Even well-crafted content might not perform up to par if your content is not aligned with your overall strategy or lacks clear objectives. In the same way, even well-meaning content creators can sabotage their own content strategy by overlooking key search engine optimization (SEO) tactics or focusing on the wrong approach.

At Hennessey Digital, we’ve identified seven critical ways you might be unintentionally hindering your SEO content strategy. We’ve talked about how to optimize your content for SEO, and now we’ll shed light on these common saboteurs and how to avoid them, making sure your efforts don’t go to waste and your content is driving the results you need.

Writing Content Without A Plan

Any project goes better with a plan. Having a strategic plan for your content ensures that the pages you publish work together to boost the rankings of each piece of content as well as your entire site.

Here are a few essential factors that should be considered in your content plan:

• Site structure: When search engines evaluate your content, they use bots to crawl through your website. A clear and consistent site structure will allow these bots to categorize your content and determine its importance, relevancy, and ranking potential. Without a plan, you might create a disjoined site structure that confuses crawlers and prevents pages from being categorized (and ranking!) correctly.
• Keyword research & mapping: Keyword research ensures that you are creating unique content around keywords and topics that are relevant and have actual search volume that will drive traffic to your site. Keyword mapping also helps you avoid cannibalization (targeting the same keywords in multiple pieces of content). Cannibalization will cause your pages to compete with each other and can negatively impact their performance.
• Consistency: By planning in advance, you can ensure that your SEO efforts are continuous and not sporadic. Consistently publishing content is a positive ranking signal to search engines that you are keeping your site active and up-to-date with fresh and relevant information.

Thinking in the Short Term

Organic SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, and consistency is critical. As such, you can’t treat your content strategy like a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign.  PPC campaigns are designed to be turned on and off. You need time to research and plan your strategy, create your content, and monitor the page as it begins to appear in search results. New pages often take weeks to “settle” into a ranking.

Quick, sudden changes to your content strategy will not garner immediate results. In fact, this could result in content that hurts your SEO performance. If you rush your content strategy, you risk creating disjointed, duplicate, or low-quality content. If you suddenly pause content for long stretches of time, as mentioned above, you might see a loss in rankings or traffic as search engines do not see you as a consistent source of content.

Not Knowing Your Goals

The number one reason we see content strategies shift is when clients don’t have a thorough understanding of their own goals or priorities.

Discussing priorities is one of the first—and most important—conversations I have with any client. In our first meeting, we look at the intersection of the services they offer and the locations where they offer them, and discuss what areas are most important or need the most attention. We discuss what drives the most business for our client and what areas have the highest ROI.

Based on this information, we can determine the objectives of our content strategy: not only what content we want to create, but also how we want to create it. We might take a “shotgun” approach and create content for multiple locations to establish brand visibility in those areas, or a “sniper” approach, hyper-targeting one market or service to increase conversions.

Every approach has its merits, but the best approach is the one that aligns with our client’s goals. Without having defined goals, you won’t get the most out of your content strategy. Similarly, if you are working with an agency, the best way to empower your SEO agency is to provide them with insights into your current performance and priorities.

If you’re unclear about your priorities, ask yourself these questions:

• What is my most profitable practice area, service, or product right now?
• For law firms, what is the average value of each case type?
• What practice area, service, or product do I want to be more profitable?
• Which of these has the highest ROI for my firm or company?
• Where do my clients or customers live (top cities or zip codes)?
• Are there any areas I know my competitors are not currently targeting?
• How much business growth can I handle without expanding operationally?

Writing for Yourself, Not Your Audience

Once your content plan is finalized, it’s time to get writing. At Hennessey Digital, we create meaningful and useful content that showcases Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) while also incorporating all the necessary SEO elements that search engines understand and value.

In some cases, however, in an effort to establish E-E-A-T, content can become too complex. When you are a subject-matter expert in your field, it can be tempting to want to dive into the details and explain the complexities of your work to make it accurate or more “valuable.” In the past, we have worked with clients who have wanted content to be written the way they would want to read it, without considering their audience.

Your audience is rarely experts. Using too much legal or technical jargon can overwhelm and alienate your potential clients or customers. The most meaningful content is understandable and accessible to the average person. That’s why we typically recommend writing content at an 8th-grade reading level. Simple, actionable content provides a positive user experience, which satisfies E-E-A-T and increases the chance of users converting.

Not Understanding Search Intent

In the same vein, writing content that does not consider search intent can also undermine your efforts. Search intent refers to the purpose behind a user’s search query, and falls into categories such as…

• Transactional
• Informational
• Commercial
• Navigational

If the content is not meaningful or useful to a user’s search, then they will quickly leave the page. For example, if a user arrives on an FAQ page looking for a quick answer, they will likely not stay on the page if it is full of calls to action to contact the business. Conversely, if there is too much tangential information on a transactional page, they may click away before they can convert.

These user actions indicate to search engines that your content isn’t relevant and will eventually lead to the page losing ground in the search results.

(Want to learn more about search intent and different types of content? Check out How To Optimize Content For SEO by our Senior SEO Team Lead Natasha Guy.)

Not Revisiting Your Content

One of the most significant ways to sabotage your SEO content strategy is to publish your content and consider the job done. Search results are constantly shifting which means even if your page is ranking right now, it isn’t guaranteed to stay that way forever. Certain industries such as the legal industry have particularly volatile rankings, sometimes changing from day to day.

As such, you need to regularly monitor the performance of your content and reassess your content as needed. This could be as simple as refreshing content to include more recent statistics to ensure it isn’t outdated, or completely rewriting a page to be more relevant to the primary keyword and the search intent.

Ultimately, revisiting your content ensures you’re staying on top of best practices and will better weather major core updates.

Using AI to Write All Your Content

AI is here to stay, there’s no doubt. We have spent months testing and learning the many advantages and disadvantages of using ChatGPT and other AI tools for SEO. For content, AI chatbots are capable of producing quality, readable content, and it’s understandable to want to leverage AI to start producing content at scale.

