improve content

“Build Your Own Content Operations Framework”

More and more marketers of all stripes, including inbound, outbound, social, digital, and content marketers, are being expected to take on the role of content operations.

These marketers need to comprehend:

  • Who is engaged in the creation of content?
  • how material is produced
  • Who is the creator of what content?
  • where content is envisioned, produced, and kept
  • How long does it take for material to appear?
  • Why is content made
  • How to create a structure that will put all of this into order and structure

Content marketers can no longer solely concentrate on the results of their content marketing activities due to growing expectations. Now they must also think about, create, put into practice, and manage the framework for content operations within their enterprises.

What precisely do content operations entail?

The overarching perspective of everything content-related in your business, from strategy to creation, governance to effectiveness assessment and content management, is called content operations. The Content Advisory consults with both large and small businesses, and all too often, content operations are left to develop naturally.

Teams claim that because “things are operating just fine,” formal content operations are not required. Nobody wants to be responsible for bringing everyone into line. Nobody likes to deal with the arguments put forward by various teams as to why their methods are the only/best/correct methods. Therefore, content teams continue to insist that everything is good.

Breaking news: it’s not.

Who produces what material when is not the only consideration.

When done correctly, content operations promote efficacy and efficiency in terms of procedures, personnel, tools, and financial resources. From conception to archive, content operations are crucial to the strategic planning, creation, management, and analysis of all sorts of content across all channels (paid, earned, and owned) and throughout the whole company.

The finest possible customer experiences for audiences are enabled and powered by a brand’s formal, documented, and enforced content operation architecture.

It needn’t be as difficult as it seems.

One of the greatest and most difficult concerns for anything new is “Where do we start?” and it is what prevents many content, administrative, and marketing teams from adopting a formal content operations strategy and methodology.

Here is some guidance presented in simple, high-level phases.

1.Clearly state the content’s goal.

The “why” behind the team’s actions is its purpose. It serves as both the impetus and inspiration for everything that comes after. It is the motivation behind all content-related endeavours, yet it is never fully realised. Consider it the direction of all content initiatives.

2.Describe the goal of the content

It’s time to outline your content mission after the team’s content activities have a defined (and approved) mission. Is the goal of your material to draw in new employees? create brand loyalty? strengthen connections with customers? Does the C-suite and the rest of the corporation support you?

3.Define and keep track of a few primary goals and outcomes.

Once your content’s purpose is established, it’s time to outline how success will be measured.

Because they have true worth and boost your company’s profitability, content assets are called assets for a reason. Therefore, you must evaluate their effectiveness. Setting OKRs, or objectives and key results, is one of the greatest ways to accomplish this. OKRs are a powerful goal-setting and leadership tool for articulating goals and the steps needed to achieve them.

Three to five important quantitative, objective, measurable results are often listed along with the target, which is typically a broad business goal to be fulfilled. In order to ensure that the ultimate goal is accomplished, checkpoints are last developed.

Consider that you’ve given yourself the goal of putting in place an enterprise content calendar and collaboration platform. Key outcomes to monitor could include:

  • user and technical requirements documentation
  • finding, displaying, and choosing a tool
  • putting the instrument into use and rolling it out

You would monitor things like obtaining funding and approvals, specifying requirements, managing procurement, and so forth.

4.Assemble your team for content operations.

You need personnel to do the work using the OKRs set. What shape will the building take? Who will submit reports to whom?

Are you going to use a centralised command-and-control strategy, a decentralised but supported structure, or a hybrid approach? The organization and team structure must fit into the framework and culture of the broader business.

5.Make a governance scheme official

You need a governance model regardless of how the operational framework is constructed. Your content operations are governed to make sure they adhere to established standards, goals, and objectives.

Get a senior-management advocate to oversee the creation of your governance framework; ideally, this person should come from the C-suite. The only method to receive funding is in this manner.

You should have an editorial advisory group, also known as an editorial board, content committee, or keeper of the content keys, to stay in touch with the organization and its content requirements. Representatives from all the business functional groups that use the material, as well as those who are closely involved in its delivery, should be included in this committee. The team should oversee the project, offer comments, and serve as a liaison with the rest of the company.

