Quality content that’s well organized should always be at the forefront of your blog strategy.
Small business owners reach out to me regularly in search of better rankings and more leads. They have a blog, but it’s full of random posts, numerous posts all on the same topics, and posts that barely skim the surface of their area of expertise.
Thin and disorganized content sabotages your rankings.
- Readers, if they do find you, are left feeling frustrated because you didn’t answer their question.
- They don’t get the chance to see you as the expert you are.
- They don’t have enough reason to return.
With over 4.4 million new blog posts being added each day (TechJury), many businesses are pushing quantity of blog posts over quality — and without a strategy to help guide them in the right direction, their blog posts are getting lost in the noise of their competition.
Thin content works against you
Thin content refers to any blog post, article, or page that skims the surface without getting into any real detail. It’s content that doesn’t provide value to your audience and it’s what Google is actively trying to get rid of with their latest Helpful Content update.
Have you ever searched for a problem that you’re having and opened a page only to be greeted with a short, vague paragraph that doesn’t really answer your question? It was frustrating, wasn’t it?
Don’t do that to your readers.
In addition to providing little to no value for readers, thin content also makes it hard for search engines to understand what the page is about. The goal of search engines is to provide informative content that answers a reader’s question quickly and accurately. If search engines don’t know what your content is about, they’re not going to show it.
Writing posts with shallow information won’t help you get found by people who are looking for your services, products, and programs.
Competing keywords confuses the search engines and gives readers too many options
If you have dozens of posts around the same topic, you’re actually competing against yourself in the search engines. Rather than being seen as an expert on the topic, you’re just seen as someone with a lot of content that’s all centered around the same thing.
Imagine visiting the website for a local landscaper…
- You’re hoping to improve the curb appeal of your home, but you’re not sure where to start.
- Looking at their blog, you’re greeted with 17 blog posts all about improving your curb appeal.
- How do you decide which one to read?
- Do you read them all?
It’s unlikely anyone will click on all of those links unless they already trust you. In this case, the chances that they’re going elsewhere to find a better resource are high.
The better way to approach this is to have one post that goes in-depth on the topic of improving curb appeal and then link out to other related posts or pages within your site. These related posts could be about choosing the right colour for your front door, low-maintenance plants, or whether to use artificial grass.
This allows you to still cover the topic but give your readers more detail when they find an area they’re interested in, while also helping to create internal links back and forth within your site.
Optimized content ranks better
By properly formatting your content, you’re helping the search engines better understand your content and expertise. By using headers, bullet points, and other formatting techniques to break up your content into smaller chunks, you’re making it easier for readers to digest your content.
Readers are also more likely to stay on your page when presented with well optimized content, helping to increase time on site and show your readers that you’re an expert at what you do.
The better optimized your content is, the higher chance you’ll have to rank in search engine results pages. That means more traffic to your website and more leads for your business — it’s a win-win!
Are your content efforts working for you or against you?
Recently, I was doing an assessment for a potential new client. They had a blog that was several years old and they were adding new content each month but they were getting very little traffic to their blog posts and they needed help.
They tried:
- Creating multiple posts around the same topic
- Adding videos so readers stayed longer
- Stuffing keywords in throughout the post
But none of these techniques were helping them get the traffic they wanted.
Unfortunately, their efforts were working against them — but it wasn’t all bad news. The fact that they have content to work with means we have content to improve.
As a business owner you know you need to get in front of clients and you know blogging can help do that, so you try to squeeze in content creation whenever you can. But let’s face it, you barely have time to create in-depth quality content, let alone learn how to optimize it so you get the best results and rankings.
What I shared with my client is that creating new content isn’t always the answer. When a good foundation of content is already in place, improving that content to better optimize and consolidate it under one clear content strategy can produce better results.
If you have poorly written, unfocused content, it’s time to clean up your posts and give them the attention they deserve. By optimizing your content, you can better compete in the search engines while engaging your readers with valuable information.
Tips to improve your business blog posts
Instead of creating new content for the sake of having something to post, try some of these tips with the content you already have.
- Merge similar content into one, longer-form content piece that delivers more value to visitors and search engines.
- Transcribe your videos to improve accessibility and give search engines more content to index.
- Evaluate your content and see if it’s still relevant — if not, delete it!
- Review the data — check Google Analytics and Google Search Console and see what can be tweaked to rank better
- Create internal links — links to other pages and posts on your own website — to help users find more information on your site
If you want to improve your search engine rankings, your content needs to work for you. You’ll get more from your existing content, spend less time creating new content, and ensure the content you already have is optimized for search engines.
