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Case Study: The ROI of Re-optimizing Content (Plus Bonus How-To)

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Case Study: The ROI of Re-optimizing Content (Plus Bonus How-To)

The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

We’ve been re-optimizing Brafton’s blog content consistently since 2018. It’s been one of the main SEO strategies we’ve used to increase our blog traffic from 20,000 to 200,000 monthly visitors over the last three years, and we’re continuing with this strategy into 2022 (and probably beyond).

For the purpose of this study, we wanted to answer the question, “How well does content re-optimization work, and is it worth your time?”

But first, let’s back up and get some definitions out of the way.

What is content re-optimization?

In its simplest form, content re-optimization is the process of updating existing content with new material in order to add value to the original piece.

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There are many ways content can be updated. Here are some methods we’ve used over the years:

  • Adding new visual content, like an infographic, to an existing blog to appeal to readers who are more visual learners.

  • Adding a video tutorial to help elaborate on a topic we’re covering.

  • Replacing outdated examples featured in a roundup blog post with better, more recent examples.

  • Adding missing topic gaps that our competitors are covering but we aren’t.

  • Completely re-writing the content in favor of a better target topic (a very drastic measure).

In all instances, we’re adjusting existing content in some way to make it better for our audience. Ideally, that content will also perform better in organic search.

Why re-optimize content?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably invested significant time and energy into creating awesome content for your brand — and just like me, you know exactly how much effort goes into every single word published. There’s the planning, the research, the writing, the rounds of review, the copyediting, the proofing, the curation of helpful visuals, and finally clicking “Publish” once you’re done. All of this takes time and participation from multiple stakeholders.

It’s exhausting. And expensive.

It’s in your best interests to protect the time and monetary investment you’ve put into every single piece of content you create for your brand, and make sure it keeps performing at or beyond your expectations. This is why we re-optimize our content at Brafton. Because we’ve found it’s an incredibly cost-effective way to keep our content competitive and generate the business results we expect from our website.

Why this study was conducted

We know that our content re-optimization efforts can take credit for a portion of the organic traffic results we’ve seen on our website. For this analysis, my goal was to calculate the exact impact content re-optimization was making on our blog performance.

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Let’s get into it!

Methodology

I focused strictly on written content updates that had been made to our blog posts between January 1, 2021, and October 31, 2021. Using this timeframe, I was able to use all 16 months’ worth of Search Console data for the metrics analyzed:

  • 41 articles were analyzed.

  • The articles had been republished with written content updates — their publish dates were updated at the time of the re-optimization.

  • Each article had a unique keyword target.

  • Primary tools used:
    • Search Console. I compared the three-month timeframe before the republish date with the three-month timeframe after the republish date.

    • Ahrefs. I took a snapshot of the data from three months pre- and post-re-optimization.

  • Each article selected had been indexed for a minimum of three months before being re-optimized, with a subsequent three months of data to evaluate.

  • Metrics evaluated (and which we were looking to improve with re-optimization):
    • Clicks to the URL from the target keyword.

    • All organic clicks to the URL.

    • Total number of page-one keywords each URL ranks for.

    • Target keyword position for the URL.

    • Total organic impressions for the URL.

Results: More clicks to URL from target keyword

Our primary goal with re-optimization is to increase the number of clicks each page is generating. The first thing I wanted to look at was how well this works for each blog’s specific target keyword (with the understanding that these aren’t the only keywords these blogs will get clicks from — more on that in a bit).

Using Search Console, I looked at how total clicks have changed/improved after each individual blog’s republication:

Clicks to the blog post for the target keyword “creative content.”

According to the data pulled from Search Console, 41.46% of the articles had more clicks to their URL for their target term after being re-optimized. In aggregate, all articles saw a 5.89% increase in clicks to their target keyword after we re-optimized them.

Results: More total clicks to re-optimized content

re-optimized blog posts also rank for more keywords related to the target keyword — and I wanted to track that change not only for our target keywords, but for all the keywords these blogs rank for. This is because, when we do written content updates, we are often filling in topic gaps to make the piece more comprehensive. With more mentions of these related topics, there’s more chance to rank for related keywords as well. This then drives up the total number of clicks to the page.

