The "Complete Content" Approach to Content Marketing
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Complete Content: A new model to drive SEO success, and much more, with content marketing. Danny Blackburn, Content Director at Stickyeyes, talks you through this new approach to content, and explains why a lack of clarity when it comes to what content is, and what we want it to actually do, is making digital and search marketing much harder.
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The "Complete Content" Approach to Content Marketing
- 2. OK Google, how do I make my site rank?
- 3. Easy!
- 6. This is content too, right?
- 7. Content?
- 8. SOCIAL AGENCY SEARCH AGENCY CRM AGENCY CREATIVE AGENCY PR AGENCY MEDIA AGENCY BRAND AGENCY RESEARCH AGENCY CLIENT Strategy Research Assets Content Strategy Research Assets Content Strategy Research Assets Content Strategy Research Assets Content Strategy Research Assets Content Strategy Research Assets Content Strategy Research Assets Content` Strategy Research Assets Content
- 10. There has to be a better way.
- 11. What do people want and need from you?
- 12. “Spotting patterns in what people wanted in their lives, and their obstacles, then creating content around that just plain worked.” Tara-Nicholle Nelson Former VP of Marketing, Under Armour/MyFitnessPal Author, The Transformational Consumer
- 13. Three layers of insight. What do we need to do to drive performance? What does your audience want and need? What does your brand stand for?
- 14. What makes you, you?
- 15. Audience Insights. Demographics are a greatstart,butwe need to go waydeeper.What do they want andneed from you?What do they care about? TRUSTEDSOURCES Jointhedotsbetweenmultiple datasourcestoproducefully roundedaudienceinsights. IN-DEPTH PROFILING In-depthprofiling– demographics,geo,politics, professions,disposable incomeetc. ONLINEBEHAVIOURS Learnhowaudiencesbehave online.Deviceusage,social networkpreferencesand more. DEEPINSIGHTS Unlockadditionalkeyinsights suchashobbies,outlookonlife, brandrolepreferencesandso on. COMSCORE / GWI / YOUGOV / EXPERIAN / HITWISE / GOOGLE ANALYTICS / PROPRIETARY DATA
- 16. INTERNET USE MOTIVATIONS Source: Global Web Index, March 2018 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Research how to do things Stay up-to-date on news / events Research / find products to buy Stay in touch with friends To get inspired / get ideas Research for work Entertainment Fill up spare time Organize my life Networking for work Express myself Share content %ofaudience Hunter Global Baseline Hunter Global 18-24 Hunter Global 25-34 Hunter Global 35-44
- 17. BRAND PREFERENCES 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Make you feel like a valued customer Provide innovative new products Help you to simplify your life Improve your knowledge and skills Produce eco- friendly products Keep you up-to- date Provide entertaining content Give you the chance to personalize products Donate to / support charities Make you feel cool / trendy Improve your image / reputation Connect you with other fans of the brand %ofaudience Hunter Global Baseline Hunter Global 18-24 Hunter Global 25-34 Hunter Global 35-44 Source: Global Web Index, March 2018
- 18. TECHNICAL PROFICIENCY RELEVANCY AUTHORITY & TRUST USER ENGAGEMENT USER EXPERIENCE Technical Optimisatio n Functional Content Engaging Content Marking Comms. UX Optimisatio n CRO Mobile Optimisatio nWhat leversdoyouneedtopulltodrive SEOsuccess? KEY PERFORMANCE FACTORS RESEARCH & STRATEGY STRATEGIC COMPONENTS MEASUREMENT & REFINEMENT Performance insights
- 19. SEO PROFICIENCY SCORECARD [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] [CELLRANGE] 0.0K 12.5K 25.0K 37.5K 50.0K 62.5K 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Ted Baker Selfridges Flannels Harvey Nichols Harrods House of Fraser Far Fetch TK Maxx Tessuti Zee & Co Visibility Proficiencyscore Visibility Authority Relevancy Engagement UX Brand X
- 20. From insights to strategy…
- 21. Content doesn’t work unless it’s consumed.
- 22. CONTENT DISTRIBUTION Pushing content to the audience via blend of owned, earned and paid channels. CONTENT DISCOVERY Creating content in a specific way to make sure people find it when they’re looking.
