What Content Should I Optimize?

Optimizing existing content is always a sure thing. But how do you figure out what’s best to optimize? And how do you prioritize? This collection of three Saved Views is designed to do exactly that.

These views rely on the All Inventory table which lists all the topic/page pairs for your site. Because one page can rank for multiple topics, even a small site with a few hundred pages can have thousands of entries in this table. The use of filters in these Saved Views is the key to making the list infinitely more manageable. As you go through the list and evaluate the candidates, add them to a plan so you can create content briefs and assign the pages for updating by your team.

This post only scratches the surface of what you can do using MarketMuse Saved Views. We’ve compiled dozens of different ways you can use these views in What Should I Write About?

Let’s take a look at these views.

Optimize – At Risk

Creating a list of pages that qualify as thin content is easy. Just take the list and filter for word count less than whatever value you deem appropriate. If your site architecture is reflected in the URL, you could also filter on that data, limiting the list to certain sections of the site, like blog posts for example. This way you eliminate content such as landing pages where low word count isn’t necessarily an issue.

The only problem with this approach is that it includes thin content pages where the risk has already been realized. In other words, they’ve already been hit and are ranking poorly. Now you have your work cut out for you in bringing them back to life.

But wouldn’t it be nice if you could find thin content pages at risk and fix them before the problem arose? That’s what this Saved View is for!

With some additional metrics, you’ll really be able to hone in on those critical pages. First, there’s Rank where you can apply a filter to only include thin content that’s already performing well – the type where you wouldn’t want to lose your position. Next is Organic Traffic Est. – for those who want to focus on content that brings in the traffic, you can filter for this as well.

Page Authority and Topic Authority helps clarify the risk at hand. Content with high Page Authority and low Topic Authority indicates that off-page factors are what’s driving its’ success. The risk here  is that someone else comes along, creates better content than you, and causes your page to suffer.

Let’s not forget Personalized Difficulty as this personal metric applies only to your site, indicating how hard it is for you to rank. You may want to filter or sort on this column so that you prioritize based on difficulty. You’re more likely to succeed with the easier ones to rank for (low Personalized Difficulty).

---

---

Optimize – Quickest Wins

We’ve talked about creating new content with quick wins in a previous post. This time we’re looking for existing content that we can optimize to score some quick wins. Traditionally, a quick win opportunity is considered as content ranking somewhere between positions 6 and 30. That’s a rough guide, so you’ll want to fine-tune that when applying your filter to Rank.

We’ve included two traffic metrics (Organic Traffic Est. and Potential Traffic) to help prioritize your efforts. You may want to filter or sort on this data as well.

The addition of Personalized Difficulty and Topic Authority is where you can really turn the odds in your favor. Difficulty, also included in this view, is how hard it is for anybody to rank for a topic. Personalized Difficulty shows how hard it is for you, and only you, to rank.

The ideal situation is where you have low Personalized Difficulty (easy for you to rank) and high Topic Authority (strong competitive advantage).

---

---

Optimize – Biggest ROI

Would you rather invest time optimizing a page that can bring in $100 a month in additional traffic, or one that may result in an extra $500? If this type of question piques your interests, then this view’s for you!

This view is similar to the quickest wins one discussed above. But instead of focusing on traffic, this one centers on value, which is why we include Value/Mo and Potential Value ($).  Think about filtering on one of these metrics to further reduce the size of your list or even sorting on one of them to help prioritize your wo

Just like the Quickest Wins view, this one includes Difficulty, Personalized Difficulty, and Topic Authority. Once again, use this data to isolate those opportunities where you’re most likely to succeed – low Personalized Difficulty (easy for you to rank) and high Topic Authority (strong competitive advantage).

---

---

Takeaway

These three Saved Views offer a short list of opportunities to improve existing content based on specific criteria. Apply a filter to Rank to create a list of content for which you already rank. Then review it and add any appropriate page/topic pairs to a plan. Create content briefs and assign people to update those existing pages.