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Here’s an example of what that looks like:

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Increase in total clicks to URL post-re-optimization for a blog about structuring a marketing team.

Data from Search Console showed that 85.37% of the articles had more total clicks from all keywords in the time period after they were re-optimized. In aggregate, the re-optimized articles received 29% more clicks after they were updated and republished:

Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To
1648020586 275 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To

Bonus: The data shows a 0.96 correlation between re-optimization and total clicks generated — a near-perfect correlation.

I could end my study right here and walk away perfectly happy with our decision to continue with our re-optimization strategy in 2022. But there’s more to the story…

Results: More page-one keyword rankings from variant keywords

As an added benefit, many of the blogs we re-optimized started ranking on page one for other terms related to our target keyword:

1648020586 569 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To
Total Page 1 keyword rankings for the keyword “creative content.”

Our data shows 43.9% of the re-optimized articles had more page-one keyword rankings after their republish date. In aggregate, all articles ranked for 36.45% more page-one keywords after they were re-optimized.

1648020587 656 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To
1648020587 824 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To

Results: Target keyword position changes

For this part of the analysis, I looked at how the blog’s ranking position changed for its target keyword — comparing the timeframes from before and after the article’s republication.

With Search Console, I can see a three-month average position for our target keyword and can compare those numbers pre- and post-re-optimization.

1648020588 105 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To
Example of improved rank positioning in Search Console, for the keyword “paid search marketing.”

73.17% of the articles had a better average ranking position for their target keyword after being re-optimized, according to Search Console data:

1648020588 741 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To

56.1% of the re-optimized articles had improved target keyword positioning after the re-optimization, according to Ahrefs:

1648020589 564 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To

Results: More organic search impressions

As far as results go, I’m more interested in the clicks coming to the blog, but it’s important to look at changes in click behavior in the context of search impressions. After all, a searcher can’t click on your result if you’re not even appearing in the SERP.

By looking at the change to impressions from before and after the re-optimization, we can get a better understanding of the impact of ranking for more of these related keywords.

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Example of how total impressions have changed after a blog post about sales enablement content was re-optimized.

This is also where we saw the most impressive return for our efforts — every single article we re-optimized had more organic search impressions after it was republished.

100% of the re-optimized articles generated more impressions after they were updated and republished, according to Search Console data. In aggregate, the re-optimized articles generated 62.35% more impressions after their updates.

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1648020590 139 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To
1648020590 367 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To

Insights: Why re-optimization matters for SEO

The main reason for re-optimizing content is to drive more qualified traffic to your website. By re-optimizing existing content, you’re enhancing a blog post or a landing page that’s already working for your audience.

In addition:

1. Google rewards fresher content

Each time we re-optimize a blog post, we update its publish date to reflect the time the changes were made. We also manually submit the article to Google for reindexing so there’s a higher chance Google will notice our content updates as quickly as possible.

Now, I’m not saying you can achieve the same results simply by changing the publish date to an article and not changing anything else, but a more recent publish date is likely a signal to Google — and searchers — that your content is fresh and probably contains useful and relevant information. They may be more likely to click on your content.

From a behavioral standpoint, when I perform a Google search, out of habit, I change the search filter to only see results from the last year (and sometimes I’ll only look at content if it’s published within the last month). I’m picky, and I can imagine other searchers are, too. Have you ever glanced at the publish date of the top results and chosen to click on the newest one?

Updating the content’s publication date at the same time we re-optimize it is our attempt to better serve the behavior of searchers and encourage more clicks.

2. Topic comprehensiveness (not word count) leads to more clicks

When we set out to re-optimize a blog post or a landing page, we’re not just looking to beef up its word count and call it a day. A longer word count doesn’t always equal more clicks.

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Instead, we strive for topic comprehensiveness, and often that means we are building on what’s already there. But not always. Sometimes we’ll remove sections that are no longer relevant.

