Ashley says: “Look at what's currently ranking and really study the top 10 to 20 search results to understand what patterns there are in terms of how the content is structured, how much content is in there, and what's working well for both a Google and a user.

Don’t just copy-paste what's currently raking. Instead, identify patterns from that data, and then bring something new and unique to the table with your content.”

How do you learn what you should be ranking for?

“It comes into a few things, one of which is defining what your brand is, what your brand journey is, and what you need to accomplish right now. Usually that changes from a quarter-to-quarter perspective of what you're trying to focus on. It also has to do with what your product is or what your service offerings are, for instance, are you doing a new product launch and that's what you want all the attention to be on? Or do you have the same standard services, but you want to focus on highlighting maybe just one or two of them?

Once you’ve decided on what you want to accomplish, you’ll need to go in and do some keyword research to identify this new product that we're launching that we need to promote, to better understand what people are searching for in order to be able to find your product, what's the intent behind the search, and then where can you sit within that user journey.”

It's easy for SEOs just to think of the category of business that they’re in and attempt to discover opportunities that perhaps there isn't that much competition in there and drive traffic from there. But if it's not hyper-relevant traffic to begin with, then they're not necessarily going to do anything on your website when they get there.

“Exactly. And if anything, it could totally mess up your data. If you can say, ‘Okay, we have a bunch of traffic going to certain pages, but then no one's doing anything’ - that's not helpful at all. In fact, it's a big red flag from a marketing perspective that we're getting the traffic, but the language in our content is not converting or keeping people on the page so we're missing the messaging entirely.”

What's your favorite way to actually discover what's currently ranking for the keywords that you've defined that you want to try and rank for?

“Literally putting on that user hat, going to Google, typing in the keyword that I'm trying to rank for, or trying to better understand and see what is populating. Do understand that's going to be location-based, but that will give me a general idea of what is populating and what it looks like.

There's just something about putting yourself in the user's shoes. We have so many SEO tools (like SemRush) that will give you a snapshot of the top 10 ranking search results and the patterns that you can identify, but there's something very unique as a marketer to be able to go in as the user and see for yourself. Sometimes that's how I identify the biggest patterns or the biggest opportunities.

If all 10 of the top-ranking articles have this one heading that focuses on variations of this type of product, that's a big indicator that people want to see variations. With that information I can build an internal linking strategy around those variations. It can also give me the ideas of, okay, everyone's focusing just on variations, but what about similarities? No one's talking about the similarities. That's how I can make my content unique by both including the variations because that is working, but also adding a section focusing on what the similarities are.”

If you're an international brand and in lots of different countries, do you translate your existing content, do you start up fresh, or do you try and get someone involved directly within that market, where the user is, and decide what they want and produce content that they want rather than do any translations at all?

“From a perfect world where you have a huge marketing department, endless budget, someone in all these locations? Yes, that is definitely the idea to have someone boots on the ground who really understands the language and the terminology and creates content within that area. But that's very rarely what the actual situation looks like, though. Very rarely do we have the capability to have someone's boots on the ground in all of the different locations that we're trying to get traffic from.

Instead, I use SEO tools to change the geographies to be able to understand what the conversation and trends are there. I’ll also go to forums, Reddit, Facebook groups in those areas and join those groups to understand what they are actually saying. Facebook groups in particular have a keyword search term inside of the group; so drop the keyword in there and see what the conversation is in that specific location. There's a lot of fun and unique ways to kind of immerse yourself in an area that you're not actually in.”

How would you go about offering something different with your content, and is that likely to be appealing to Google?

“It's hard to say because there are always so many other variables. For example, if you have really high authority sites ranking in the top three, even if your content is unique, has all the bells and whistles, and it's completely optimised, you're still competing with really high authoritative brands, and that's just going to be a difficult spot to come up and it will take time. But if that's not the case, then you do have the opportunity to be unique and offer something different with your content that users are desperately searching for, or they don't even know that they need that information, but it's helpful.

For example, I noticed a lot of the long-form content pieces, pillar pieces of content are still being produced by brands, which is great; it's really helpful for users. But where it's confusing, and where there's usually this loss is people aren't using jump-to buttons as much, or they'll have the Table of Contents, but they won't link to those sections. They're thinking they're checking the right boxes, but they're still not making it as easy for the user to find the specific answer that they want and they're burying it.

Your content can be unique and it can be as simple as making what the actual answer is, and the points of that, so incredibly easy to find by using the jump-to buttons within your table of contents. It's not like you need to come up with a brand new answer to this question. It's sometimes as simple as being unique and how you display that information.”

Is there any way that you can split test or test the changes that you intend to make beforehand to get some kind of idea of the likely click-through rate or traffic you're going to get because of that?

“You can. But I mean, if we're talking about if you're on page one, and you're five, and you want to be at three, I mean, you're so close at that point that making any major changes, I would never recommend making any changes like you're already good.”

So it's more about authority, rather than actually the type of content you have?

