Return to the basics with your content strategy

Begum says: “Go back to basics. Focus on content and making sure it resonates, sounds reliable, and attracts the right audience.

There used to be a lot of fluff content back in the day. We should be going back to the humane basics. We should understand and acknowledge that SEO is talking to the user about the website, and remember the basics of effective communication.”

How do you know that you’re talking to the right user?

“You should be identifying what you want to say and what you want to communicate. Firstly, you need to know who you are to connect with the right audience and embrace their style of communication. As long as you understand what you are doing and are solid in your strategy, you can find the right audiences that will be attracted to what you are offering.”

Is there a particular style or type of content that you find to be effective at the moment?

“In general: not AI-generated content. All the fluff being created recently is making us feel very pressured as SEOs. There is so much fluff going on that we cannot really get to the point where we want to be. Cut that fluff out and clear the fog so that you can present yourself as you are. That’s the best thing that you can do, both for your audience and yourself.

There is a very, very deep pool that you have to go through right now, and it’s extremely frustrating. We have to make it easier for our audiences.

From my perspective, fluff is all the marketing that uses jargon like, ‘Get it now!’, ‘You deserve this!’, etc. It’s marketing that doesn’t really offer anything for the user and is just trying to steer them in a direction that will leave them frustrated in the end. Provide value and communicate your value well. Do it without generic AI content and reveal your brand’s personality in every communication that you have with the client.”

Does AI only produce fluff?

“AI increases fluff, which is why I’m trying to avoid it. It is already proving to be very helpful because content is one of the most time-consuming SEO tasks. However, many brands have been leaning towards automating content production and optimization, but AI doesn’t really make optimized content. You still have to be you.

You can enter keywords and it will very easily come up with an article brief, and even outline everything for you, but you still need to provide some sort of value for the client from your perspective. Otherwise, they will be frustrated with what they read on your website.

AI can help at the beginning of content creation and during the ideation process. It gives a much faster pool of content that you can take advantage of. However, this still has to go through your heads of strategy and digital marketers to be able to resonate with the users.

You don’t write an article just to put it out there. People should be engaging with it and there has to be some sort of target for it. It has to serve your goals. To be able to do that, you can take advantage of AI, but it still needs to go through an editorial process.”

What makes a piece of content resonate with a user?

“Providing your perspective and appealing to the users, as long as it touches them on a personal level or solves a problem for them. If it provides value, it’s applicable, and it’s information-rich, that’s going to resonate with your users.”

What makes a user feel that you’re likely to be reliable?

“It’s about being trustworthy and consistent in all your communications. You should have a stance and you should not be saying X in one place and Y in another.

When it comes to AI, it doesn’t really know what it’s talking about. When you leave the content creation up to AI without any editorial input, it just goes nuts, and you can end up in a very weird position. It has a lot of bias and a lot of the information that it has been fed is unreliable.

If the information you are providing on your website is very heavy on the content side of things, rather than facts and data, you are going to need to be very strategic instead of just publishing everything AI has generated for you.”

How do you attract the right audience?

“It is about speaking the same language. There isn’t going to be any change on that front. Good SEOs still find ways to identify what their users are looking for and the keywords they are using.

If you’re catering to Gen Z, the wording that you use would be very different from when you’re communicating with Gen Y or millennials. You need to understand those differences and know when your audience is familiar with the jargon, is from different countries, speaks different languages, etc. Identifying those differences will help your business to really cater to the right audience.”

Do people make the decision to convert themselves or can you assist the process with sales writing, UX functionality, etc.?

“All of those elements definitely have their own input, but you follow some sort of sales funnel with your clients when they come to your website. That funnel relies heavily on the content that is on your website and how you engage with the user as a brand.

Not every communication that you have with your users will be on the website. Your online presence, your offline presence, and any space where you provide information and engage with your users is an input that may help them convert. On that front, we come back to identifying who you are. As long as you know yourself and you know what your users like, you can tweak your messaging and craft your sales model based on that.”

How does a brand establish who it is, how it talks, and what it represents?

“It’s all about the messaging, the values, and the mission. Whatever you are trying to do and whatever you feel your values are, you should be able to communicate them and stay true to them in order to be reliable.

Changing perspectives and providing different things on different fronts is not going to make you a very reliable brand. In recent years, we have seen that users are actually looking for a human connection. They want to be understood and they want to be heard.

As long as you are putting your core values out there and ensuring that your communication is wrapped around those, that will resonate with your users a lot because all the purchasing and conversion patterns have changed in the past few years.”

What does human connection look like?

“It can be having an individual associated with each article you produce, having social profiles that are easy to follow, video content, etc., but it can also be simple, subtle tweaks like providing the information in the right place.

It could be something as simple as having size guides or FAQs on your pages for the sake of being useful for the client, not for the sake of SEO. Be a step ahead of them and think about what they might need throughout the journey they are taking on your website.

To do this effectively, you will need to have different inputs from different users. You should be in connection with your users to be able to identify what they want and what they need. Then, you can tailor your messaging, and even your whole strategy from time to time, if need be. Lay it all out there with subtle tweaks and useful information.

When it comes to measuring the value of improving your human connections, reviews and social engagements are definitely a great way to do that.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“Throughout this conversation, I’ve had a little bit of a war with AI-generated content that doesn’t get any editorial input. Take advantage of AI, but don’t try to make it the core of your SEO offering. Use it as a tool that makes your job easier but stop focusing on AI. Keep focusing on people and providing for them.

You can still use AI tools to check your content. For example, Grammarly has AI-based grammar checkers which you can certainly take advantage of. At the end of the day, though, you need to be personally checking your content – particularly if it was generated or altered by AI.”

Begum Kaya is SEO Manager at Uprise Up, and you can find her on X/Twitter @begumkayaseo and at upriseup.co.uk.