But relying too heavily on this new technology is still a big risk, for all of the reasons discussed above. AI content is often lacking in E-E-A-T signals, and any facts, statistics, or laws it does provide must be thoroughly checked. ChatGPT in particular creates content that is very repetitive and does not always meet search intent, and requires lots of human editing or rewriting with specific prompts. In addition, the content needs to be formatted, linked, and published with all the appropriate SEO signals.

Avoid Sabotaging Your SEO Content Efforts

Crafting a successful SEO content strategy requires a holistic approach and a long-term mindset. From developing a well-researched and structured content plan to understanding your audience’s needs and search intent, paying attention to these tactics is crucial in creating relevant content that drives traffic. Remember to revisit your content regularly, ensuring it stays fresh, unique, and impactful. Avoiding these common pitfalls can transform your content from just good to truly effective.

Want to learn more about how we craft content strategies that convert? As a leader in SEO and law firm digital marketing, Hennessey Digital creates ambitious, customized strategies in close collaboration with our clients. Contact us today and see how we can help your business grow.

The post 7 Ways You Might Be Sabotaging Your Own SEO Content Strategy appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

Content is used to express on-page SEO recommendations. Without SEO-backed content, you’d be hard pressed to find your flower bulb sprouting, much less providing the beautiful blooms and ROI you’re looking for with your digital marketing agency. Here at Hennessey Digital, we use a multifaceted plan designed to keep your progress going in a positive direction.

There are many nuances to writing search-optimized content with the ultimate goal of conversions in mind. And when creating SEO-rich content, always remember to write for humans first (more on that later!)

In this post, I’ll share tips and tricks from our Content and SEO teams on how we get our clients’ sites to the top of Google search results. But first, let’s look at the types of content we create for our clients.

Types of content pages

Transactional pages

For our law firm clients, transactional pages are Practice Areas or Services pages, usually found in their respective navigational sections on a website. These pages help your firm get noticed in locations where you may not have offices, but still offer services. They also let us point Google toward you in cities or states where you want more clients.

Transactional pages focus on one main keyword, such as “personal injury attorney” or “personal injury lawyer.” The H1 (first header, usually the title of the blog post) should include your main keyword. H2s (any additional headers) should support the main keyword; examples include “personal injury lawsuits” or “personal injury cases,” which prevents over-optimizing for keywords.

In doing so, however, the main topic of the page can get muddled and confuse Google as to what the main idea is. For this reason, links to pages with more info are the best way to expound on ideas. Transactional pages should give general, evergreen information specific to the practice areas or services and offer links to blogs or FAQ pages that are relevant to the particular practice area or service.

With transactional, commercial, navigational, and informational pages alike, keyword mapping also helps avoid cannibalization issues and increase visibility for desired keywords.

Transactional pages are written for user consumption in layman’s terms (think seventh or eighth grade reading level). And remember, your target audience is not other lawyers; it’s potential clients. We want Google to crawl these transactional pages and rank as high as possible in the search results.

And while these pages include relevant information, they shouldn’t explain complicated legal information. Other pages on the website can be written for those purposes, but the purpose of transactional pages is in the name: transactions! If your page does a good enough job of explaining a particular concept, it should drive visitors to submit a lead form or pick up their phone.

FAQ Pages

FAQ pages answer the questions your website’s visitors may have about what you do or how you do it. The questions and answers found on FAQ pages should be brief and should give exact information that answers the question without much fluff.

These FAQ pages can relate to many different subjects, and your site should try to answer a variety of questions. One way to think about FAQs is that you’re helping answer common questions, and many attorneys look at this as pro bono information! Check out this FAQ page from Ben Crump as an example.

FAQ pages are written primarily to inform people and, secondarily, to possibly appear in Google’s featured snippets or in the “people also ask” section in Google search results. We’ve seen changes underway in these sections in the last few months, so at Hennessey Digital, we know to be flexible and keep our eye on the prize as things adjust. Currently, the “People also ask” section may appear in search results similar to this example:

Blogs

A blog post can be considered a longform version of an FAQ page. This is where you want to include external links, stats, etc. to establish that you are an authority on the services you provide. Blogs can also be used to share news about your company, conferences employees attend, events the company sponsors, and more.

Above all, blogs are written for users, so this is the opportunity to share all the details that relate to the topic at hand, but don’t fit in with your transactional pages or FAQs. Blog pages may also wind up ranking for featured snippets or in “People also ask” sections in the Google search results, but remember: ranking is not their primary function. It’s just an awesome byproduct of keeping your clients well-informed.

Examples of good blog post topics for law firms include:

• Winning a landmark case
  • What was the award?
  • What were the challenges?
• New people hired to the firm
  • New lawyers with a brief bio, areas of specialty, etc.
• Legal practice areas at the firm
  • Are you adding a new personal injury practice area?
  • Is there a new mass tort your firm wants to add?
• Announcements, events, and awards
  • Many firms sponsor food drives and other charitable events.
  • Take lots of photos and videos to include in multimedia posts.

Check out our tips for creating compelling content and remember to update old content periodically to boost the SEO value of the page.

What to avoid when creating SEO-optimized content

Of course, for every “do,” there’s a “don’t.” The same goes for writing SEO-optimized content for your site. There are things to avoid for each type of content outlined above.

Things to avoid in transactional pages

• Including annual stats. These are apt to change, and your transactional pages should be as evergreen as possible.
• Offering links to white papers that are not housed on your website. You want people to stay and convert, not go searching for info on other sites.

Things to avoid in FAQ pages

• Complicated answers that need over 500 words to explain. Remember, this is where people are looking for quick answers. Save anything longer for a blog page.
• Opinions, especially controversial ones. These should be fact-based answers.

Things to avoid in blog pages

• Short-form content that’s better suited for FAQ pages. People come to blogs for the fluff!
• Marketing language that’s trying to sell you to your users. Visitors know when they’re being sold. Your blogs should read like conversations with your audience.

FAQs on optimizing content for SEO

The information above provided the basics on SEO for content. Our team gets questions on this topic a lot, and these are the top two questions we hear from clients:

1. Is there such a thing as too much content being added to a site at the same time?

Our recommendation is to add no more than 50 new pages per week. While there are exceptions, this is the general rule we follow as adding new content incrementally helps to better measure SEO efforts. If we publish 200 new pages and it has an adverse effect on organic results, it will be hard to determine at what point too much was too much.