Again quoting Simon Sinek, he says, “Passion alone can’t cut it. Passion needs structure to survive. A why without a how has a low chance of working.

6.Design effective workflows and processes

A line of sight into every content process is necessary for compliance with the governance paradigm.

How is a material created from beginning to end? 27 different approaches might be found today. Your ideal outcome would be to develop the bulk (70%) or more of your content in this manner, including infographics, advertisements, CEO speeches, and other types of content.

Understanding the various processes used to generate and publish content today, including who is involved (internal and external resources), how progress is tracked, who the doers and approvers are, and what happens to the content once it is finished, may require some research on your part. Once these processes have been established, you can optimise and It integrates them into a core workflow while making provisions for unusual and sporadic content requirements.

7.Use the most appropriate technological stack.

What number of tools do you use? Due to the fact that many businesses expand through acquisition, their content stacks sometimes contain duplicate elements. They may use two or three content management systems (CMS) in addition to numerous marketing automation tools.

Conduct an audit, get rid of duplications, and simplify as much as you can. Where possible, automate using the built-in features of the content stack. Use technology to automate, for instance, running a campaign on the first Monday of each month.

Your content operations framework doesn’t need to be supported by sophisticated technology. A spreadsheet made in Excel may be one of your most crucial tools.

The aim is to streamline the production of content. Organisations and even teams within an organisation can have quite different perspectives on what that looks like.

Adopting a strong content operations framework necessitates changes in organizational, technological, and cultural aspects. It needs support from the top of the organization and a commitment to business objectives at all organizational levels.

Nothing about it is simple, but the reward is well worth it.

7 Tips for Boosting Content Marketing SEO in 2022

Content marketers can no longer just depend on historical SEO performance data as a predictor of future success due to the change in consumer behaviour and the enormous volume of content being produced.

The goal of Google hasn’t changed; it’s still to deliver the best response possible for every search. Its capacity to offer the optimum solution has evolved, though, and it can now do so more frequently.

It’s critical to gain as much knowledge as you can about how search is related to your business, target audience, and other factors given that 71% of marketers think organic search plays a role in their business intelligence. Seven areas are listed here.

1.Market information

83% of marketers claim to undertake market research, and 88% of that group claim to utilise that research to guide business choices, according to HubSpot’s Not Another State of Marketing Report 2021. 67% of marketers polled said they intended to increase their expenditure on market research in the upcoming year.

By thoroughly understanding your market, you can more accurately determine the ranking and traffic potential of content assets. Here, keyword research is a crucial granular activity because it reveals the terms and expressions that buyers use to find information, goods, and services similar to yours.

You should also be familiar with the websites that show up first in the search results for those keywords. It might not be a typical business rival. The best information, for instance, can come from a big media outlet, a university, or a government organisation that produces pertinent content on your subject.

By watching your rank and evaluating market information, you can find opportunities to optimise content for more precise intents, longer-tail keywords, and less competitive SERPs.

2.Searcher purpose

You can give material that your target audience will want to read by understanding why they search.

Connect your current content to the path of your clients. View the coverage gaps you have. Perhaps you’re doing a wonderful job of creating awareness and educational material for the top of the funnel, but you’re lacking content to address searches with a commercial or transactional intent.

You may assess the search terms users use to locate your content. You can make sure that content continues to offer the best and most complete answers when you have a solid understanding of the motivations behind the queries you’re aiming to address.

Finally, you can dig even further and examine the micro-moments, or the person’s state of mind at the time of the search. Google published a number of white papers in 2015 that focused on the know, go, do, and buy micro-moments of search behaviour.

Micro-moment strategies are still highly significant in 2021. Using a micro-moment lens to analyse SERP results can help you better match your content marketing strategy and customer journeys by:

  • Recognizing appropriate uses for movies, graphics, and quick-read information
  • recognising the variations in the target markets and keywords at each micro-moment
  • improving and speeding up the alignment of keywords to their client journey
  • figuring out how paid content tactics can support SEO for a variety of micro-moments in order to dominate specific keywords and categories

This will assist you in setting priorities for content expenditure nearer conversions.