What’s important is that we’re comparing our content to competitors in the space, and finding ways to improve on what we’re missing. And we’re doing all this to serve our audience with the best content we possibly can. As a result, our content covers more ground and gets more impressions and then, ultimately, more clicks.

Conclusion

By honing your message around a target topic and adding value to your content with a re-optimization, you’re giving Google more reasons to serve your content to its users.

In a perfect re-optimization scenario, Google notices you’ve provided more useful information, your content will rank higher in search for your target keyword, and you’ll get more clicks to your page. And best of all, those clicks will be visitors that are highly interested in what your business has to offer!

Adding more information to an existing blog post or landing page makes your content more comprehensive. You cover a broader range of related topics, and therefore there are more chances to rank for those variant keywords. This is what helps extend your reach beyond just that initial set of target keywords.

And the more chances you have to rank for these variant topics, the better. The more often you show up in search, the more users will start recognizing your brand. They might even start searching for your brand name directly.

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Bonus: Re-optimize your own content and analyze your results

Checklist: How to determine which content to re-optimize

If you’re sold on content re-optimization — great! — but you’re also probably wondering where to start.

I’ve created a checklist that I use for the Brafton blog to help me decide whether or not I should spend time (and money) to re-optimize a piece:

1. Look for pages that have had a dip in ranking position or estimated traffic. This will be the first flag that you might want to re-optimize your content.

1648020590 977 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To

2. Check the current content’s score in a TF-IDF tool (I recommend MarketMuse or Clearscope) to see if there is room for improvement. If your content score is lower than the tool’s recommended score, it’s a hint that you probably have some missing topics to cover.

1648020591 180 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To

3. Check ranking changes/SERP-rank volatility to see what’s changed on page one. Take a look at the top 10 ranking positions and how those results have changed over time. A SERP with a lot of volatility or new competitors coming onto the first page is a good sign that you’ll need to improve your content to stay competitive.

1648020591 285 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To

4. Look at the current results on page one and determine if you can still realistically rank there. If you’ve been outranked for a SERP and you can’t reasonably get back onto the first page, your efforts might be better spent elsewhere.

1648020591 595 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To

5. Estimate the traffic you might gain from your page-one ranking. Don’t forget that clicks decline the farther down the page you rank.

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6. Ask yourself: Is this good enough? If yes, then proceed to the re-optimization!

Walkthrough: How to tie content re-optimization to ROI

Now for the fun part — diving into your own data to find out if your updates made a meaningful impact on your business goals.

Speaking of goals, you’ll want to make sure to determine the goals that make the most sense to your business and what you’re trying to accomplish with organic search before starting on this re-optimization strategy.

Some examples:

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  • More clicks to the blog, year-over-year.

  • More website conversions from organic traffic.

  • Better brand awareness in search.

If you’re just starting to re-optimize your content, I recommend bookmarking this article and coming back to this section later. While it’s true that performing updates to your content may have an immediate impact on your content — a jump in keyword position, perhaps — you’ll want a decent chunk of data to perform your analysis. And the only way you’ll get that is with time.

Step 1: Choose content to analyze

Once you’ve got a few months of data to work with, you can start your analysis. Say you re-optimized a few blog posts three months ago (and these blogs have been live on your website for at least six months). Add those URLs to a spreadsheet. Here’s the template I used for my study if you want to start there.

1648020591 596 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To

Step 2: Note publication date, and determine timeframes for analysis

Log your republish date for each article in the sheet. Then determine the timeframe for three months before your republish date and three months after (not including the actual republish date). 

Tip: You can search this in Google Search for an accurate answer, no calculator or calendar required:

1648020591 866 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To
1648020591 292 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To

Step 3: Pull your data

For each metric you’re looking to measure, pull the data from the two separate timeframes:

1648020591 482 Case Study The ROI of Re optimizing Content Plus Bonus How To

Step 4: Analyze your data

It might look like steps 1-3 are quick and easy, but they’re surprisingly time-consuming and tedious. Once you’re done you’ll have a lovely block of data to analyze. Calculate the changes for each article individually, and in aggregate, to see how your optimization efforts paid off.


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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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