TRAFFIC
Figure 2: Increase in share of potential organic traffic across
whole industry (December 2017 to February 2018)
Month
Source: Branded3
Google not only determined that these
pages were great for the specific queries
related to these articles, but also decided
that the site overall was better for users
by having these detailed guides. Over
the same three-month period, visibility
overall increased by 42% with our share
of potential organic traffic increasing from
13% to 18% within the whole industry
(see Figure 2).
But it’s not just about improving
rankings. Whenever users spend money,
they do so at personal risk. A product they
buy might break, a service provided may be
substandard or an activity or holiday may
not be enjoyable. The more we educate
our users, the more capable they are of
making a good decision when spending
their money, and this gives them the
confidence to spend. This is why other
forms of content, such as reviews, product
descriptions and guides, are vital to
encourage a user to convert.
Improving the content on your site is one
of the most important things you can do,
both from an organic ranking point of view
and to help increase conversions across
all channels. With Google continuously
improving its understanding of content
quality, content will only become more
important in the future.
Steps to creating better content
1. Improve existing content
Look at the keywords where you can
feasibly and easily improve rankings,
such as from 20th to 5th. Now look at
2
the ranking page for these keywords.
Is the content on this page informative
enough, detailed enough and well
written? If not, start by improving the
content on these pages. But beware
– not all queries warrant long reams
of content. To stick with the example
of gambling, a user searching for
a better-ranked competitor. What can
you learn from them? We recently
did this for an igaming client’s most
important keyword using learnings
from the top-ranking competitor. This
helped rankings grow from 5th to 3rd
by creating more detailed and better
structured content.
4. Structure your content correctly
Getting the structure of your content
right is often more important than
people realise. The higher up on the page
content can be found, the more likely
users are to read and interact with it.
Equally, Google will consider content
higher on a page as more important
in its rankings. It’s also important to
present content in an easily digestible
format that makes it easier for users to
find the information they need. This
can come in the form of tables, lists or
by splitting content into sections with
subheadings. Google tends to favour
content displayed in these ways not only
by ranking them better, but also by
featuring these types of content more
commonly in their answer boxes 2 .
“The more we educate our users, the more capable they
are to make a good decision when spending their money
and this gives them the confidence to spend”
“football scores today” is probably
only interested in a table containing
football scores whereas a user searching
for “what is a non-runner” is probably
expecting a more detailed piece of
content explaining this term. Make sure
you tailor your content strategy to the
purpose of the page.
2. Identify content gaps
The next step is to find those keywords
that are not giving you rankings. If the
keyword is relevant to your business and
you don’t rank for this term, then you
may simply need to create the content
that fills this gap.
3. Competitor research
If you’re unsure about what will work
or wondering how you can improve the
content on your site, look at what your
competitors are doing, then use this
information to develop your content
strategy. Compare your ranking page
for important keywords with that of
5. Make your important content
easy to find
The easier your content is to find on
the site, the more users will view that
content. Google also uses this as a
ranking factor, determining that the most
important pages on a site are the easiest
to find. You can make your content
easier to find through your internal
linking. This can be improved for
important pages by including links from
the top navigation, the footer, a sidebar
or by adding links into the content of
other pages wherever this is relevant.
BEN LAWRANCE is a
digital strategist at Branded3,
which was named Best Large
SEO Agency at the UK Search
Awards 2017. Ben works with
a range of brands in the retail and
financial sectors helping them improve
their organic visibility.
https://www.branded3.com/blog/getting-featured-googles-answer-box/
iGB Affiliate Issue 68 APR/MAY 2018
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