one job, and each one feeds the next.
- Start here. How to use the sheet, how the priority score works, and what the example rows are.
- Goal. One business goal, the KPI that shows progress, and the GA4 event that measures it. Your first 90 days appear here automatically.
- Customer voice. Phrases from sales calls, support tickets, reviews, and Reddit, with the problem behind each one.
- Keyword map. Every keyword you might target, sorted into three tiers, with search volume, difficulty, and a priority score the sheet works out for you.
- Roadmap. Your keywords in publishing order. You don’t type anything here.
- Page & publish checklist. The steps every page goes through, from the URL to the first Search Console check.
The grey rows are a worked example for a social media management tool, with real US search data. Replace them with your own as you go.
How to fill in the content strategy template
1. Pick one goal and decide how you’ll measure it
Start with the result leadership will judge content on. That could be traffic, leads, demo requests, or trial signups, but pick one. With five goals, nobody can tell which page to write first.
Next to the goal, write the KPI that shows progress and the GA4 key event that measures it, such as a demo-booked event or a trial signup. Set the event up before you publish anything. Tracking added three months later can’t show you what happened in those three months. If you’re choosing between metrics, the SEO KPIs worth reporting at each stage change as a program matures.
2. Collect your customers’ own words before you open a keyword tool
Before I touch Semrush or Ahrefs, I read sales-call transcripts. Buyers describe their problem on those calls in words no keyword tool suggests, and those words become the angle for each page. Then I go to Reddit and other communities where buyers ask each other for advice, and to support tickets and reviews.
Write each phrase down as the buyer said it, with its source, the problem behind it, and how close the buyer is to choosing. The example rows are real Reddit posts about social media tools, such as a marketer considering getting rid of Hootsuite “in favor of a cheaper platform”. That one phrase points to several pages a competitor could write: a pricing breakdown, an alternatives list, and a comparison.
Buyers ask ChatGPT about their problem in those same words, so a page that uses them matches the question they type.
3. List your money keywords first
Money keywords are the searches people make when they’re already in the market. They’re usually built on a competitor’s name or a buying decision:
- [competitor] alternatives
- [your product] vs [competitor]
- [competitor] review
- [competitor] pricing
- migrating from [competitor]
- best [category] tools
I start every strategy here, because these searchers are closest to buying and these pages are usually easier to rank. If you’re not sure where to look, finding bottom-of-funnel keywords starts with your sales team and your competitors’ names. The example in the sheet shows both points. For a social media management tool, the money keywords have low difficulty scores:
| Money keyword | Monthly US searches | Difficulty (0–100) |
| hootsuite pricing | 720 | 8 |
| best social media management tools | 410 | 6 |
| sprout social vs hootsuite | 390 | 20 |
| buffer alternatives | 390 | 20 |
| hootsuite review | 210 | 41 |
| hootsuite vs buffer | 170 | 32 |
My best client results came from pages like these. A native advertising platforms guide I rewrote for Taboola went from about 47 US visits a month to 711, and to #1 on Google. A software roundup I wrote for Softr reached more than $130K a month in traffic value at its peak. A best-apps list for Zapier saves the company more than $20K a year in ad spend. One listing in my own roundup of SaaS SEO agencies led to a $36K ARR deal in 10 days.
4. Then cover the jobs your buyers want to get done
Once the money keywords are covered, move to the jobs your buyers are trying to do. If you sell a social media management tool, your buyers don’t only search for tools. They search for how to get more followers on Instagram, how to make money on Instagram, and how to build a brand there.
| Jobs-to-be-done keyword | Monthly US searches | Difficulty (0–100) |
| how to make money on instagram | 6,600 | 60 |
| how to get followers on instagram | 1,500 | 67 |
| how to schedule instagram posts | 1,500 | 64 |
| instagram content calendar | 390 | 50 |
The sheet has a column for how your product helps with each job, because that’s where the product goes into the page. A scheduler belongs in “how to schedule Instagram posts” as the answer, shown step by step. Where the product doesn’t help with the job, leave it out of the page.
These keywords bring more searches, but their difficulty scores run from 50 to 67, against 6 to 41 for the money keywords, so they come second. Awareness topics, like “best time to post on Instagram” (90,500 searches, difficulty 85), come last, if at all.
5. Let the sheet rank your publishing list
The Roadmap tab sorts your keywords for you. Tier comes first, so money keywords always lead. Within a tier, the priority score favors keywords that are easier to rank for and keywords with more searches, and it gives a 15% boost when AI answers already name a competitor for that search.
You add the month and owner on the Keyword map, and the Roadmap shows the order. Anything you mark as published drops off the list, so the top row is always the next page to write. Keep each month realistic for the writers you have. A plan with 30 pages in month one usually ends with three published and a team that stops trusting the plan.