- 23. Passive moments Active moments
- 25. MICRO MOMENTS Micro-momentsoccurwhenpeoplereflexivelyturntoadevice—increasinglya smartphoneorsmartspeaker—toact onaparticularneed. I wantto BUY Someone’s actively ready to make purchase and may need help – we need to be there to help them. I wantto GO The user is actively looking to visit somewhere – they’re looking for a range of ideas and inspiration. Iwantto DO Beforeor after purchase, those key moments when people want to get things done or try new things. Iwantto KNOW Exploring or researching but not yet in purchase mode. Users want useful information and inspiration.
- 26. DISCOVERY Creating whattheaudience is lookingforand makingsure theyfind it DISTRIBUTION Creating whatwillengagethe audience andpushingitinfrontof them
- 27. INDIRECT Messaging thatis specifically NOTabout thebrand, productor service DIRECT Messaging thatisdirectly aboutthebrand, product orservice DISCOVERY Creating whattheaudience is lookingforand makingsure theyfind it DISTRIBUTION Creating whatwillengagethe audience andpushingitinfrontof them
- 28. DISCOVERY Creating whattheaudience is lookingforand makingsure theyfind it DISTRIBUTION Creating whatwillengagethe audience andpushingitinfrontof them INDIRECT Messaging thatis specifically NOTabout thebrand, productor service DIRECT Messaging thatisdirectly aboutthebrand, product orservice Complete Content
- 29. BEST-IN-CLASS PRODUCT CONTENT IN-DEPTH DESTINATION GUIDES AWESOME ADS! ENGAGING INTERACTIVE TOOLS DISCOVERY Creating whattheaudience is lookingforand makingsure theyfind it DISTRIBUTION Creating whatwillengagethe audience andpushingitinfrontof them INDIRECT Messaging thatis specifically NOTabout thebrand, productor service DIRECT Messaging thatisdirectly aboutthebrand, product orservice
- 30. “What you want your audience to take away…” Your brand purpose Your content theme Your personality & tone of voice YOUR KEY CONTENT TOPICS Functional Content Best-in-class, highly optimized category & product content that’s aligned to users’ search behavior and focused on driving conversions. Informational Content Highly-relevant practical and actionable informational content which helps our customers in critical ‘I want to know’ micro moments. Engaging Content Instantly engaging, talkable, sharable content designed to be distributed to the audience via owned, earned and paid channels to grab their attention. Advertising Content Channel-appropriate, user- journey align advertising creative – from Digital Display, to DR paid social ads to brand VOD, engineered for impact. Channels & Investment Strategy
- 31. Complete Content ON-SITE ENGAGEMENT CONTENT DEPTH & RELEVANCY BRAND AWARENESS CONTENT DEPTH & RELEVANCY ON-SITE ENGAGEMENT AUTHORITY & TRUST ON-SITE ENGAGEMENT BRAND AWARENESS AUTHORITY & TRUST ON-SITE ENGAGEMENT AUTHORITY & TRUST BRAND AWARENESS DISCOVERY Creating whattheaudience is lookingforand makingsure theyfind it DISTRIBUTION Creating whatwillengagethe audience andpushingitinfrontof them INDIRECT Messaging thatis specifically NOTabout thebrand, productor service DIRECT Messaging thatisdirectly aboutthebrand, product orservice
- 32. Nice theory. Where’s the proof?
- 33. Functional Content. Driving SEO visibility with content.
- 38. The new layout outperformed the original with a: 7.1% rise in click-throughs to product pages 2.2% rise in overall conversion rate vs SOLOPRESS: CRO EXAMPLE
- 40. Informational Content. Tapping into ‘I want to know’ micromoments
- 41. Solopress
- 44. This is not keyword stuffed SEO fodder – it’s high quality brand content including step by step how to guides and glossy video designed to give users exactly what they want and need.
- 45. Source: ahrefs, Mar 2018 INFORMATIONAL RESULTS
- 46. CATEGORY SUB-CATEGORY FILTER-LEVEL GENERICS GENERICS Occasions Hair inspiration Products Hairstyles Festival Wedding Prom Celebrities Red carpet Festivals Curlers Hairdryers Straighteners Curly Straight Long Messy bun Short Curly Updo Braided Long Wedding Evening UpdoElegant Curly Daytime Long hair Styling Essential Pink Black Compare Waves Fringe Short Pony Vintage Easy
- 47. Engaging Content. Reaching the audience in all the right channels
- 48. Hertz
- 49. THE ULTIMATE US ROADTRIP
- 50. THE ULTIMATE US ROADTRIP FEATURED BY: Notonlyhighlyengagingbut also incrediblyuseful,wecreatedan evergreenresourcewhichcontinues todriveauthorityandawareness. It’sagiftthatkeepsongiving!
