Is Your Digital Content Hurting Your Website Performance?

Google’s most recent helpful content update should be the wake up call you need to review your website’s content. This update prioritises high-quality information for consumers.

So, let’s explore how to improve your SEO content strategy to benefit your business.

Google has renewed its focus on improving the quality & helpfulness of search results with a core ranking update. This update means original, high-quality content designed for humans (not just search engines) is crucial for ranking high in search. 

“The helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations won’t perform as well.”

Google

The first step in any SEO content strategy is to complete a content audit. This will help you to uncover the gems that are valuable & driving people to your site & what content is dragging you down.

Once you have completed a content audit you can categorise your content using PICK:

Remove the dead wood that is simply hanging on to your site. It’s outdated, irrelevant content that doesn’t provide value or contribute to conversions. Nobody needs to see the team Christmas post from 3 years ago…

Refresh the content that is exactly on the topic your customers are looking for but lacks depth or is outdated. Update the content, add relevant details & optimise for better engagement.
The search engines love fresh content so a re-write can pay off big time.

Multiple pages saying more or less the same thing is not doing you any favours & can confuse the search engine crawlers on what content to rank.
Merge similar content into a single, comprehensive piece. This prevents keyphrase cannibalisation & offers your customers a central location for all relevant information.

Nurture your high-performing content! Build in to your content strategy to regularly review & update these content gems to ensure they maintain their value & continue to attract traffic.

Practices & tactics that once dominated to give you the best chance of reaching the top of search rankings have now fallen by the wayside.

Search engines now are prioritising audience experience & high-quality information.

Let’s look at the outdated SEO practices you must avoid:

Creating tons of content without focusing on how it adds value to your site leads to overwhelming customers & search engines. 

Instead, focus on the quality of your content that is informative, insightful & engaging to your target audience.

It used to be the case that if you repeated keyphrases often enough in your content then you would rank highly for them. But this would often lead to a bad customer experience as the content would be difficult to read or provide little information on the topic.

Search engines are now sophisticated enough to identify & penalise this tactic. 

Instead, research for relevant keyphrases that match what your target audiences are searching for but use them strategically & naturally in your content, making sure you are writing for human readers rather than crawlers.

The use of AI is only going to rise & it can be a really helpful business tool. However, content written only by AI can lead to unoriginal, inaccurate & generic content that lacks depth. Like any powerful tool, you need a human to drive it.

Instead, AI can be great as a starting point. It can provide a framework for your content for you to bulk out with expertise, opinions & insights. You will not be penalised for using AI to generate content as long as it’s high quality, created for humans & edited with human input.

Using a brand tone of voice throughout your content will also add personality for a truly valuable & engaging customer experience.

Short content or a page with a high word count but lacks detail is not helpful to your readers & does not allow you to demonstrate your expertise.

Instead, do thorough research on key topics & provide engaging & insightful content.

Creating captivating headlines just for the clicks will damage your reputation in the long run. It will lead to customers quickly bouncing off your site & search engines issuing penalties.

Instead, write clear & informative headlines that accurately reflect the content.

By providing valuable content you can build a strong relationship with your audiences instilling trust & encouraging repeat visits.

Top Tip: Once you’ve written new content, think – would the reader feel like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?

A key part of the March 2024 Google update is clamping down on unoriginal content. Avoid duplicating either your own or someone else’s content.

Instead, offer a fresh take on the topic with new information, insights or perspective to really make it your own & show your expertise.

Sites that are hard to navigate or are visually unappealing will lead to high bounce rates which search engines consider in ranking algorithms.

Instead, review your site from a customer perspective making sure it’s easy to navigate & optimised for a mobile experience.

Font style, size, copy length, formatting, colours & images should all be carefully considered to create an inviting website for your customers.

It’s an over-saturated landscape & it can be very difficult for businesses to cut through the noise.

We suggest using these key content marketing success strategies to help you to stand out:

The first stage for any content marketing strategy is to understand your target audience – their needs, wants & pain points. Once you’ve done your market research you can create meaningful content that your audience values.

This is now a key factor in the usefulness of content. Google uses 10,000 contracted search quality raters to act as human quality control over search results, they assign quality scores to specific web pages based on Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trust.

Show your expertise with well-researched & in-depth content. Establish your authority on subjects through collaborations & develop trustworthiness through accurate & up-to-date information. 

The customer route to making a purchase has become even more complex with consumers thoroughly researching & interacting with multiple touch points before making a final decision.

Using different formats such as blog posts, FAQs, case studies & videos allows consumers to interact with your brand at various stages of their buying journey & puts you in a good position for the right content to reach the right audience at the right time.

Use analytics tools to track website traffic, user engagement & key site events. This will give you a good understanding of what content is working & what needs to be improved.

Creating a closed-loop content marketing strategy of continuous improvement means you’re always focused on creating the best customer experience. This is the best practice for reaching the top of the search rankings.

AI & generative search is in experimental stages & there is currently uncertainty on how it will impact performance. But it’s important to consider generative search when creating content to ensure you’re in the best position for when the inevitable changes come into effect.

Informational content: FAQs, glossaries, reviews & testimonials, are exactly the type of content generative search looks for. These resources answer questions, address concerns & naturally target long-tail keyphrases that potential customers are likely to use.

On top of this, clearly label your content with relevant keyphrases so AI systems can clearly understand the purpose of your content, increasing the chances of content appearing to the right audience at the right time.
Get prepared for generative search.

Balanced Impact is a digital marketing advisory that helps businesses build a solid foundation for continued & sustainable growth.

• We simplify digital marketing strategy & focus on the metrics that drive sustainable growth
• We blend strategy design with digital marketing training to build high performing teams
• We believe in being a deeper advisory; we work within your business to build accountability in the team to drive sustainable growth

We’ve conducted hundreds of content audits, helping businesses identify & address low-performing sites to drive business performance.

Developing a SEO content strategy with Balanced Impact optimises content & site structure for commercially relevant keyphrases, driving traffic & sales.