Marcus founder of SearchMetrics has shared the following tips for making content for the moments that matter.
Content can be very broad, Marcus discusses that we need to first discuss search engine ranking factors. When discussing ranking factors, we should assess page load time as it effects the user experience. Page load times have decreased over the time and is having a positive effect, even though people don’t want ‘ranking factors’ and there is a myth around factors in general as it’s harder to create definitive lists.
Niche ranking factors allow for prevision. Microdata and structured data like schema markup is crucial for niches. The divorce and dating niches aren’t using microdata even though it would be perfect to improve the SERP real estate potential. Whereas something like recipes are rich in microdata and when 8/10 search results are using microdata, SEOs are missing out if they don’t use it.
Now for videos. Pages that have videos rank highly in the fitness niche, however, other areas like wine and divorce content aren’t utilising videos. You don’t get fit by reading is ultimately why it’s important for that subject matter.
Now for an analysis of number of paragraphs. Divorce content written by lawyers for example is rich in paragraphs, whereas wine content doesn’t use the same text structure, therefore ranking factors aren’t universally applicable, especially across niches. Being real, you don’t get divorced by video, the format would not be appropriate.
Marcus is posing that we should be analysing the structure of content within our space, for example divorce content is often heavy with lists which is crucial for ranking high, but with specificity to that niche.
What can we do with content based on this?
Content specialisation within your niche is crucial. He uses about.com as an example who have now specialised and moved from their one site fits all for any area of content subject matter. They rebranded the content with different structures and layouts to fit the certain area niche, i.e finance content with minimal images and design.
Updating content is also a great tactic to use when specialising your content. Marcus took his own content and increased its visibility by updating the content’s design and structure to fit their niche.
A third tactic Marcus says to do is remove content. Consolidating and removing content increases crawl budget, helps Google to understand the value of existing content, so don’t cannibalise, capitalise.
For the full slides, check out the presentation over at Search Metrics.