“Say you're on pages two to five and clearly people are searching for this, then you're close, but you're not there yet. That's a big indicator that you can safely make these changes. You don't even need to be A/B testing. You can make these direct changes and see and analyse this over time. How you're moving, are you going down? Okay, then that changed. That's not satisfying it. But also going back to putting the user hat on and typing in Google because Google's understanding of the intent changes all the time. That could literally be the difference of why you're not on page one, you're on page two, you're at the top of page two, but you're not making it over there yet. And it's because maybe Google's understanding of what the intent is changed so you need to update your content to basically satisfy it.”

Is it possible to serve multiple types of intent from the same page with similar content, but obviously, content that would differ depending upon the stage of the buyer journey, or are you better off actually having separate pages for them?

“Bit of both. I see this all the time, specifically pillar pieces of content to where it'll be informational and address informational. But then they'll seek commercial intent here and there. If you want a fast solution to this, instead of reading everything, you can just click here and purchase this, and their problem is solved.

I see brands all the time having the primary purpose be an informational intent. If I see that working really successfully, that's definitely something where I would go and look at what's currently ranking and seeing what they are doing. Are they just focusing on satisfying that informational intent? Or is it all a commercial base? And sometimes that commercial base is what works.”

Are you noticing any trends at the moment in terms of types of content?

“Video content has been on the rise since 2018; I've been preaching that everyone needs to be doing video content in some way, shape, or form along their content stage. With everyone going to social media networks to get answers or to have conversations, video content is more important than ever before.

In terms of content style, though, there is definitely this need for this shorter piece of content to where the answer is right there. Don't make me scroll three-fourths of the way to the page to get the answer that I'm searching for. You know what the answer is, you have done the keyword research to understand that I'm just trying to get to this one point as a user. So burying is not helpful.

That's also where I'm really curious to see how many different types of content are going to be affected with this most recent update? And are we going to see patterns with longer form content being affected, because ideally, longer form content has satisfied user journey by being informational. But with AI creating these really long-form pieces of content, it's just a little early to say to throw out all your long form and just focus on short-form.

I think this update is really going to tell us a lot once it’s fully rolled out of what not only Google wants to see, but how we can safely keep creating these longer, shorter-form pieces of content while still getting to the point.”

Can it be just as effective as part of the brand experience to aim to drive traffic to social media or other sites on behalf of your brand and then do that as part of the buyer journey? Or ideally, do you want to keep people on your website as much as possible?

“I think that depends on your brand, your goals, and who you're reporting to. At the end of the day, where are the conversions coming from? If they're happening because they're engaging and getting comfortable with your brand on social media, and then stopping by your websites, and then eventually, going back to social and making a conversion. It's really understanding what that user path looks like, where you have resources to put the most effort to create content in and where you can track that path. I don't see anything wrong with putting a lot of effort towards social and creating a user journey, creating content from a social perspective that eventually gets people to the site.

I think social is really good for building brand authority from a consumer standpoint of getting to know your brand and, what kind of content you create. And then, when they're ready, they know what your site is at that point, they know what you offer, they understand who you are, they're going to go on the site and make a conversion. But that can be very controversial, depending upon what your organisation has resources for, what they report on, and where the conversions really come from.”

How often should you update your content, and how do you know when it's time to update it?

“This will be dependent upon how much traffic you get. How often are you getting data to be able to say that this new blog post had enough eyes on it that I can start tearing it apart? I always recommend auditing your content quarterly, which means at the end of the quarter, going back and pulling up all the metrics for all the content in that past quarter, not just new content that you've posted, collecting the data for that, and seeing what the patterns are.

User intent and Google’s understanding of user intent can change. That's where data from older pieces of content is also going to change. So, if you have the capabilities and the resources to do even a rough content audit on a quarterly basis, that's going to really dictate what you need to do in the next quarter, in terms of what posts need to be updated or what posts still need time and shouldn’t be touched.”

What's something that SEOs shouldn't be doing in 2024?

“I think at this point, relying on AI for so much that you’re losing your voice as a brand because we're going to AI to dictate so much of our content and so much of our content strategy. AI is not great at sentiment and it's not great at tone; which means you could find yourself in a rabbit hole in telling it: ‘No, that's not it, try this. No, that's still not it, try this.’

It is just not there yet, and I don't know if it'll ever be there. It might, who knows. We often end up spending so much time trying to reshape it, that if we could have just gotten back to creating it ourselves. Even from a strategy perspective, doing old whiteboard and writing it all out, and kind of getting all your ideas on paper, versus relying on AI to do everything. It ends up taking more time, it's not producing great results, and brands' content across industries are starting to look all the same.

Consumers are not dumb and they're catching on to this. They're very well aware of what AI is doing and what role it's playing in marketing. So, from a time perspective, you may think that you're saving yourself time, but I recommend just using AI as a co-worker, not as your primary resource.”

Ashley Segura is Co-Founder and CMO at ContentYum.