- 51. Advertising Content. The impact of awareness on non-brand search
- 52. Tesco Bank
- 53. ROADMAP INSIGHTS
- 54. Establishedproducts >10%clicksreached Unestablishedproducts <10%clicksreached RANKING DISCREPANCIES 53.7% 22.9% 22.6% 19.6% 19.3% 15.7% 12.6% 3.4% 1.9% 0.4% 0.3% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Life Insurance Home Insurance Loans Car Insurance Credit Cards Pet Insurance Travel Insurance Travel Money Current Accounts Savings Mortgages %ofavailableclicksreached % of available clicks reached
- 55. 333% 245% 239% 188% 169% 111% 88% 81% 65% 30% 29% 0% 100% 200% 300% 400% Credit Cards Loans Home Insurance Car Insurance Pet Insurance Travel Money Current Accounts Travel Insurance Life Insurance Mortgages Savings %brand+productsearchvolumevs.top3 Brand + keyword search volume – relative to market CONSUMER AWARENESS
- 56. 189% 65% 0% 50% 100% 150% 200% Established products Unestablished products Avg.%brand+productsearchvolumevs.top3 Brand + keyword search volume – relative to top 3 CONSUMER AWARENESS
- 57. DISCOVERY Creating whattheaudience is lookingforand makingsure theyfind it DISTRIBUTION Creating whatwillengagethe audience andpushingitinfrontof them INDIRECT Messaging thatis specifically NOTabout thebrand, productor service DIRECT Messaging thatisdirectly aboutthebrand, product orservice
Editor's Notes
- Hi everyone. So today I’m here to talk about content, and how we can use it – it all its forms – to drive SEO performance, engage real human beings, and ultimately sell more stuff.
- Now, everyone in this room today knows that content is absolutely central to SEO. In fact, if you ask Google how to do SEO, it basically just tells you to “do some content.” Which is helpful. “Give visitors the information they're looking for. Provide high-quality content on your pages. This is the single most important thing to do.”
- Easy! Let’s all just go away and do some of that! High-quality content! Thank you very much! Of course, in reality, there’s much, much more to that very nebulous statement from Google than meets the eye… What does it actually mean? What does ‘high-quality content’ look like? How does it differ from ‘shit content’? And what the hell IS content anyway? Where does it start? Where does it end? Isn’t everything just content? Argh!
- Now a few months ago, I came across a post on this very topic in one of my content marketing LinkedIn groups. Some well meaning soul asked the group ‘how do you define content?’ As I scrolled down the answers from the great and good of the content marketing community – and it was shocking. Not because they were bad. But because they were all different. Literally no two responses were the same. Even a bunch of professional content marketers couldn’t agree on a clear and simple definition. So I did what any self-respecting “Xennial” would do – I Googled it.
- And this was the result. So, Content Marketing is apparently all about “the creation and sharing of online material that does not explicitly promote a brand, but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services”. OK – so we know Google wants “great content”… But content marketing is all stuff that “does not explicitly promote a brand”. Does that add up?
- What about the other stuff marketers create and build? All those brilliant product and category pages which convince and convert audiences? All those beautiful shoppable Instagram ads? Those carefully crafted emails? Is that not content too? Feels like it is to me.
- All this confusion is basically a function of the fact that everyone in the agency world wants a bit of content - mainly because they see it as a new way to boost their revenues. But everyone’s coming to it from their own comfort zones. So content being made by ad agencies ends up looking a lot like adverts. Content made by PR agencies looks a lot like PR campaigns. Content made by media agencies offers great new ways to extend reach. And content for search is usually either on-page optimization and PR-y link fodder. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s some really good stuff in and amongst all that. The point is, it’s all different, and it’s ALL content.
