BrightonSEO April 2024 - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Your Way to Content Success

A talk discussing the reasons and ways to reduce, reuse and recycle content in order to reap success from it.

Transcript

1. Reduce, Reuse Recycle Your Way to Content Success Natalie Arney Freelance Consultant @__nca Speakerdeck.com/nataliearney
2. Hi, I’m Nat
4. I’m a Freelance SEO Consultant. I’ve worked agency side and in-house, for big brands and small brands.
5. I love nothing better than helping businesses - and people - meet & exceed their potential.
6. Have you ever been in the position where no matter how much content you create, your Organic Traffic still continues to decline?
7. It’s often the fault of content decay.
8. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
9. OK, so what is content decay?
10. Isn’t it just another SEO buzzword?!
11. Content decay is a decline in Organic Ranking and Traffic over a period of time
13. This downward spiral happens in the background
14. And it can not only impact one piece of content
16. So what causes it?
17. Content Aging
18. Shifts in Search Intent
19. Decline in Interest in the Topic
20. Cannibalization
21. Algorithm Updates
22. Competition (Internal and External)
23. OK, so we know how it can happen, but how does it affect us?
24. Decline in rankings
25. Decline in Organic Traffic
26. Decline in CTR
27. Link acquisition fails to help
28. People don’t get what they need!
30. The Importance of the Content Audit
31. The Importance of the Content Audit
32. The Importance of A GOOD Content Audit
33. A good content audit helps you to identify problem content (including decay)
35. A good content audit helps you to understand what works well
36. What Does A GOOD Content Audit Include?
37. Evaluate metrics like search and social stats, indexing status, traffic, keywords, shares, and backlinks.
38. Make sure to incorporate E-E-A-T and ensuring content meets quality standards.
39. Make sure to include a way to assess if the content meets its intended purpose and aligns with user intent.
40. Is it just the SEOs role to decide on content quality?
41. No.
42. When auditing content, we should never just look at SEO.
43. (even if it’s just a couple of metrics)
44. Caveat: Don’t let non-SEOs remove content they don’t see as helpful - without your guidance. Speak up!
45. What ranks well doesn’t always show/mean quality
46. Especially in the world of rank and tank
48. So what should we look for alongside Organic Traffic Metrics, Keywords and Backlinks?
49. • All channel traffic • Conversions • User journeys • Social shares
50. Speak to other teams/consultants (Including copywriters and editors, but also Customer Service & Customer Success)
52. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
53. Reduce
54. Don’t churn out unhelpful and lower quality content at scale…
55. … especially in the age of the stochastic parrot
56. (Emily M. Bender) Professor of Computational Linguistics
57. … you need to stand out in an ever-growing sea of beige
58. … and try to survive the ‘enshittification’ of the internet
61. Remove old, unhelpful content that can’t be saved
62. Consider removing or splitting long content to align with intent and improve user experience
63. Consider E-E-A-T
64. Consider content design (users)
65. Consider information gain (Search engines and LLMs)
66. Reuse
67. Reuse content across channels
68. Stuck for content ideas?
69. Look at what performs well elsewhere
70. Trends on other platforms often deserve a landing page
71. These trends are more likely to be featured in the press
72. Not only will you then have a presence for said trend, the page can also be used for link acquisition & brand authority building
75. Keyword tools only tell part of a story, and landing pages/articles provide a place to embed useful other content (video, images etc) aside from the original channel it’s placed on
76. Recycle
77. Improve content that already exists
78. Using the findings from a good content audit to help improve this content
79. Existing content does not need to be good or helpful to benefit from an upgrade
80. Existing content does not need to be good or helpful to benefit from an upgrade This should be considered before removing that content
81. Let Me Show You a Quick Example
82. I found a piece of content that wasn’t doing that well… it had potential
83. After a quick refresh…
85. Providing Value
86. This won’t always be SEO value
87. This won’t always be SEO value - try to see if it can provide this but don’t force it
88. Quality is key.
89. Intent is key.
90. It needs to be insightful.
91. It needs to be human-centric.
92. Review Frequency
93. Content needs to be reviewed regularly… but how regularly?!
94. At least annually, considering trends, search queries, and user demands to refresh and update content accordingly.
95. Evergreen Content
96. Even evergreen content requires periodic updates to stay relevant and competitive
97. We have very little time and budget; is it worth it and how do we cope?
98. Prioritize quality over quantity to maximize impact
99. Stop producing rushed, poor-quality content and focus on creating fewer, high-quality pieces that provide substantial value across channels.
100. Thank you. Where You Can Find Me: X (Twitter):@__nca LinkedIn: Natalie Arney nataliearney.com