Content marketing has undergone numerous changes over the last several years. A lot of these changes can be traced back to the evolving landscape of search and an evolution in how people discover, search for, and consume content on the internet.
However, a lot of marketers are still experiencing the same issues that were typical 5–10 years ago. “I have a difficult time determining the ROI on investment of the content I write.” “We are aware that what we’re producing offers value, yet we do not seem to be ranking highly on Google for the keywords we want to rank on.” And, “I’ve done my keyword research. What do I do now?”
Let me begin by stating that adding more content in the hope of making your site appear on Google isn’t the solution. In fact, adding more content to an outdated website architecture will make it difficult for Google to discover and rank your site’s content. This is not a scenario every marketer would like to be in.
The solution to these issues is far more extensive than the amount of content that your company publishes every week or month The real issue lies in the method by which content strategies are developed and arranged. SEO is changing, and marketers have to be flexible.
Nowadays, we live in a highly digitally connected world with millions of people looking for content every minute, as in addition to millions of of content that are posted on the internet every minute. This makes it difficult for a search engine such as Google more difficult to provide users with the most relevant, highly reputable content. To stay a relevant and efficient search engine Google introduced a variety of algorithm modifications in the last few years.
The first significant update, which really shaken the internet it was the Google’s “Hummingbird” algorithm update in 2013. This update was focused on separating phrases instead of narrowing down search queries to specific keywords. Many users of search engine optimization and content marketers saw this as a first change from a keyword focus to a specific topic.
The most recent major update came in 2015, Google’s RankBrain algorithm change. RankBrain is Google’s machine learning artificial intelligence technology that interprets user search results to identify pages that don’t have the exact keywords they were searching for. Google can accomplish this by identifying past search data with similar themes, and combining words and keywords to create more result page for search engines that are contextually driven.
For more details about the growth of SEO look over the sections below that provide resources.
This change offers the chance to reach your ideal target audience. This is a crucial aspect to making content that is successful in today’s digital world. Many people forget that it’s not only about making content for a search engine. They aren’t the ones that fill out forms on your site. Search engines aren’t responsible for posting your content to social media. They’re not your customers. Humans are.
If you’re looking to create useful content that converts your visitors into leads, and ultimately customers, you have to provide a positive, helpful user experience that is beneficial to both the user and search engine, and not just two or one.
Here’s the solution problems for both Make targeted groups of relevant content which focus on a particular subject in depth. The targeted clusters need be connected to a central hub, also known as the”pillar page.
A Pillar page (also called a content pillar or a power page) is a page on a website that covers a particular area in depth. It is linked to a collection that contains related information.
Topic clusters in its base, can be described as a means to organize a website’s content pages by using a more organized and more thoughtful site design. Topic clusters reorganize the structure to create clusters of related content, which connect to a central pillar. Each pillar page must provide an extensive description of the topic the writer is writing about. By linking all content internal to the topic on the subject to a pillar site, search engines like Google can quickly scan all content and realize that there’s a relationship to the page’s contents. Clusters also signal the search engines that there’s an actual depth and breadth in the content, giving the pillar page greater authority in the topic. The algorithms like Google’s RankBrain give this sort of ordered linking by giving it a higher rank in search results.
If you’re just beginning to the art of creating content or starting out, think about mapping the areas your company would like to be recognized for and establish authority around them. Map and arrange your website’s architecture to accommodate it.