6. Build each page to the same checklist
A ranked list only helps if each page is built to compete. The checklist tab covers what every page needs:
- A short URL that contains the main keyword
- A heading (H1) that names the keyword and the result the reader wants
- The keyword in the title tag, the heading, the first 100 words, one subheading, and the meta description
- Sections that answer the buyer’s questions in the order they ask them
- Original images, product screenshots, and a walkthrough of how to do the job in your product
- One call to action that fits the reader’s stage
Each money keyword has its own format. There are separate guides on writing comparison pages that win the deal, alternatives articles for switching buyers, software reviews that rank above G2, and “best X” lists that rank and convert.
7. Publish, get it indexed, and get it seen
Publishing is the start of a page’s work. On the day it goes live, request indexing in Search Console, then link to it from at least three related pages on your site. Build backlinks where you can, through partners, guest posts, and lists that already rank.
Search takes months to send readers, so distribute the page the same week. Share it on LinkedIn and in your newsletter, hand it to the sales team, and answer the community threads where buyers asked the question it covers. Then repurpose it into a LinkedIn post, a sales one-pager, or an email.
8. Measure what each page does
Check each page’s position and clicks in Search Console at 4, 8, and 12 weeks, and confirm the GA4 key event fires on its call to action. Ask ChatGPT and Google the buyer’s question and note whether the page is cited, because AI answers send buyers too, and they don’t show in Search Console.
Ask every new lead how they heard about you, too. I only know about the $36K deal from my agencies roundup because the agency’s founder emailed me. No analytics tool showed it. For the full method, measuring content marketing ROI starts from these same per-page numbers.
A worked example: the plan behind my own site
My own plan uses the same tiers. For a service business, the money keywords are the searches people make when they’re hiring, so my Tier 1 was service pages and “best” roundups. The jobs my buyers want done, like growing signups from search and proving SEO is working, came second.
Comparing the three months to October 22, 2026 with the three months before, Search Console shows my site’s clicks rising from 1,060 to 3,860 and impressions from about 647,000 to 3.05 million. Over the last 30 days, my site was also the most-cited source in AI answers to the buyer prompts I track in Peekaboo, with 4,802 citations across five AI tools.
My site isn’t a SaaS product, so treat it as proof of the method, not a SaaS benchmark. The client results in step 3 are the SaaS proof.
How this template compares with the free ones you’ll find
There are good free templates. They solve different problems, and none of them decides your publishing order for you.
| Template | Format | What it does well | What it leaves to you |
| Semrush | Google Doc | Thorough goals, personas, content audit, and gap analysis | Deciding what to publish first |
| Superpath | Doc and example | Working backwards from your business model | Keywords, customer research, and publishing order |
| Liam Carnahan’s guide and calendar | Sheet and slide deck | A content calendar with recurring tasks | Ranking topics by how close buyers are to a purchase |
| Canva, Miro, Notion, and Craft templates | Designs and boards | Good-looking plans for any kind of content | B2B buying intent and measurement |
| This template | Google Sheet | Customer voice, money keywords first, an automatic roadmap, a page checklist, and GA4 measurement | Writing the pages |
If your team needs the full strategy document, with personas and brand guidelines, the Semrush template covers it well. Use this one to decide what to publish and in what order.
How to present your content strategy to leadership
Leadership wants one page from your strategy, and it should answer three questions. What result are we working toward, what are we publishing in the next 90 days, and how will we know it’s working?
The Goal tab is that page. It shows the goal and the KPI at the top, the first 90 days underneath, pulled from the Roadmap, and the measurement plan in the same view. When someone asks when content will start bringing in leads, answer with the measurement plan, the GA4 event and the 4, 8, and 12-week checks, rather than a traffic forecast you can’t guarantee.
Content strategy template FAQs
What should a content strategy template include?
A content strategy template should include one measurable goal, your customers’ own language, a keyword list sorted by how close each search is to a purchase, a publishing order, a checklist for building each page, and a plan for measuring results. Without the publishing order, it’s a list of ideas.
What’s the difference between a content strategy, a content plan, and a content calendar?
A content strategy decides what to publish and why. A content plan puts those pages in order with owners and deadlines. A content calendar schedules them by date. This template covers the strategy and the plan, and the month column works as a simple calendar.
How often should you update your content strategy?
Review the roadmap every quarter, and check the measurement every month. Move keywords between tiers when your product or competitors change, and add new phrases to the Customer voice tab whenever sales or support hears a new way of describing the problem.
Would you rather have the plan built for you? My content strategy service covers the customer research and keyword work, plus a content audit and a map of the AI prompts worth targeting. Book a call with me, and let’s find the pages your buyers need to see before they choose a tool.
