 closest to your B2B business is probably your best bet.
Jen: We noticed something was amiss maybe in March, even January of 2017. We looked at two sort of things. We looked at net new traffic to a content channel like the blog, was it netting a lot of new eyeballs? And two, was the content really attracting people and was it then pushing them toward a new trial start, an NTS for us.
What we noticed was there was a portion of posts that we’re definitely driving NTS but they were quite old. This was cornerstone content, it had kind of aged. When we looked at things like landing page example posts, those are doing pretty well but they hadn’t been updated in a long time. But what we also noticed was the traffic to those was dipping. We had lost a significant portion of that traffic because it wasn’t ranking anymore.
It was really important to be able to look at the trends and understand traffic was flat lining at the time. Do we invest further in this channel were questions that we had to ask but it was like, “How can we go back to that content and refresh it such that it will pull in the eyeballs for us and it will rank and be the first thing someone sees when they look up certain things that are highly related to our product. The moment for us was really early 2017 when we started looking at the attribution data and how much traffic was coming in.
Nathan: I love this idea of cornerstone content. I wanna know how you keep that relevant at the top of those search results.
Jen: There’s two ways. We look at content that we’ve created and we ask, “Does it still answer the core question?” When we think of what people would type into the search bar in order to find that piece of content, we’re thinking okay, well, if I ended up here, one, would I click it from a SERP when I look at the metadata? Would I have clicked on that from a SERP to answer that question. If not, make some changes there. But two, when you get onto that page, how quickly does it get to the core answer? Are people gonna get there and then need to use the back button right away or does it really answer that question as the best experience on the internet?
Also, this may involve asking yourself is the best experience on the internet for this particular question best suited to a blog post or do you make something like an online experience? Like this very top of funnel FAQ style resource for example or do you put it in a course or what does that experience look like that it’s the best answer on the internet.
But second, you can start all the way back at keyword research again. If you look at that piece and say, “No, we’re gonna put that to bed.” We either have to refresh it or we’re gonna put it to bed and we’re gonna start again with some keyword research about discovering the intent behind what people are actually looking for.
Nathan: Jen, something that you kind of mentioned earlier too was that you try to make sure that you find those synonyms for what people should find they’re closer related to your products such as PPC landing page. When someone searches for that, you want them to find Unbounce. How do you go about finding those sorts of synonyms, how do you make sure that that is part of your processes, you’re going into this idea of optimizing for search engines?
Jen: We use a few tools that are very, very handy for this. One, we use AHREFS. Basically, you can use this for keyword research and use or navigate to the keywords explorer and you’ll get all kinds of ideas for different variations that you can run and export that list. Another tool that I use is SEO Book. That way, you can find all the possible variations of a given keyword for eventual inclusion in the content. But basically, it helps you uncover different permutations of the same keyword and it’s very, very helpful.
Nathan: We’re talking about this whole maturation over the course of eight years and identifying this time to pivot and really focusing on this intent behind someone’s searches, you want to be there. Why is it more important now more so that ever before to consider this sort of pivot from lifestyle content to optimize for product intent?
Jen: I think that’s a great question. I think it comes down to how people are interacting with the internet now. I think we’re seeing a rise of things like voice search already as a trend starting in 2017 onward. We’re starting to understand that when people are looking for businesses, they’re not just going to your resource hub or your blog, you know what I mean? Like the famous saying, “People don’t read blogs, they read posts.” Unless you’re sort of getting on their radar via your social or your paid, or if people are still paying attention to your email for example. You do have to sort of reach them in different ways.
I think examining search intent is a great way to do that but you have to do it right. You don’t wanna blindly attract a bunch of people to your site for a high-level terms that you’re going after that aren’t connected to your product or are only loosely did. You have to make that connection very, very clear. But following the sort of fundamentals approach, I think it’s kind of like both time-saving and cost-saving. Things like podcasts, even though they’re really cool to do, I think you can do them after you’ve covered the sort fundamentals approach.
It’s not to say that you can’t ever do lifestyle type content—I keep calling it lifestyle but you know what I’m talking about—stuff that’s one step away from your fundamentals, it’s fine to do that as long as you can support it. It may mean that you need a little bit of paid budget or you just have really good discovery on your site. If there’s some kind of resource section that gets a lot of traffic. It has everything to do with your site’s domain authority and whether you’re attracting the right type of people there. It’s not necessarily a new way of doing things but certainly if you have not covered it when you first started, now is a good time.
Nathan: Jen, something else that you kind of mentioned was that you focused on this idea of the customer journey, and the last time we chatted you had mentioned focusing on this idea of curriculums. I really wanna hear your perspective on this because I think it’s really amazing to think about marketing as a form of education and nurturing prospects and the customers. Could you elaborate on that idea and what that means for you at Unbounce?
Jen: Yeah, sure. I love this too. Basically, we look at sort of a whole process for creating content that will rank. First, we start with that keyword research and AHREFS or Google Keyword Planner and you’re looking for terms that relate again, strongly to your business, but present a high volume traffic op. But then, to create this sort of curriculum, you start grouping up keywords by intent. You imagine what people typing these keywords into Google are really wanting to know.
If I type in, as we said, PPC landing pages, I, as a marketer can kind of look at that and go, “Okay, that’s super tied together with what is a PPC landing page. How do I create, build, make PPC landing pages?” You kind of come up with this intent and start grouping together similar questions. This is what Cody and I, my colleague, call the curriculum for your content. This is mapping out all the stuff that a given piece is gonna cover.
You may realize as you start to go that, “Okay, this is starting to look like five different pieces.” Or, “We have the opportunity to tie four pieces together whereas maybe we would’ve only made one blog post in the past.” But we kind of look at this curriculum and ask, “What’s the best way to show this info online? If I was searching for this, what am I hoping to find?” We basically determine do we need a web experience like I said, or do we need a series of pages, is this a quick blog post on the topic? That’s how you put that curriculum together.
But we also consider after you read something like the answer to X, what would you be now looking to know next? This is how you figure out what your calls to action throughout the content will be and how you’re mapping out that journey.
Nathan: This whole time, we’re talking about getting the right sorts of people in with the right sort of intent, at the right time, and they’re doing this through search and well-beyond, you guys are looking at automation to help bring in those right people and nurture them further.
What’s your best advice for marketers who need to mature their blog or their content to go beyond those pages, to go beyond the lifestyle content we’ve been dropping in this episode? Where should those marketers focus first or where should they start to implement some of the advice that you’ve provided today?
Jen: I know Moz just published a really great piece. I think it might have been a whiteboard Friday. Actually, I think it was just a regular blog post that they did on identifying traffic drops on any pages of your site.
Similar to us, you could do sort of this analysis and determine, “Okay, we’ve had a few traffic drops from posts that used to perform really, really well for