- But this approach has taken us to a very confused place – where every team, every agency has its own definition of content, its own research, its own KPIs, its own content strategy and then its own content assets. And the client ends up playing the role of referee. Does this look familiar to anyone? Yes, this approach ends up delivering a lot of content, but it’s a pretty messy and inefficient way to go about it.
- And all this comes at a point in time when people want and need brands to be more joined up than ever. These days we interact with brands in so many different ways, different moments, and different channels – and people quite rightly expect brands to understand what we want and need in all of those moments.
- There has to be a better way. Brands need to become as dynamic as their audiences.
- And that better way starts when we stop talking about customers, and consumers, and users. And start talking about people. Real, complete, complicated, confusing, unpredictable people. Because people don’t care about agency models, or the internal structure of marketing teams, or KPIs. They care about what matters to them. And they expect brands to give them exactly what they want and need in all the moments that matter. Think about it… What do you want and need from a brand when you’re actively looking to buy something? What kind of content do you want and need when you’re researching something you don’t quite understand? What kind of content do you want and need when you’re flicking through your Facebook feed in front of the TV on a Saturday night? As marketers, we need to understand how our brands can add value in ALL of those moments.
- This is exactly the process used by Tara-Nicholle Nelson, who’s the former VP Marketing at MyFitnessPal and under armour. She’s a bit of a guru of mine, her book The Transformational Consumer is well worth a read. Her whole approach – in simple terms – is about identifying what people want, and the barriers stopping them get those things, and then creating content that helps them achieve them. And to do that, you need to start by diving into the data.
- I use three different layers of insights Audience insights: What does the audience want and need? Brand insights: What makes your brand different, better, special? This is critical for understanding how the brand meet those needs and wants. Performance insights: What do we need to do to move the needle in ways that will drive performance?
- The first element is understanding the brand, something which performance marketers and search agencies sometimes neglect a bit in my opinion. But if you want to engage with an audience, the first question has to be ‘how can my brand offer them value’? Now some brands have a really well articulated vision of what the brand is and what it stands for, whereas others don’t. But this process is as essential for utilitarian brands as much as it is for lifestyle brands. In a nutshell it’s about understanding how what you do, what you sell, what you offer interacts with what the audience wants and needs?
- Once you’ve developed that deep understanding of the brand, you then need the deepest of audience insights. Demographics are a great start – but we need to go deeper than that. What channels do they use in which moments? Do they turn to search engines? Or do they ask their mates? Where do they hang out online? Are they Facebook addicts? Or are they avid Snapchatters? What kind of content do they want and need from brands in all those moments?
- Here’s an example from our work with Hunter Boots – we can look at the reasons WHY the different segments use the web. From the data, we get loads of insight. We see some big over-indexes in several areas – stay up to date, research products, to get inspired. We see similarities between segments – all segments are using the web for product research – and we see differences between segments – the younger group are most interested in entertainment. For a content person, the data is painting a picture of exactly what your audience want and need.
- But we can go deeper still. Here we can use the data to understand what the audience explicitly wants and needs from brands. As usual, they want to be made to feel valued, but when we look how this compares to the baseline, we see huge over-indexes – they clearly want brands to “make them feel cool / trendy” and to “improve your image” It all builds a nuanced, multi-layered understanding of what the audience wants and needs.
- Finally, we need to look at performance insights – what levers do we need to pull in order to achieve your specific objectives? From an SEO point of view, that means understanding what drives ranking performance in 2018. Data from our proprietary Roadmap tool tells us that, in broad terms, these are the five high-level factors which impact SEO performance.
- We can then understand where you stand compared to the competition on all those factors. This is the output from the SEO proficiency process we use at Stickyeyes. The stacked bars show brands’ proficiency overlaid against search visibility – the purple mountain in the background. We generally find that the most proficient sites/brands are the most visible. But we can also see the specific factors at play within this audience. Here, Brand X has solid authority, engagement and UX metrics but is some way behind the market leader when it comes to content depth and relevancy, as measured by our content optimization tool. And we can also use this to get a sense of whether or not there are any major technical challenges – here you can see that Brand X has a pretty high lever of SEO proficiency but very poor visibility – a clear indication of significant technical or link-related problems.
- So all those insights give us an understanding of what the brand stands for, what the audience wants and needs, and the specific levers we need to pull to drive SEO performance. But the ingredients alone aren’t enough. Do how do we find the right recipe?
