How to Create In-Depth Content That Ranks Better
This webinar features Jeff Coyle (MarketMuse Co-founder & Chief Product Officer) and Jeff Baker (Director of Marketing at Brafton) discussing the secret to better ranking – writing higher-value content that far exceeds what currently exists on the web. During the one-hour webinar, Baker uses numerous examples to reveal how Brafton uses this type of content to give them a competitive edge.
How Inbound Marketing Has Changed
This webinar begins with Jeff Baker looking back over the last decade and reflecting on changes within the industry and how Brafton (his company) adapted to the shifting environment. While many people historically divide SEO into different eras, during which certain things worked until they didn’t, the reality is that search has been in a constant state of flux. Content continues to evolve alongside changes in the Google’s ranking algorithms.
How Content Depth Influences the Pre-writing/Research Process
The most important work, that requires a great amount of upfront effort, is topic selection. It’s vital that you nail this down first, before moving ahead with content creation.
This requires looking at:
- keywords for which the competition ranks, but you do not
- keywords that competitors are bidding on (high commercial intent)
- keywords for which you nor your competitors rank
- what content exists that has good optimization potential
Brafton uses a number of different tools for keyword research and relies on keyword volume and competitiveness to evaluate the landscape.
Between planning content and its creation lies the content brief. This document ensures writers create content that is expert-like in its depth of coverage.
Jeff discusses the challenges he faced initially when he first did this manually.
How to Leverage Your Research While Writing
Combining all the information gathered during the research phase into a content brief creates a content blueprint that writers can use to create the most comprehensive piece of content on the web.
Jeff talks about the value of using content briefs to ensure complete coverage of a topic. It can be also used to take old content that’s not ranking and give it new life. During the conversation, he reveals how Brafton runs old content through MarketMuse content analyzer (now part of MarketMuse Suite) to discover content gaps that may be preventing the page from ranking.
Jeff also discusses how Brafton tactically implements the use of briefs with writers at their agency.
The Importance of Competitive Analysis in Content Depth Assessment and Execution
A list of keywords isn’t all that helpful to writers, as Jeff discovered. As both Jeff Baker and Jeff Coyle explain, content briefs give context and guidance. This enable writers to be more creative while achieving the goals of the brief.
Competitive analysis is a core component of the decision-making process when deciding topics about which to write. But it doesn’t stop there. The competitive landscape can change between the time a content brief is created and a finished piece submitted for publication. Jeff tells the audience how Brafton uses MarketMuse to verify, prior to publishing an article, that it is indeed comprehensive.
Why You Should Update Content on a Regular Basis
Brafton looks at page ranking and traffic generated from an article to determine potential candidates for optimization. Jeff provides an example from their own site on how they went from position 3 to position 1 literally within minutes of publication.
How Brafton’s Current Process Gives Them A Competitive Advantage
Most SEO’s are behind the times and don’t practice Brafton’s type of in-depth content creation. On-page SEO produces small gains unlike what can be achieved through high-quality content.
Q&A
During the Q and A session, Jeff Coyle and Jeff Baker answered questions from the live webinar audience. Here are the questions they addressed.
How does this have an impact on home page optimization?
What about product pages?
Do you worry about cannibalization between product pages and some of the other content you create?
Are their good examples of content briefs?
How did you justify the value of pivoting at Brafton?
What’s an example of how this process empowers creativity?
Resources
The Google Ranking Factor You Can Influence in an Afternoon [Case Study] | Moz
Content Brief Examples:
What you should do now
When you’re ready… here are 3 ways we can help you publish better content, faster:
- Book time with MarketMuse Schedule a live demo with one of our strategists to see how MarketMuse can help your team reach their content goals.
- If you’d like to learn how to create better content faster, visit our blog. It’s full of resources to help scale content.
- If you know another marketer who’d enjoy reading this page, share it with them via email, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.
Stephen leads the content strategy blog for MarketMuse, an AI-powered Content Intelligence and Strategy Platform. You can connect with him on social or his personal blog.