Remember, Google has to crawl, digest, and add this content into the massive amount of information already available in search results.

2. Do you really have to repeat the keyword that many times on a page?

We want to ensure Google understands what the page is about. The main keyword should be used in the meta title, meta description, H1, and several times within the content on the page as well for clarity when Google’s bots crawl the pages.

The part of the page seen before scrolling (commonly referred to as “above the fold”) is aimed at users and getting them to convert. Many people don’t scroll down after landing on the page, definitely not past the halfway point. The top half of a page is written for users, and the bottom section is written primarily for Google.

SEO content for law firms

When we work with law firms on designing search-optimized content for their sites, we always recommend the following:

• Timely approval of submitted content. The end goal of SEO-optimized content is to create new leads, but first, it must be added to the site for that to happen. Absolutely nothing can start happening online if there’s no content for Google to crawl. Holding up the content process for revisions that most users aren’t even likely to read means holding up your results by weeks or even months.
• Ask questions. If you don’t understand why we’re doing something, please give us the chance to explain. We want to optimize your time with the level of behind-the-scenes detail you want. Educating our clients means a stronger, transparent partnership that helps us both grow.
• See something missing? Tell us! It might not be added to the page you’re thinking of, but we may be able to use it in a different page category. We’re the marketing experts, but YOU are the subject matter experts in the areas of law you practice.

If you’re missing this level of transparency and communication with your current marketing agency, please reach out and see if your company can feel the Hennessey Digital difference. After all, we are the digital marketing agency you wish you hired first!

The post How to Optimize Content for SEO appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

Good content is critical to the success of a website. Targeted, well-optimized content can earn a page a coveted top spot in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Engaging, authoritative content convinces users to click and convert.

But content is king, and not just because of its impact on rankings. In my time at Hennessey Digital, I’ve had the unique privilege to serve as both Director of Client Services and Director of Content. I’ve seen how content also impacts the success of our client relationships—and our agency as a whole.

The Curious Case of Content Production

In late 2020, we began scaling our agency’s content production at a rapid pace. After our team attended a series of legal industry events where we met with lawyers and legal digital marketers from around the country, we had an unprecedented number of new clients.

As the Director of Client Services at that time, I was in charge of onboarding each client, welcoming them to Hennessey Digital, getting the many wheels of our SEO department turning, and ensuring our internal team and clients were well-aligned.

During that time, a pattern emerged: for every seamless onboarding experience, there was an inevitable false start, and more often than not, content was at the heart of it.

The reason for this? Like many other SEO agencies, we were using the tried-and-true system of spreadsheets to manage our content plans. And don’t get me wrong: ask anyone at Hennessey Digital, I love a good spreadsheet. (Editor’s note: She absolutely does.)

Our team utilized several innovative, custom scripts on these spreadsheets that pulled in SERP data, strategically generated title tags and URLs, and even automatically checked for errors.

These scripts were constantly updated and tweaked to improve our content plans. Once they were complete, the plan was sent to our amazing content production team who were powering through hundreds of unique SEO-rich content pages each month.

So why were clients still unhappy with content?

With Content, Transparency Is Key

Any client, regardless of their SEO savvy, understands content as a deliverable. They might not understand the intricacies of our technical audits or the hours it takes for a website rebuild or to compile a disavow file, any of which can greatly influence the performance of their website.

Projects like this happen behind the scenes and don’t always result in visible changes to a website, which means it can be hard to showcase our work without bogging down the client with details that they might not, or frankly shouldn’t have to, care about. They have a business to run, after all; they hired us to take care of nitty-gritty nerdy details.

But when you pay for a piece of content and receive a new page published on your website, that is a clear transaction. There is ROI that any client can pinpoint, regardless of how the site is performing.

As such, when a client is new and eager to see results, content turnaround is often the first clear sign of “success,” as it should be.

With our spreadsheets growing more complicated and our content production scaling at a rapid pace, we had neglected to make it easy for our clients to follow along with these important milestones: where their content was in our pipeline, when it was published, and when it needed to be improved.

At this point, the Client Services team and I collaborated with the Content team to clean up our client-facing documents. We built new scripts that incorporated content production status into our spreadsheets. This helped a bit, but the process was still fragmented.

Content production happened mostly in our internal project management system, Asana, or with our production partners, We Do Web Content. Transparency for the entire content pipeline was still lacking—until a new avenue for transparency became available.

The HD Platform: Investing in Visibility

As part of our Vivid Vision, our leadership team began discussing a new project: the HD Platform. The HD Platform standardized our client reporting in a singular hub where clients could log in to view their organic traffic, rankings, and leads in real time.

In addition, the HD Platform took the concept of a performance dashboard to the next level, going so far as to show clients a direct correlation between their incoming leads and investment with Hennessey Digital. In effect, this puts an exact number on clients’ ROI with our agency.

I loved the concept—but actually fought hard to change our initial priorities. The HD Platform is at the heart of Hennessey’s commitment to radical transparency, and there was no better opportunity to overhaul our content pipeline and incorporate it into a clean, client-friendly portal.

While providing better reporting would benefit both us and our clients in the long run, incorporating content into the HD Platform V1 would solve an immediate issue that was plaguing our agency. SERP results aren’t always within our control, but content production is.

For months, the Web Development team collaborated with Client Services, Content, and Analytics, and in July 2021, we launched our proprietary HD Platform that gave full transparency into clients’ digital marketing ROI.

Since then, all Hennessey Digital clients can log into the HD Platform and instantly see the state of their content pipeline. The HD Platform shows each stage of the production process and allows clients to review their content plans and even review and approve pages before they are published.

The HD Platform launch was a huge milestone for us. We identified an internal blocker, and we built a solution. Problem solved, right?

With Great Transparency Comes Great Responsibility

Rolling out the HD Platform was no small undertaking. We had to test with our developers, train our Content and Client Services teams on a new tool and processes, and train our clients. We had to translate our overstuffed and over-scripted spreadsheets into uploadable files which could be imported into our sleek new Platform.