- It starts with the understanding that content can only work when it’s consumed. So you need to start by thinking about how you’re going to achieve that for your brand and your audience.
- When you think about it, there are only two fundamental ways content can be consumed – distribution and discovery. It’s pretty self-explanatory… Distribution is… and Discovery is… But the crucial thing to understand is that the TYPE of content which works for distribution is unlikely to be the same kind that works for discovery.
- Content for distribution is the kind of thing which needs to reach out and grab people in passive moments, to stand out, to disrupt. Content for discovery is much more about active moments, when people are actively looking for something. What works in one, probably won’t work in both. Life insurance anecdote…
- Thankfully, these days we have a huge range of distribution channels we can leverage – across the paid earned owned and shared spectrum. To choose the right blend of channels we need to go back to all three levels of insight and apply all the information we’ve learned – what channels do they use? What works in those channels? How do they become aware of brands? How do they buy? Critically – this is about much more than ‘where should be buy space’ – it’s about the right kind of content in the right channels. Take social media for instance – in some contexts, a straightforward product and price social media ad is exactly the right thing to do. But in others you need to do more than that – genuinely entertaining, engaging content. It might even be a combination of both. It’s all about working out what’s right for your brand and your audience.
- On the flipside of that in content for discovery. This is about understanding the micromoments that matter.
- So that gives us this discovery vs distribution axis. The next thing to consider is HOW you can talk to people in those different moments. Again, at the highest level, a brand only really has two ways to talk to people in those moments.
- You can either talk to them directly – about your brand, product or service Or you talk to them indirectly – about things they’re interested in, their passion points, their pain points.
- So that gives us the four fundamental areas of content… To the right, we have content which fits that original definition – content which “does not explicitly promote a brand”. To the left we have content that’s more traditionally in the space of ‘marketing communications’. The top half is discovery content, or ‘pull content’ as some people call it. The bottom half is about distribution, or push content’. These are – at a top level – the only four ways brands can talk to their customers and every brand needs to think about how they can and should leverage these four content types in the ways and the channels and the moments their audiences want and need.
- And the best brands get it right in all four areas… For Hertz…
- From an SEO perspective, these four areas of content all pull our different strategic levers in different ways. But crucially, they all contribute to pulling ALL of those strategic levers. So, for example, while functional content is primarily about boosting content depth and relevancy, doing it right is also critical for on-site engagement…
- Of course, all that is just theory right? So let’s look at some specific examples…
- OK let’s start with Functional Content
- When we started working with Solopress, our SEO team identified a big disconnect between the site and what people actually searched for. So the challenge was to rework the site’s Functional Content to fix that.
- When we started working with Solopress, the site was structured very rigidly around product taxonomy. For example, there were 80 pages within the ‘leaflets and flyers’ section of the site, based on things like this. Of course, our keyword research had showed very clearly that this just wasn’t how people searched for leaflets and flyers – we had to realign the site content to reflect how people really search in real life. We had to make sure the site was meeting people’s wants and needs in those ‘I want to buy’ moments.
- So we reworked the site structure to align the content with what people actual search for. Now the data told us it was all about size, style and material, then at a lower level, specific sizes, styles and materials. This allowed us to reduced the size of this site section from 80 pages to 19 pages, which was obviously great in terms of distributing the site’s inherent authority. For me, this is exactly the kind of thing we all need to be thinking about as part of a Complete Content strategy – “is the functional content on my site aligned to what people want and need in those ‘I want to buy moments’. And for Solopress, it is now.
- But as well as aligning the structure of the site, it was also about making sure the content on the site was right for people in that moment. Now this is 100% NOT about stuffing a bunch on keywords onto a page. It’s about creating best in class functional content which gives people what they want and needs in those ‘I want to buy’ moments. Think about it, if you’re actively searching for A6 flyers, what do you need to know? It’s the basics – price, delivery information, reasons to choose one brand over another. I talk about this kind of content as being ‘convince and convert’ content – and yes, it’s very closely related to CRO.