3.Types of search

How does the content’s intended audience find it? This can significantly alter the format and even the content that should be included.

For instance, you should consider offering a top-notch mobile page experience if you discover that 85% of your blog audience accesses your content via a mobile device. Rank-influencing features, including page speed, external links, technological components, and on-page elements, have different effects depending on the industry:

4.SERP placement

The appearance of search engine result pages varies depending on the query. Rich snippets, video and image results, map packs, people-also-ask questions and answers, and a host of other features are now available in addition to the standard results with the title, search snippet, and link.

Understanding the kinds of results that show up on the SERP for the queries you’re focusing on is crucial. For instance, if an older, less authoritative highlighted snippet from a listicle-style piece appears on the results page, your company may have a great chance to build and optimise a better listicle article specifically for the topic. You could even make and optimise a video to gain placement in those rich results that display in that valuable real estate above the fold if you decide to explore a topic where a video appears on the SERP.

As I demonstrate below for health care, education, home renovation, banking, travel, and e-commerce, you can frequently learn from trends in your business. For instance, a subset of searchers who value speedy responses is visible in the health care and education industries, but this type of information doesn’t even register as a preference in the home improvement, finance, or e-commerce industries.

5.Types of content

The best content formats and distribution channels for the audiences and keywords you’re targeting can be determined with the aid of SEO insights.

For instance, a searcher who clicks on a link to a detailed B2B buyer’s guide may anticipate an ebook rather than a blog article. A searcher looking for a broad overview would probably anticipate a high-level blog post on the subject rather than a restricted download.

Additionally, you might find that the initial content type isn’t a suitable fit for drawing searchers. For instance, according to your market and keyword analysis, the guide that was published last month ought to be doing far better than it is. However, it appears from your search results that it isn’t performing as planned. You repackage it into other content assets, such as a YouTube video, a SlideShare presentation, or a collection of blog posts, to increase its audience.

To determine which content formats resonate and perform best for meeting various user needs, analyse your website analytics and industry trend statistics. Make sure each piece of old content is performing to its full potential and use these SEO insights to inform future material.

6.Automated real-time user behaviour

This tip becomes a little more challenging because you can’t always adapt your content to what visitors are doing in real-time on your website. However, according to studies from Segment, Accenture, and other organisations, consumers become irritated by impersonal material, and the majority of them are more willing to patronise companies that offer them personalised offers and suggestions.

To achieve this at scale, AI-enabled SEO technology can be a big help. Since they have already left by the time you analyse the site analytics and determine exactly what that visitor was looking for,

We collaborated with Campbell’s, whose recipe material is a crucial factor in promoting and selling their products. Their website automatically generated appropriate internal links for the footer and labelled them as “members also viewed…” across all recipe pages using a tool provided by our company. Within a few weeks, Campbell’s content for 4,000 keywords moved to page one.

7.Conversion and engagement insights

It is crucial to know which key performance indicators (KPIs) to use to determine whether a piece of content is effective. For instance, traffic statistics and ranking data are wonderful, but are users engaging with your material or are they just browsing?

In Google Analytics, set up conversion monitoring to monitor if visitors are completing your desired goal.

If you want to see which material gets the most engagement on your social media networks, you can also check them out. Can you have the same success in search by focusing on a different goal or subject?

Putting everything together

There is no end to good outcomes in SEO; it is a continuous effort. Your SEO content strategy must keep up with changing consumer trends, from mobile optimization to focused keywords and from searcher intent to content kinds.

Are you utilising SEO to its fullest potential? Plan for 2022 but also be ready to dig deeper. Find opportunities to scale your efforts with clever automation, improve the specificity of your personalisation, and streamline content optimization.

To improve your SEO results, fix outdated content.

Your website likely contains a mountain of published material if your business has been around for longer than a year or two. Because so much of that information is out-of-date or unrelated, it no longer benefits your audience or your brand.

However, it doesn’t hurt at all, right?