All of this wasn’t happening in a vacuum, either. “Content strategy is SEO strategy” after all, and our SEOs were reviewing the outcomes of a recent Google core update and identifying new opportunities for the third quarter, many of which involved content.

The SEO team then introduced several new processes that would:

• Improve how we update old SEO content
• Change our emphasis on localized content
• Integrate principles for writing compelling content into new and updated pages
• Introduce supplemental content to support other SEO initiatives

These processes were to be rolled out with Q3 2021 and would greatly benefit our clients—and have, in fact—had a significant impact on our client performance since their introduction.

For the Client Services team, though, this introduced a new challenge. Not only were we educating clients on a new content review system, but we were also educating them on what types of content they would be reviewing.

In some cases, this caused frustration. The HD Platform onboarding process caused delays in content plan approvals, which in turn delayed production and publication of new content. We’d created transparency but disrupted our timetables—and our clients could see that more clearly than ever.

In many cases, however, it also fostered great conversation. When clients are better able to see and understand our SEO content strategy for their law firm, they are also more engaged. We know the legal industry inside and out, but a successful campaign is a collaborative effort.

When clients provide detailed feedback on a content plan it often gives us greater insights into their priorities or other unique aspects of their business, which in turn, help us refine our content plans.

A Shift In Perspective on Content

These insights and issues were at the top of my mind when I began my transition to Director of Content. I was elated to return to my content marketing roots and felt I had a good understanding of the pain points the Content team was facing, having heard so much feedback directly from our clients.

But now I was no longer an outsider making suggestions or advocating for change. I was marching into the trenches and untangling an ever-evolving department. Our timelines were still suffering from our growth and onboarding.

By the time I stepped into the Content Director role full-time, we were on the verge of losing a few clients: not because of rankings or leads, but because we could not deliver content on time. Content was impeding our success as an agency.

It was time to take everything we’d learned from 2021—our quick growth, our greater transparency, our strategic shifts—and make some big changes.

For the last year, we have focused on three key areas:

Communication

The same transparency we applied to our clients needed to be applied to our team. Working in a remote company is not easy. We are growing not just in size but in geographical distance and time zones, with team members in 15 countries and counting.

My first goal was to get the entire Content department—strategists, writers, editors, publishers, as well as external stakeholders, like our SEO leads—all moving in the same direction. We needed to standardize our processes and have more internal touchpoints to communicate blockers.

Meanwhile, our VP of SEO Steve Guberman, Senior Director of SEO Michael Cipielweski, and I have been updating our SOPs to make sure the whole company is aligned and my former Client Services team, led by Director of Client Services Kristine Hyman, has more insights into what’s going on behind the scenes.

Strategic Decisions

We writers love a good rule of three, so here it is one last time: “Content strategy is SEO strategy.” A mistake in a content plan doesn’t just affect production or timelines, it can disrupt site structure, cause cannibalization, and introduce other errors that will negatively impact site performance. If a content plan is perfectly outlined, all that follows—from the execution to the results—will have a much higher ROI for us and our clients.

To improve our strategies and collaboration with clients, we took the proactive step to build out a whole new team within the Content department: Content Strategists, who would bridge the gap between SEO and Content. With a select set of clients, they could be more hands-on while creating smarter content plans, providing more feedback to the production teams, and monitoring content performance.

Perfecting the Pipeline

SEO content production is a deceptively complicated process. Beyond just writing, editing, and publishing, there are often multiple levels of QA and feedback—back and forth between writers and editors, writers and SEOs, editors and clients, clients and SEOs, publishers and strategists, so on and so forth. It varies for each client and each campaign.

Capturing every step of the process into a single pipeline for the Platform was—and continues to be—a challenge, but a good one. Mistakes impact our team’s efficiency, but they highlight gaps in our processes that we can adapt to and will benefit our clients in the long run. One of our core values is “Stay nimble; never stop learning,” and this is embodied by our Content team every single day.

The Future of Our Content Process

Keeping up with content creation is a challenge for any agency, but we’re not a content mill churning out pages for the sake of content. Our strategies are often ambitious, designed to build a strong, connected network of content that lifts the performance of an entire website, and every new page strengthens that network.

Our Content Strategists build out and monitor the network. Our Content Writers and Editors capture the voice of our clients, their industry, and SEO best practices to produce the best content possible. Our Publishers translate it all into a conversion-worthy user experience. Most importantly, the entire Content team knows the value that we can provide to our clients and takes advantage of every opportunity to improve.

The tools and processes we use to execute our strategies may change; they may (and probably will) break in some unexpected way, but we take those breaks—the lessons learned, the feedback received—and leverage them to set us up for future success.

And if you’re curious if the Content Marketing team and I can help your law firm succeed, please fill out the form below to contact me.

The post Why We Overhauled Our Content Process appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

As a user, I want content that’s engaging, understandable, and that answers my query without using jargon. Think about online recipes as an example. When I look up a recipe, I want the recipe itself; I don’t want the “this is my entire life story and how I invented this dish” nonsense that didn’t relate to what I needed.

Google and other search engines, however, tend to favor a specific word count, a strategic use of keywords, correct usage of headings, domain authority, photos optimized for web publishing, and more. Its goal is to provide users with relevant, trustworthy, and high-quality information, but I just want that one morsel of information without all the fluff.

That’s when it hit me that SEO-rich content is a lot like Beef Wellington. The meat of the article is the content, and Beef Wellington wouldn’t be Beef Wellington without, well, beef. SEO is the dough and optimizations are a compliment to the dish, not the main focus. Good content is able to stand on its own, and SEO should wrap around it to make the best Beef Wellington possible.

In the past, we’ve shared tips for writing compelling content and why updating old content is important. To keep the food analogies going here, I’m revealing my six-step recipe for the best SEO-rich web content that’s still written with actual people in mind.

Define your audience and purpose

In writing SEO-rich web content, it’s important to ask: who are you writing for? If it’s fellow professionals or experts in your industry, skip explaining granular terms because they probably already know them. If it’s someone unfamiliar with the subject matter, get more detailed and thorough in explanations.