- So for me, CRO is absolutely part of Functional Content. In those ‘I want to buy’ moments, we need to make it as easy as possible for consumers to achieve that. In this case, Research found that users were confused by the labeling on CTAs. This, coupled with the fact that the vast majority of sales were for non ‘create you own’ products led us to test reducing the prominence of the DESIGN NOW button and adding more explanation to the user. Now increasing conversion rate on your site might not improve SEO performance, but it definitely will improve the revenue you’re driving from existing SEO traffic. It’s all part of the same process. What I’m arguing for here is turning the typical process on it’s head – instead of different teams starting with KPIs (‘it’s my job to improve conversion rate’, or ‘it’s my job to drive more traffic from organic search’) we need to start with what users want and need in ‘I want to buy moments’ and align everything to that.
- And when you get it right – this is the kind of impact it can have. Solopress’s SEO visibility has tripled in two years, taking them into the big league of online printers, driving transformational levels of sales and revenue.
- So the second area of Complete Content is Informational Content. Again this is content that’s NOT about your brand, products or services, and which is primarily there to be discovered in those active moments. So compared to Functional Content, this is much more aligned to that traditional definition of content marketing in that it doesn’t explicitly promote the brand.
- This is an area we’ve been working on recently with ghd.
- For ghd, both brand and commercial non-brand search represents a big opportunity. There are plenty of ‘I want to buy’ moments in this space. But those are dwarfed by the amount of informational search volume in this space. Millions of people are searching for hairstyles-related informational terms. Each one of these searches is a highly relevant person asking a question and looking for an answer – and each one represents an incredible opportunity to put the brand in front of people in key top-of-the-funnel moments.
- So to tap into that opportunity we’ve launched the ghd hairstyles hub. This is very closely aligned to in-depth insights into what people are actually searching for in this space, and again it’s very closely aligned to what people actually want and need in those informational search moments. There are loads of tools on the market to help you understand what people are searching for around a given topic – keyword planner, searchmetrics, ahrefs, and we also use a bunch of in house tools. In fact, we’re just in the process of building a really cool tool using IBM’s Watson AI platform to help us understand the semantic concepts, entities, emotions around the topics we’re creating content around.
- Critically, this is NOT keyword stuff SEO fodder. This is content that’s very carefully created with people in mind, and specific moments in mind. We’ve worked very closely with the brand to ensure that the quality of the writing, imagery and video is absolutely top draw. It makes it expensive and time-consuming to create – but it’s worth it.
- So we’ve only dipped our toe in here at this juncture, but we’re seeing some really positive green shoots. Since the initial 24 pieces of informational content were launched the ghd site is now ranking for more than 3000 additional informational terms, driving thousands of additional ‘top of the funnel’ clicks to the site.
- Now that’s great in its own right, but we’re also starting to see that Google is rewarding sites with semantically deep content. So adding a deep and rich pool of highly relevant informational content to your site shows Google you’re an authoritative site in your given market. As such, we’re seeing sites rewarded with commercial search ranking improvements when highly-relevant informational content is added to a site.
- OK, onto engaging content. So again, this is content that’s primarily designed to be distributed to users, to grab them and engage them.
- For Hertz, we wanted to create something really engaging and inspirational around one of the main reasons people from Europe hire a car in the US – that once-in-a-lifetime American Roadtrip
- So it started with a simple idea – existing road trip planning tools were all super complicated things which required loads of knowledge and time. On the other end of the spectrum were simple blog articles – things like the 10 best things to see on a California road trip. So we spotted an opportunity to do something in the middle – something interactive, engaging and personalized, but something inspirational too, that would draw on Hertz’s 50 years experience of helping people enjoy American Roadtrips.
- So this is what we built. You choose the bit of the country you want to visit, enter your personal interests and then you’re presented with a selection of specially curated itineraries, a mix of ‘must see’ attractions and hidden gems. And every month we’re adding new routes, based on timely and topical events such as the 50th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King. Each new route gives us a powerful outreach angle to take to influential sites. It’s about keying into the audience’s passion points in an interesting, engaging way in a specific way that allows us to pull the levers we need to drive SEO performance.
