Is the action that you are taking solely intended to benefit readers?
This is a great question to ask yourself while planning, and implementing your content strategy. A very good, or “epic” piece of content, as Joe Pulizzi puts it, is motivated by what the customer wants. The core of content marketing can be boiled down to Pulizzi’s observation, ”Your customers don’t care about you, your products, or your services. They care about themselves.” That being said, what role do SEO services play in content marketing? Search engine optimization services have been consistently proven to increase visits, leads, and even customer conversions… but your customers don’t really care about any of that, do they? An SEO agency can get your web pages to the upper ranks of a Google search, but that rank is only as valuable as the quality content SEO that you provide on those pages.
The Real Goal of Quality Content SEO Services
If you have sub-par, disengaging, and just generally bad content on your #1 organically ranked page, you are making a mistake. The real goal of search engine optimization strategies should be to expose your best performing, most educational content to as many people as possible. In fact, Google’s mission statement is
”To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
The essential component to this mission statement is the word “useful”. You will frequently find that a search engine optimization agency aims to rocket your blog posts, landing pages, and home page to the top of the SERPs, with utter disregard to the usefulness of the information contained therein. This is a good way for a temporary increase in traffic, and maybe even conversions… but when you stop shelling out the money to maintain that #1 spot, your results will suffer from a lack of quality content SEO. Applying search engine optimization services to bad content is akin to paid advertising, and this benefits no one.
Which Content You Should Leverage with an SEO Agency
Now that we have established that applying search engine optimization services to sub-par content is a waste of resources, we must determine which content we DO want to leverage. The answer is fairly obvious: only have an SEO agency focus on your highest performing quality content SEO. The method to determine which content is your “highest performing” will depend on the goals of your company. If your company, like most, is interested in increasing profits, then you will want to try to rank your landing pages and/or blog posts with the highest conversion rates. A great way to qualify your content is to run a pilot, or test period for everything that you publish on the web. This will give you some longitudinal data on your content, and help in your decision for the application of quality content SEO services.
What to Do with Your Under-performing Content
You might be wondering, if I only employ SEO assistance for my highest performing content, what becomes of my low performing pages? I will not be the one to tell you that a no-post-left-behind policy is going to be the right way to go. However, if a certain page’s metrics are average… there may still be hope. Many SEO services offer conversion rate optimization that helps to pinpoint and rectify the barriers to conversion that are lurking within your content. If your SEO agency of choice does not offer this service, you may consider switching agencies or reaching out to a conversion rate optimization specialist for help. Keep in mind that some content may be hopeless if it receives dismal results after you introduce it and collect the corresponding data. In general, I would suggest following the Pareto Principle: know that 80% of your achievement will come from 20% of your efforts. Be efficient in recognizing which content performs, which can be adjusted to perform, and which content can be left behind.
If you are looking for an SEO agency, or you’d like to learn more about other strengths and weaknesses of your site domain, request your free assessment to see how you can improve. Enfusen SEO services are only a small piece of what we offer to serve your needs.