Then, answer this: what’s the purpose of the content? Different intentions will provide different results. A 2,000-word blog post isn’t the best way to sell a cut of beef, and a 250-word landing page isn’t going to give the best information on how to cook different cuts of beef.

Always know who your audience is and what the purpose of the content is before writing it.

Research competitors who are already ranking

Look at what’s currently ranking for the topic you’re going after. What’s the average word count? How many keywords and keyword variations are included? How many images did they use and how were they spaced out? What content did they include?

Take notes from your competitors and formulate an outline for content before you start writing based on the answers to the questions above. You may be an expert on the topic that you are writing about, but in order to have the SEO juice needed to rank, you also need to understand what’s working for competitors.

If you can reverse-engineer your competitors’ success, you’ll save yourself time and effort.

Write the answer, then expand on it

People are looking for answers to questions, whether it is phrased as such or not. Give them those answers clearly and concisely at the beginning of the page in the most straightforward way possible. This is called the “inverted pyramid” method of writing.

After you write the most important part, dig deeper. Include answers to related questions, tell a useful story, and give readers actionable tips. Don’t include useless jargon to get the word count up. Everything written on the page should be engaging and beneficial in some way.

Use a call to action at the beginning and at the end. Users want to be directed to what they should do next. Point them to buy a product, learn more, call your business, or visit another page on your site.

Format, format, format

In writing for SEO, use headings to your advantage. Include your keywords in them. Use the proper hierarchy. Search engines and users alike love bulleted lists, numbered steps, and information split up so that it’s easy to see and understand.

Large blocks of text are not easy on the eyes for users, and search engines are smart enough to understand that splitting up information is a good thing. Use shorter paragraphs, photos, videos, buttons, icons, and white space to give readers a visual break.

Formatting is critical to writing content that’s easy to digest, for humans and for Google’s algorithm. Give both what they want.

Optimize the page

“SEO” is a term that encompasses so much, but for an individual page, there are a few measures to focus on that increase search visibility. Link to relevant pages on your website and other credible websites that talk about the same thing. Build links to the page being optimized from other websites.

Ensure there are enough of the primary keyword and keyword variations, but not too many. A good rule of thumb is using one keyword every 200 to 500 words. Keywords should fit in as people speak; if the content is read aloud, it should sound natural.

Make sure images are under 100kb, have proper alt text, and are useful. Don’t only use stock images. Infographics and other forms of your own intellectual property are great to include. Check Google Pagespeed Insights to make sure that the page isn’t being weighed down by extra code, image issues, etc.

There are hundreds of other ways to optimize SEO, so check out this step-by-step SEO guide for more information.

Revisit your content often

Sometimes, no matter how well-written or well-optimized, content doesn’t rank or it loses rankings. That’s okay! Just tweak the recipe. So often a page will rank for some time, and then eventually, something newer and better-optimized will come along and your page will tank. This is especially true with time-sensitive content such as events and news articles.

Monitoring your pages and keyword rankings regularly will show what content has the biggest opportunity to rank or rank again. Updating old content regularly sends the message to Google that it’s still relevant, still important, and still being checked on.

And don’t just add a couple of paragraphs to old content, either. Repeat the entire process outlined above.

Creating SEO-rich content is a process

Overall, content and SEO can make a delicious dish when they work together. Writing for the web is different from writing a book or a newspaper because not only do you have to keep your audience in mind, but you also must take how search engines will “read” the page into consideration. Define your purpose, look at the competition, write in a human-centered way, format your piece, and optimize it for the internet.

Don’t forget to monitor and update content regularly. Seeing what works and what doesn’t and making changes accordingly is a crucial part of any content marketing strategy.

Think back to our recipe analogy. If your content is under-seasoned, season it better. If it’s overcooked, grab a new cut. It may take a few tries to get the recipe right, but keep trying because people (and Google) will eat it up.

The post 6 Steps for SEO-Rich Content That’s Written for Humans appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

(And to learn more on creating compelling content, check out our newest post on SEO-rich content that’s also written for humans!)

Our Approach to Content Audits

At Hennessey Digital, our content audit project has produced awesome results for our clients. The content audit project was spearheaded by our Vice President of SEO Marian Mursa, who had the following to say about improving content performance:

According to Marian, even if your content is near-perfect when it was initially published, circumstances may change six months later. This can leave you wondering why a page is suddenly not performing the way it used to.

Updating old content, improving underperforming content, or repurposing content into an easily digestible format can breathe new life into it, build loyalty and brand awareness, and increase your client base.

But what exactly does a content audit entail?

What Is a Content Audit?

Our content audit leverages a simple four-step process to help our clients climb in the SERPs, drive more traffic, and most importantly, it doesn’t require the production of new content — it’s simply working with the content you already have at your fingertips.

At a high level, our Content Audit is the process of:

1) Organizing all available assets into a content inventory,
2) Analyzing page-level performance data,
3) Prioritizing underperforming content to improve, and
4) Optimizing those pages for user experience (UX) and SEO.

While I can’t share Hennessey Digital’s secret sauce for how we go about executing this process, here are a few quick and easy ways you can improve your underperformers, outdated posts, or low-quality pieces:

• Adding photos, videos, infographics, and other creative elements
• Improving the content and adding additional information
• Adding or improving internal and external links through link-building and information architecture optimization.

During a content audit , you will evaluate your existing content to see if there are any areas you can improve, rather than making the all-too-common mistake of piling even more pages on top of existing pages that have fundamental flaws.

4 Reasons Your Website Content Needs to Be Updated

So now you know what a content audit is, but how do you know if your website needs one?

Check out these four reasons content often needs to be updated and see if they apply to your website.

Your content isn’t giving people the answers they are looking for.

You don’t need to have psychic powers to know that searchers came to your website because they want something.

It’s easy to get so focused on ranking that you end up writing to Google instead of to the readers. Sure, you’ve done your SEO research, and you’ve got your keywords in place, but are you hitting the pain points of the target audience you’re hoping to reach?