Wrong. The search rankings and user experience of your content may be badly impacted by outdated content.

For instance, published content may contain links to articles, studies, or other helpful websites. Pages go offline over time for many reasons. These links might now lead to pages that no longer exist. As a result, your search ranking suffers since Google dislikes content with broken links. They are not well received by audiences either.

Furthermore, your material may cover subjects that don’t align with your company’s present marketing or content strategies. It would be undesirable for those pages to appear in searches.

Many brands are reluctant to remove information, yet the outcomes are frequently pleasantly surprising. For instance, HubSpot removed over 3000 pieces of old material. The business noticed an improvement in its SEO results in just a few months.

Conduct a content audit first.

Despite what HubSpot has learned, you shouldn’t erase all of your previous material. Much of the information you’ve already provided can be enhanced to boost SEO and the audience experience.

Fortunately, there are numerous techniques to enhance already published material in order to boost SEO. Even better, information that has been appropriately maintained or renovated can benefit you just as much as fresh postings. For instance, according to Search Engine Journal, periodically deleting or updating outdated information may increase page traffic to your site and improve SEO. You could eventually save your brand money by putting these tactics into practice.

You must first locate the erroneous or out-of-date content if you intend to cut it with digital scissors. You must thus audit your content. Every piece of content on your website, whether it be blog posts, tutorials, or interview articles, should ideally be reviewed to determine what still benefits your target audience by establishing authority or by providing information. Start with one content area, such as blog posts, and then extend from there if the volume of content makes that effort too challenging.

Remove or move content that is:

  • no longer applicable due to modifications to your business or shifting industry trends
  • Not useful to the people you now want to reach

The SEO boosting strategies listed below may help the material you choose to preserve.

Update and republish quality but outdated material.

What should you do with your archived blog articles and other reliable content that you wish to keep? Republish them since Google favours recently published material.

However, don’t simply repost them on your website because that will quickly result in a ranking penalty in the eyes of Google’s computerised search engine algorithm.

Refresh the article instead by:

  • Adding new sentences
  • Updates to current ones
  • Including fresh links and images

After that, post your excellent material again with the current date. After revising more than 20 previous blog entries, Databox, a well-liked dashboard platform for organisations, noticed a 75% boost in website traffic.

As you work on upgrading older information, keep the following options in mind.

In the content you’re maintaining, remove any references to dated statistics.

Look through posts that are largely truthful and reliable. Edit out any incorrect information or dated references that may be present.

Consider that you’ve written a fantastic blog post for your small business about how to use a particular product. Although the article is still current, it contains information from five years ago. To benefit your brand, remove such phrases.

By doing this, you may avoid having broken links negatively affect your content. Additionally, it stops your target market from reading out-of-date material and drawing the wrong inferences about the legitimacy or authority of your brand.

By changing those out-of-date references or data pieces with more recent ones, you can improve the SEO value of previously published pages.

Go online and look for current, correct, and relevant references to replace each one that was removed. This ensures that your links point to reliable sources and that they are not broken.

Review and update evergreen posts as well, don’t forget.

Read over old postings to look for references that aren’t relevant or convincing anymore. Take into account the market, its trends, and the search terms used by your target audience.

Put on your editor’s cap and start working after that. Cut the fat from outdated material, add new words expressing fresh ideas, and more without altering the essentials of previously published works. This will take you less time than if you were to develop new content while enhancing the SEO for your company.

Include fresh SEO keywords and links.

Finally, by including recently discovered SEO keywords and links, you can refresh outdated material and increase its worth for search engine optimization.

You can leverage the keyword research you’ve already done to improve older material if you’re still constantly producing new content as part of your content strategy. To make older blogs more relevant and authoritative than before, consider replacing or adding new keywords, and think about including a few new, high-authority links within older blogs.

 

Finally,

Making outdated material relevant to your target audience again requires work. However, upgrading existing material and removing outdated content can work wonders for your content marketing plan.

Without spending money on new material, you might increase organic traffic to your website and better meet the demands of your audience. See the outcomes for yourself by putting these tactics to use.