7 Tips for Content Marketing Success in 2017. In our current marketing climate, where “content is king,” many once successful SEO practices have become irrelevant or damaging to one’s site in light of improvements to Google’s ranking algorithm. Part of this evolution has been shifting away from semantic analysis and focusing more on user experience (UX) signals, such as bounce rate and time on page. This is what Google wants from their first-page content. It is imperative that you track and monitor every piece of content to assess what is working and what is not. The Internet has never been known for the caliber of prose that most of web writing demonstrates. But in an age where time on page and social shares play a larger role in search engine result pages (SERPs) rankings, writing skills will hold a greater value. In practice, LSI denotes those alternate suggested search terms located at the bottom of a Google SERP listing. Backlinks Having other high-quality sites or influencers link to your content is still a vital part of ranking well in the SERPs. This can be achieved by researching what kind of content high influencers have recently shared and/or linked to and using that information as inspiration to create something of high value.
In our current marketing climate, where “content is king,” many once successful SEO practices have become irrelevant or damaging to one’s site in light of improvements to Google’s ranking algorithm.
Once upon a time you could simply stuff a keyword in the title, subheaders, alt tags, slug, meta-description, and body of an article, and you’d land your content on the first page of Google. This type of SEO (keyword stuffing) hasn’t been in play for close to a decade, but many SEO tricks are still functional today – although it seems like a new article comes out almost daily on either Moz, Backlinko, or Quicksprout arguing that one practice or another is now obsolete.
Google’s attacks against old SEO methods have led many to cry, “SEO is dead.” While this is not true at all (SEO is alive and well), it is undeniable that SEO has changed. The difference is that SEO and content creation have become linked and entwined in new ways, as never before.
As we approach 2017 – a year where content marketing is predicted to play a larger role in digital marketing initiatives than ever before – it is helpful to take a look at some of the current trends in content marketing and what factors will lead a piece of content to rank highly.
Content Marketing Tips for 2017
UX signals reign king
It is Google’s dream to grant their crawl bots the power to actually read and assess what content is useful and well written. While this ability is currently beyond the power of artificial intelligence, Google moves closer to achieving their goal every day.
Part of this evolution has been shifting away from semantic analysis and focusing more on user experience (UX) signals, such as bounce rate and time on page. For instance, if a user clicks on a search result page in Google, stays on the page for awhile and then goes on to another page on the same site, this tells Google that the content was most likely informative, useful, and authentic. This is what Google wants from their first-page content.
UX signals cannot be cheated, like keyword stuffing used to do, but instead relies upon the content actually being good and…
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