If you have web pages that are underperforming, think about what your customers’ needs are and how your knowledge, products, or services can solve them. If your content doesn’t already achieve this, it’s time to perform a content audit.

When you are auditing content, it is absolutely crucial to ensure you have a clear picture of your customers’ pain points and express empathy for those common issues to connect with readers on an emotional level.

Above all, you must provide real solutions to those problems and pain points, helping the reader move to the next stage of the funnel and ultimately nurturing them along the path to conversion. In other words, providing solutions within your content is everything.

Providing information that helps people will keep them coming back to your website. Even if they aren’t ready to make a purchase today, they will think of you when they are ready in the future. You will also build authority in your industry in the process, and Google will reward you for it.

Your content isn’t search-optimized.

By this same token, it is also easy to do the opposite, which is to focus entirely on writing to your audience and forgetting to make sure your content is also optimized for SEO. Even “thank you” page optimization matters.

Making sure your content is optimized without keyword stuffing can make a measurable difference when it comes to your ranking position in the SERPs.

The most crucial step in ensuring your pages are optimized for search engines is making sure they meet Google’s standards, including taking their core updates into account. At least for the time being, search is Google’s world, and we’re just living in it.

It’s worth taking the time to read through Google’s Quality Rater’s Guidelines (QRG) to make sure your website’s content is compliant, sends the right signals to Google’s crawler and search quality raters, and demonstrates Expertise, Authority, and Trust (E-A-T).

Another part of making sure your content is search-optimized is overhauling your title tags and meta descriptions. Take a look at your competitors’ first page search results, taking note of what search terms they used to get there. And if you’re with a law firm, don’t forget to check out Jason Hennessey’s law firm SEO book for next-level tips.

Your content is outdated.

Don’t leave your content wearing Hammer pants after the rest of the online world has moved on.

We all know what it’s like to search for information on a topic, click on the first result that comes up, and end up discovering that the information is years out of date. When this happens, people will quickly click away from the site in search of current information—and Google pays attention to signals like that.

Signals like this clearly tell Google: “That webpage did not satisfy searcher task accomplishment,” or “That content failed to “match intent to content” and they will act accordingly by demoting your page further down the SERPs.

If your website isn’t performing the way you want it to, do an inventory of your content to see if there is any outdated information you can revamp to bring it up to date. Be sure to update the date on any blog posts or headers when applicable to reflect the changes.

Another time-sensitive reason you may need a content reassessment is that your industry or target audience has changed, but your content didn’t change with it. Sometimes, everyone else already knew there was no basement at the Alamo and you’re the last to find out. The important thing is, now that you know, it’s time to update your content to reflect that information.

Your content isn’t competitive.

While you analyze your competitors’ search engine results, you’ll also want to analyze their content to see if you can identify information gaps in your own content. During your content audit, ask yourself: What are they covering that we haven’t? See what questions they answer in their content and what information they share, then figure out how to improve upon it.

One thing you may notice during this competitive analysis is that the pages you will find at the top of the SERPs focus on their clients’ needs, rather than advertising the company’s own services. If your content is primarily focused on your business rather than your clients, that may be why you can’t beat the competition. A client-focused content audit to identify and improve underperforming content can change that.

Should You Audit Your Own Content or Work With an Agency?

During my 20-year career in content marketing, the most common reason I have seen clients’ pages underperform is because the content was not well written or optimized for search when it was originally created.

Many companies end up using inexperienced writers who don’t understand SEO, or they use third-party content providers who are more concerned with hitting a word count than with getting results.

The truth is, when it comes to content, there is no substitute for quality. Hiring an experienced writer who understands how to meet the needs of Google’s crawlers and your target market will always be worth the investment, especially when you are updating your existing content. Just be sure to design a solid content strategy to ensure success.

If you are confident you can write compelling content in-house that is optimized for SEO, the sooner you begin reassessing your content needs, the sooner you can make changes that will help your website to start climbing in the SERPs.

And if you aren’t sure about it, it’s best to get a free consultation with a digital marketing agency to find out how they can help.

The post Review, Refresh, Republish: Updating Old Content for Users & SEO appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

Consider the websites you spend the most time on. What it is about them that keeps you coming back again and again? They might have stunning graphics, impressive load times, or user-friendly interfaces, but there’s one thing that really motivates people to revisit websites.

The answer, of course, is that the content on these websites meets your needs. When it comes to digital marketing, we describe “compelling content” as information on a website that satisfies a user’s need and that works in tandem with copy to move people along the sales funnel.

At Hennessey Digital, we understand how important good content is to search engine optimization (SEO). From new, unique content to refreshing older pages that could be performing better, our comprehensive digital marketing strategy optimizes our clients’ websites with the content they need to grow their businesses.

We can’t share our secret sauce, but what we can do is give some helpful pointers for sprucing up your content free of charge!

Tip #1 – Write for Humans, Not Machines.

We all want our pages to rank well, but we’re long past the days where keyword stuffing gets you to the top of the search engine results page (SERP). Content needs to be written for the people who will end up interacting with that content: it’s really that simple.

Google’s Search Evaluator Guidelines provide insight into what transforms ordinary content into high-quality content. For instance, you must make sure that informational content is:

• Unique
• Accurately portraying expert knowledge while also being accessible
• Professionally presented

The content needs to satisfy the “why” behind the question that brought the user to that page in the first place. For instance, a user searching for a local accident attorney isn’t interested in what causes accidents: they’ve already been in one! They’re more interested in seeing what an attorney can do for them after their accident and find information on what they should do next.

Tip #2 – Satisfy User Intent Quickly.

A customer lands on one of your pages and the clock starts ticking. They will decide quickly whether your site has what they need, but how long is this timer?

It could be as short as 15 seconds.

You don’t have much time to grab and keep a reader’s attention. How do you keep a user on your page?

Your content needs to be front-loaded with the kind of information that signals to the user that you have the information or services they need. If a user has to dig to find information that’s important to their query, they may just give up and return to the search engine results to look at a different page.

(This is also why it’s important for your website development to focus on page-loading speed. If your content isn’t loading quickly enough, it won’t matter how good it is.)

