Revamp Your Content Strategy

By \ May 16, 2023

The United Kingdom got a new reigning monarch for the first time in 60 years back in September of 2022. Seems like a noteworthy event, especially considering Prince Charles’s coronation ceremony amassed 20.4 million viewers.

Speaking of coronations, is content still king of your marketing ecosystem? While doing a year-end recap can help you get started on the right foot, there’s no time like now to review your content strategy to collect data, evaluate your goals, and further optimize your SEO and social media tactics to align with those goals.

Come with me, and you’ll be, in a world of pure optimization

Ensuring your website follows SEO best practices has always been an effective and crucial component of a content strategy campaign. However, effective SEO shouldn’t use a set-it-and-forget-it approach—your Google Analytics dashboard is like an open spigot, dispensing unfiltered and raw data. If you’re not actively monitoring it, there’s little you’re gaining from this invaluable resource.

With Universal Analytics’s sunset on the horizon, migrating to GA4 has been essential to staying up-to-date on current SEO strategy. Moreover, the transition to GA4 represents an opportunity for organizations to reframe strategy, KPIs, and evaluative methods for website performance monitoring if they haven’t done so in a while. Much like a good spring cleaning can help you declutter, taking the time to evaluate your SEO strategy after the GA4 migration allows you to harness all the newness of this powerful monitoring tool.

Is Google the new Yellow Pages?

Watch out, Google—there’s a new posse of algorithms in town! 

As social media continues to shape our lives, we’re beginning to see how they’ve reshaped some of our online patterns, particularly with younger demographics. For the first time, social search surpassed Google search for brand research among individuals between 16-24 in 2022.

Not taking this news lying down, Google promptly switched its search engine results page from paginated to infinite scroll. Now search users can sit back and scroll through the entire universe of websites that answer their inquiry, just like it’s an Instagram feed.

This shift in search trends isn’t surprising, but it requires modifying your content strategy to prepare adequately. Mastering effective social search optimization (and reorienting your SEO approach to be more CTR-based than position-based) will be key to capitalizing on these changes and ensuring an active presence that complements your strategy.

E-A-T your vegetables

Google has always stressed the importance of high-quality content to ensure SERP (Search Engine Result Page) ranking success. While everyone might have a different opinion on what high-quality content is, how does Google define it?

In the prophetic words of Weird Al: “E-A-T it!”

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and it’s one of the main ways that Google’s algorithm rates the quality of your content. How can you infuse your content with E-A-T? Here are some of the most valuable guidelines you should incorporate:

• Pick content topics keeping WIIFM (What’s in it for me?) in mind.
• Cite your sources! Adding backlinks to valuable websites that relate to your content is a great way to improve SEO.
• Avoid using copy that reads as too “sales-y,” as well as automatically generated content. The amount of content you’re publishing matters, but the quality matters even more. 
• Showcase the author’s knowledge and expertise with a detailed and well-thought-out bio.

Simply put, the quality of the content you post also affects how you’re perceived. Cementing yourself as a thought leader in your industry is the goal every brand should strive for, and E-A-T-ing can get you there.

TikTok continues to dominate the social media platform leaderboards

TikTok has been a force to be reckoned with since 2018 when the app became available in over 150 markets after the Musical.ly and ByteDance merger. While the future of the platform in the US remains uncertain, the app continues to gain users and has a vice-like grip on trends—especially with younger demographics.

So, what is the secret ingredient to their success? Authenticity and short-form video. These 15-second to one-minute videos can allow your brand personality to shine in ways that other mediums don’t allow you to.

With TikTok’s success, platforms like Facebook and Instagram have created Reels to compete, as well as YouTube Shorts, offering similar products for companies that can’t utilize TikTok due to the legal and governance issues that the platform faces (or maybe a full-blown ban).

Short-form content represents a fantastic opportunity for top-tier brand awareness. If you haven’t considered short-form video content as part of your social media strategy, let this be your sign to get started!

Final thoughts

While SEO and social media are two separate aspects of content strategy, they work together like a well-oiled machine. When used in combination, it puts your brand in front of as many people as possible—both young and a little less young—and helps you not only grow in numbers but build a community of people that are invested in your brand where your content is king.

To start a conversation about creating effective social media and SEO strategy, reach out to idfive.