Marketers know that optimizing content for SEO is critical to successfully attracting target audiences. In fact, 61% of B2B marketers say that SEO and organic traffic generate more leads than any other marketing initiative.
But when it comes to B2B SEO strategy, are marketing teams devoting too much time to new content while neglecting existing content? Probably. According to the Content Marketing Institute, B2B marketers say creating new content is their biggest area of investment.
Too many marketers move on from existing blog posts, webpages, and other key organic search assets in favor of creating shiny new content. The problem with this “set it and forget it” approach is that it can lead to diminishing ROI. According to Tendo EVP and Partner Lindy Roux, “un-assessed content is neglected content that doesn’t achieve its full potential or help you reach your goals.”
On the other hand, marketing leaders who optimize existing content—for users and for search engines—and integrate content optimization into their team’s workflow are able to drive higher customer engagement and satisfaction more quickly.
Read on to learn more about:
- What exactly SEO content optimization is
- The benefits of optimizing existing B2B content
- Key activities that drive SEO content optimization for B2Bs
What Is SEO Content Optimization?
SEO content optimization involves improving your existing content to make it more appealing to the search engine robots that determine your rankings in search results. Optimization can include activities such as:
- Regularly updating your content—freshness is a ranking factor for search engines
- Revising and optimizing keywords so that content is relevant to your target audience’s search queries and search intent
- Assessing top-ranking content to identify best practices that can make your content more competitive
Content optimization also involves maintaining or upleveling the quality of your existing content so that it resonates with and instills confidence in your users. Consider Google’s E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authority, and trust) rating, which “measures how effectively search engines are working to deliver helpful content to people around the world.” Though E-E-A-T doesn’t directly determine page ranking, earning a high quality rating via E-E-A-T at both the page and site level can ultimately influence how well your pages rank in search.
To assess your content qualitatively, ask yourself:
- Does the content help solve user challenges and pain points?
- Is it still relevant based on the journey stage it’s targeting?
- Does the content reflect the latest information and insights?
- Are the headlines and copy easy to read, digest, and understand?
Of course, it doesn’t matter how great your content is if it isn’t optimized for search. High-quality content can often go unnoticed by robots, limiting your content’s reach. That’s why it’s important to integrate SEO strategy into the process of optimizing existing content for your users—the two must go hand in hand. Since search engines regularly crawl your digital content, the good news is you can keep improving content long after the initial publish date.
Benefits of Optimizing Existing B2B Content for SEO
A holistic approach that combines content optimization with targeted on-page SEO strategies drives measurable results and delivers numerous benefits, including:
- Improved organic search performance. Regularly optimizing older pieces of content to maintain their relevance with your target audience can significantly improve their search rankings. Optimizing an existing page that already ranks in search typically generates faster results than getting a brand-new page to rank well.
- Increased discoverability and web traffic. With higher rankings comes better visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). This in turn helps attract more organic traffic to your site.
- Better content experiences for your customers. Continuous refinement of your content offerings produces a more engaging content and user experience, which helps drive conversions. And a great content experience lies at the heart of a successful content strategy—one that meets the unique needs of key B2B audiences wherever they are in their journey.
6 Key Activities in the SEO Content Optimization Process
Working at the intersection of content optimization and SEO involves a wide range of tasks, from researching keywords, user needs, and preferences to analyzing SERPs and evaluating website and competitor data. These activities fall under the following themes:
- Understand target audiences. Marketing teams can leverage customer behavior signals (e.g., bounce rate, time on page, clickthrough rate, search behavior) to determine customer-focused content and keyword optimizations.
- Pinpoint relevance and intent. This involves identifying key customer careabouts by journey stage via primary and secondary research—all with the goal of optimizing content that’s relevant to customers’ search intent.
- Evaluate user-focused topics and keywords. By zeroing in on the topics B2B audiences are looking for as well as the specific language they use to search for topical content, you can better target them. This is where a review of your own website content and keywords, along with that of your competitors, comes in handy.
- Identify the right message. It’s also important to revise your messaging to make sure it still resonates with key audiences and supports customer intent across the journey stages.
- Figure out the right content format. Marketers can leverage the search, competitor, and user behavior data they’ve gathered to make sure the format for existing content still meets audience and search engine expectations. For example, you may find that the great video you have isn’t a top-ranking format for a key topic. Consider repurposing it to a format that does rank well.
- Optimize content for users and SEO. This includes punching up headlines, upleveling content quality, and determining the right keyword density so that content connects with customer intent, ranks better, and converts via organic search.
Tendo Can Help You Prioritize SEO and Content Optimization Efforts
SEO content optimization is only one part of the solution. Integrating SEO tactics with wider content optimization efforts will allow you to reach and connect with your customers more effectively across all your channels.
Contact us about our SEO services, and we’ll help you drive better organic search results while delivering an exceptional content experience.