Tip #3 – Format Your Text Properly.

While front-loading with valuable info is important, users should be able to skim your content and quickly get a sense of what your page provides. Research shows users best respond to content when it is:

• Concise
• Easy to skim
• Factual

You’ll also want to make sure your content is ordered logically, has clear headers dividing different topics, and that the spacing between headers and the paragraphs themselves makes the content easy to read.

Good Headers Make Good Content

The easiest way to make your content easy to skim is to use headers properly. A good header will catch readers’ attention while also explaining quickly and clearly what to expect within that section. Make your headers noticeable with larger fonts (H1, H2, and H3) and use title case, particularly if you’re writing for U.S.-based audiences.

Not All Screens Are Created Equal

Remember: a majority of website users access the web via their mobile devices. Long chunks of text may be easy to read on a monitor while you’re writing it, but walls of text are too much for a reader with a smaller screen in their hand.

Tip #4 – Anticipate Your User’s Next Question.

Part of satisfying a user’s intent comes from understanding what they need beyond the initial reason they visited your page. If you’re only scratching the surface of a user’s search, then you’re actually doing a disservice to your readers.

Say someone is looking for a local car accident lawyer. Beyond just finding any random attorney’s website the SERP pulls up, they may also be wondering:

• Is it worth it to even hire a lawyer?
• Should I still talk to a lawyer if the accident was a minor fender-bender?
• What’s it going to cost to hire an attorney to work on my case?
• Can I talk to an attorney for free?

Don’t miss the forest for a single tree. If your content is good, the user is better informed and will have follow-up questions you should answer. If you’re worried about going off on a tangent, interlinking between pages with more robust answers to niche questions can help the more curious users without distracting from the main point of the page.

Tip #5 – Show, Don’t Tell.

If you’ve ever watched a late-night infomercial, then you’re familiar with the line “But wait: there’s more!” But does it work for compelling content?

No, burying the lede does not work when it comes to creating compelling content. Share the information you have right up front rather than leaving it to the reader to decide whether you’re the right source for their needs.

Be Exhaustive Without Being Exhausting

What happens when you have a lot of information to share? How do you present it? Well, for one thing, 50 bullet points don’t make for compelling content. Neither do ten paragraphs under a single header, even if you think it may be necessary to fully explain a complex topic.

To make your content concise, you must provide concrete, actionable information. You should also interlink to related information on your site. Let the reader know how to contact your experts to learn more.

Tip #6 – Signpost for Going Forward, Rather than Backward.

“Signposts” are words or phrases that signal to readers where they are in a piece of writing so they don’t get lost. Signposting is an effective tool for improving a reader’s comprehension of your content as signposts let the user know what to expect from your page early on. Show that you’re building a logical chain of information as you go.

One caveat here: don’t repeat yourself! For example, rather than adding something like “as we mentioned” further down the page, rephrase your previous point and build on it with your subsequent point(s).

Tip #7 – Don’t Use People as Rhetorical Devices.

If you’re trying to sell a product or service, remember that people trust people over brands. People know that you’re a business and that you’re trying to make money. This, of course, makes them skeptical. People tend to trust other people’s experiences with the company they’re interested in more than anything that company can say about itself, which is why client reviews can be critical.

However, don’t use people as rhetorical devices for your content. What does this mean? Well, using phrases like “People ask us,” even if it’s true, doesn’t add informational value to your content and can actually hurt your credibility. Present your information factually and clearly without leaning on who may have asked about it previously.

Tip #8 – Build Yourself Up Without Putting the Competition Down.

I can see you grinning here, but hear us out. You want people to know that the product or service you provide is the best around, and while it might seem appealing to emphasize what you do right by pointing out what your competitors do wrong… don’t.

Think about this: if the average reader will only take 15 seconds to decide whether your page is worth their time, and the first thing they notice within that time is a snarky or otherwise negative comment about the competition, are they going to stick around to read more?

When building content around your services, focus instead on what makes you worth your reader’s time. Do you have a team of experts across the globe who can provide your clients with white-glove service? Have you continued to be one of the fastest-growing companies in the Americas despite a global pandemic? These are items better worth mentioning.

Good content helps elevate your website and can turn readers into customers. Even if someone leaves your site without being converted on their first visit, a well-crafted, unique selling proposition can pull people back into the conversion funnel in the future.

Tip #9 – Evergreen Content Is Always in Fashion.

Some content is written for a specific time and place. It’s perfectly fine if certain blog entries have a limited shelf life.

However, the majority of your content should focus on information that’ll be as helpful to one person now as it will be to another in a couple of years. For content that isn’t time-stamped, a prolonged discussion of “recent” events that aren’t so recent anymore can and will confuse your readers. Worse, it can signal to your readers that you’re not providing the most up-to-date information, and that includes your products and services.

Evergreen content should always be relevant. If, for example, your business is impacted by new legislation passed in 2021, it’s better to say specifically when the change happened (in 2021) rather than make the user guess as to whether the “recent” legislation is still actually “recent” at all.

Be Prepared to Refresh Your Content from Time to Time

Even the most evergreen content needs adjusting from time to time. New legislation may pass, or more recent statistics may be released. You’ll need to be ready to tweak or add on to your existing content for…well…forever! Revamping your content can keep your page firmly seated amongst the highest Google ranks, or it can even boost it right to the top of the SERP.

Ready to Integrate Optimized Content for Your Site?

While the phrase “content is king” is certainly true, no monarch is as effective alone. A robust digital marketing strategy that includes high-quality, original content is essential to growing your digital business. From cutting-edge SEO to PPC and analytics, Hennessey Digital has you covered.

The post 9 Tips for Writing Compelling Content appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

We asked our in-house Content and Creative teams to give us the scoop on content vs. copy. Here’s what we learned: while copy and content have complementary functions, each serves a distinct purpose, especially when the focus is on SEO.

Content educates while copy sells

Content marketing, or simply “content,” exists to educate audiences and build credibility. The purpose of content on a company’s website is twofold: to provide answers to frequently sought out questions that people ask via search engines, and to boost the website’s presence in search by answering these user questions. This specific type of marketing intent is to serve the reader or end user.

