The fast-paced nature of content marketing has led to numerous changes in the way people are discovering content. Coming with these new changes are more refined search engines that offer new ways that businesses can utilize in developing their content. At the end, this ultimately leads to changes in how people use search engines.
But then again, a vast majority of people still experience the same struggles that were all too familiar five years ago. Most prominently is the problem businesses face when trying to create awesome content, and still not ranking high in Google for the target keywords. To combat such a situation, businesses need to progress along with their content since the industry is only going to be more complex from here on out. You may then ask, "how do we keep up?"
We'll discuss just that.
Transformation of Search Engines
There's been variations in SEO in recent years leading to the non-reliability of the old metrics for its success.
One of these is the way keyword rankings are being measured. Content marketers analyze their content based on the performance of keyword rankings for the most part, but how reliable and credible is this method? The differences lie in the context. Search results may change depending on the context, specifically where you are inputting a certain keyword from, which may lead to different search results. You need to find a way to evaluate success not just based on keyword rankings alone.
Differences in search results vary depending on where you’re searching from. The best example of this would be searching for the best and nearest coffee shop in town, the results depend on your actual location.
Google has also been dictating how content should be structured with the introduction of featured snippets on the main Google search engine home page. These snippets allow for users to answer a question without the need of looking through the content. It is a convenient feature for the average person scouring the internet for information. But these snippets have made it so that the industry has been leaning towards making content that suffices these needs. In reality, the featured snippets get more traffic for a given question than the non-featured snippets. Publishers now tend to configure their content to fit this mold.
The Best Content Marketing Strategy in 2021 and Onward
The short answer would be: topic clusters! In developing an organic search model for our content, it is best to look at your visibility in a given topic and not just on a specific keyword. By doing the latter, you would be limiting your reach on a broad area of topics. Think of it as a web-based structure for example, the bigger the web the larger the amount of things we can catch. In other words, by organizing our content in topic clusters and lessening disjointed or lone posts, we can easily capture a large share of the search traffic along the vast net of relevant keywords we cast.
Start off from a core topic and simply branch out from there. But how do we do this? First, understand that the topic cluster model will enable a deeper coverage of information across various topic areas while reinforcing your already efficient information structure.
Second, develop a pillar page which is a broad overview of a singular topic depending on the area you would like to focus your content on. Each cluster topic or subtopic will branch out in a way that will lead it back to the pillar page which contains the main content. These linkages will surely benefit you and your content, because when a cluster topic performs well it also elevates the other search rankings since they are all interconnected to one core topic. With this strategy, you can efficiently boost your ranking and at the same time improve the on-site experience for your visitors.
In this day and age, we sift through numerous content that seem impossible to all process. By adopting the cluster topic model, you can build an information structure catered to your audience's experience without having to worry about curbing your creativity. Focusing your resources into a specific topic will net you viewers that would actually care about your content. Then over time, this will just gradually improve. Until the next set of changes for the SEO industry come into play.