- OK so I guess this is the controversial one? Is advertising, content? Well, for me, it absolutely has to be considered part of the Complete Content ecosystem. There’s a narrative in the content industry which is basically content good/advertising bad – which is obviously total nonsense. It’s like arguing that a hammer is better than a screwdriver, when any idiot knows both are very good at different jobs. Again if we take it right back to people, and what they want and need, it’s clear that advertising and ‘content’ both have an important role to play. And there’s loads of evidence using attribution and econometrics to show that, for example, display advertising drives significant uplifts in brand search volume, PPC click through and traffic. Yes, sometimes highly engaging or very useful content is absolutely the right type of content to create an put in front of the audience. But people know full well that brands sell stuff, and they accept that. Of course, they want advertising to be good advertising. The effectiveness of advertising is incredibly well researched and well documented so for content marketers to argue that their shiny new toy is somehow superior is crazy. We know advertising is great for driving awareness, and – done right – great for driving DR sales too.
- But does advertising impact SEO? Can non-brand rankings be impacted by your ad spend? Absolutely – and here’s a quick bit of insight from our work with Tesco Bank to help demonstrate why.
- So it started with data from our Roadmap tool, which shows a strengthening correlation between brand search volume and ranking performance, while correlations with other traditional factors such as DA are diminishing.
- We wondered if this might go some way to explain the difference in non-brand SEO performance for some of Tesco Bank’s different products. Some products were ranking relatively well in non-brand search – pulling in decent amounts of the available non-brand traffic – whereas others weren’t performing as well from an SEO perspective. It was the same site, with the same authority, the same engagement levels, the same links etc. So how come?
- So when we looked at the number of brand + keyword searches in each vertical – eg Tesco Bank Credit Card – there was a clear pattern. Generally speaking, there was less brand + keyword search volume for products which weren’t performing well from an SEO perspective. So lots of people search for Tesco Bank Credit Cards and Tesco Bank ranks well for the generic term ‘credit cards’ Crucially, we knew the products with the greatest brand + keyword searches were the ones with the greatest awareness activity behind them – simple things like fliers in store.
- So in a nutshell, increasing awareness of a product, and brand search volume for that product, appears to have an impact on non-brand rankings. Now I’m not saying you need to go and spend £5m on a TV ad campaign instead of investing in an SEO agency – that’d be madness right! But what I am saying is that the evidence points to Google considering brand awareness when it decides where to rank your site. As such, there’s a strong case that awareness advertising – programmatic, display, radio, TV etc – is actually contributing to your non-brand SEO performance. It just shows how interrelated modern SEO is.
- So the fundamental point I want to leave you with today is that if you want to create the kind of ‘high-quality content’ that Google says it’s looking for, you need to think about how you’re using content in ALL it’s forms, across all four areas of Complete Content, because all four of them impact SEO performance. Now of course, it’s all got to executed well – crap content is crap content whatever form it takes. But understanding the specific jobs each type of content does, and the specific SEO levers pulled by each type of content, helps us develop a single, integrated content strategy that will deliver what you need: - Functional content which ranks for those relevant ‘I want to buy’ moments, which helps boost PPC relevancy scores, which convinces and converts people better than ever. - Informational content which taps into people’s real word wants and needs, which ranks in relevant ‘I want to know’ moments, which introduces people to your brand right at the top of the funnel and drives them closer to conversion. - Engaging content which goes out into the world in all the right owned, earned and paid channels, grabs people and pulls them into your brand – every post is a front door to your brand. - And, yes, really good advertising and media buying which stands out from the crowd, which resonates, which communicates what makes your brand different and special and better. If you can create a single, integrated strategy to do all those things you’re giving Google exactly what they need. But SEO is just the beginning. Complete Content is the right way to drive SEO performance, but it’s also just the right way for brands to engage with their audiences. Because it starts with people, and the four fundamental kinds of content brands can engage with them, it gives you a single integrated framework for ALL your marketing activity. When you work it through, you’re left with a Complete Content ecosystem which gives your audience what they need in all the moments they interact with your brand.
- And that’s where the really exciting bit starts. Once we have the right content ecosystem in place, we can start to use data and programmatic technology to allow users to find their own personalized paths through that content ecosystem. Every touchpoint – in paid, earned or owned channels – gives us crucial information about where individual users are in their dynamic user journeys allowing us to understand what to serve them next, in which channel, to help them get closer to conversion. But that’s probably a talk for another day…
- So I hope that all makes sense. If you want to find out a bit more about Complete Content there’s a free ebook available on the Stickyeyes website. I’d love to hear what you think about it.
- Thanks for listening and please feel free to grab me later on in person or on social media.