Good content should inform, establish trust between the reader and the company, and act as a thought library for readers (and the company!) to refer to. Content is about creating a track record of reporting the facts through data and firsthand accounts.

At Hennessey Digital, our Content team is responsible for designing clients’ overall content strategy around their business goals. We have a fully-staffed team of writers, editors, and publishers who handle everything from designing clients’ content strategy and creating content to supporting and optimizing clients’ business goals through content.

How to write quality content

Quality content is the engine behind any successful SEO strategy. Our team gets to know our clients’ businesses and their competitors to create content that answers the questions that people have about the client’s field of expertise.

For our legal industry clients, we focus on specific practice areas for the metro area the client is in (and surrounding areas they serve, if applicable). We research and identify keywords to target for ranking in search engines, and once we know the keywords we want to rank for, we write content that both educates visitors and establishes the client as an authority in their field. This lets the reader know that the legal query they are researching can be facilitated by the law firm.

Good content addresses the questions that people are coming to your site to find answers for. If you’re a law firm, examples of visitors’ questions might be “do I need a lawyer if I’m in a car accident?” or “what can I do to protect my rights if I’m injured at work?”

To make sure the content we write for clients is accomplishing the goals we set, we use tools like SEO Writing Assistant from Semrush to check how many times we’re using specific keywords compared to top-ranking pages. Tools like these can be used as a guide for monitoring pages’ competitiveness. (And check out our tips on how to optimize content for SEO!)

Simply put, content writing is writing with a purpose. It educates the reader, supports an SEO strategy, and, ultimately, brings in leads.

Examples of content writing

• Blog posts
• Ebooks and white papers
• Articles
• Press releases
• Case studies
• Testimonials

The purpose of content

Our content team frequently leans on Bill Gates’ famous mantra “content is king,” coined in an essay he wrote over 25 years ago. Even in 1996, Gates saw the internet as a “marketplace of content” and knew that online content needed to be focused on the end user. He wrote, “if people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will.”

Content informs, entertains, educates, and offers utility. It attracts audiences and provides them with in-depth knowledge and answers to their questions. Content isn’t just for marketing, though, and brands and employers use content to streamline and solidify their voice, communicate to customers and employees, and have information ready on demand.

The immediacy of digital advertising can be daunting. Marketing in real time is a challenge, but a good content strategy supports these efforts. Thinking about this one step further, content is like free advertising through search engines. Although it’s not really free, it’s a lot cheaper than copy used for commercials, billboards, ads, and print collateral.

How content and copy work together

While content is there to inform, copy exists to persuade and sell. Content is created to educate leads, and copy converts those leads to sales.

Good copy incites action: click the button, call, buy, or subscribe. “Conversion copywriting” is a redundant phrase as the purpose of copy is always to convert passive visitors to your website into paying customers.

Copy should be clear, tell a compelling story, and get the reader to act. Every word is essential and should compel the reader to keep reading. Great copy empathizes with the reader and puts their needs first, framing the offer as the solution to their problem.

When we hear “copywriting,” we think of impact statements and shorter lines of text in strategic places to get the reader to feel a certain way. Think about big, bold headlines that grab attention and the micro-copy that appears in call-to-action buttons. The right words in the right place at the right time can get visitors to perform the action you want them to: click, buy, subscribe, or keep reading.

Copy creates a voice for a brand: it gives it a personality and forms an emotional bond between the reader and the company. Although content can certainly be creative as well, copy is known as the more creative medium of the two, winning the hearts and minds—and wallets!—of the people it reaches.

Examples of copywriting

• Headlines
• Calls to action (CTAs)
• Advertising
• Packaging copy
• Website copy
• Core messaging

With website copy, there are many factors at play that can affect your website’s performance. Hennessey Digital’s Creative team designs websites for clients that turn web traffic generated by our SEO techniques into powerful conversion machines.

Copywriting best practices

When it comes to SEO, what’s considered best practice for writing copy? The purpose of each webpage influences how much copy is there, and, just like content, user intent should always come first. On the homepage, you need a clear explanation of what you do (and how you help solve user problems) and a strong call to action. Include keywords in the copy, but remember: usability matters more than word count.

Presentation of copy is key to your message landing with your audience. Big chunks of text are a turnoff for readers, so make sure copy is broken into easily digestible pieces and are presented in a visually appealing way. White space is good! Instead of a long list, break items out into bullet points so that the eye naturally wants to keep moving down the page and reading.

Make sure your visuals are also working in tandem with the copy. The best websites and landing pages are a result of the graphics and the copy coming together at the same time. A message is memorable when the design lends itself to the words on the screen. Because memories are associated with emotions, great advertising copy will raise readers’ dopamine levels and pull at the heartstrings, priming them for the action you want them to take (click, purchase, enroll, etc.)

Although content and copy are different concepts, there is definitely overlap between the two. What do content and copy have in common? Both content and copy can work to enhance your website’s SEO and improve your spot in search engine rankings.

Content and copy in SEO strategy

Copy and content must be relevant and answer users’ questions. Relevant content incorporates targeted keywords into the information it provides and is crucial to be able to move up in search results.

Hennessey Digital uses a “long-term, long-haul” approach to SEO strategy. We perform a page-level and keyword gap analysis to see what pages of content might be missing and which existing content pages should be updated with new information.

Different businesses have a range of content needs and budgets, and we produce anywhere from 10 to 400 pages of content per month for our clients. We write brand-new content as well as revise legacy content for clients to keep their information fresh and encourage repeat visitors to their website.

Is your content up to snuff? Our Content team shares a short list of checkpoints for your content to be successful:

• Title tags no more than 74 characters
• Meta tags at 160 characters
• Keywords in the header as well as the content
• Content is written around a specific goal

Content and copy work together to drive traffic to your website and turn visitors into leads. Both are necessary for growth. And both have a role in growing your audience and increasing conversions.

Content gets people to your site, educates them, and answers their questions. Copy makes people feel understood, converting them from a visitor into a customer—and a fan of your brand

The post What’s the Difference Between Content and Copy? appeared first on Hennessey Digital.