HOW TO CREATE DATA-DRIVEN CONTENT
Step 1: Establish and Define the Process
Creating data-driven content is not difficult. But it does require a clear process. And that’s the first step – establish and define the process. The process we recommend to our clients looks like this:
We define it as follows:
Analyze: Understand customer trends through data analysis, identify business goals and establish KPIs aligned with these goals.
This ensures your effort produces marketing results that meet business priorities.
Monitor: Track, observe and report on the published content.
Test: Try new content based on user response to boost conversions such as with A/B split tests.
Repeat: Analyze test results and do it again.
The importance of the “Repeat” step cannot be over-stated. It establishes efficiencies. It enhances communication. By building a well-defined process, you’ll be able to respond to a constantly changing marketplace more nimbly.
The process you develop may be more detailed to meet the specific needs of the different departments and stakeholders whose contributions are essential to the success of the effort.
Step 2: Research and Analyze
Once you’ve established and defined the process along with roles and responsibilities, it’s time to do research.
First, identify valuable keywords. For every brand, there’s an abundance of potential keywords your audience uses to search. There are many ways to gather this data. Advanced software tools like Research Grid make it possible to quickly find and identify relevant keywords.
Next, it’s time to group the keywords. The best way to make SEO data useful is to sort it by intent. Start by defining the search terms as Navigational, Informational, Commercial, and Transactional.
As you research the intent of your audience, it also makes sense to research the competition. Find out which competitors rank best for the keywords your audience uses. Develop content ideas around these keywords and/or topics. This will position you to capture attention, draw new customers into your funnel, motivate action and drive conversion.
Step 3: Plan and Create Your Topics
With the keyword data collected, intent determined, and competitive keyword gaps identified, it’s time to plan and create topics. Tools like Content Ideas can help. You can also use a spreadsheet to organize your ideas. Here’s how to get started:
IDENTIFY VALUABLE TOPICS
Prioritize topics based on search volume (demand), business priorities (i.e. product launches, seasonal relevance), and competitive gaps and opportunities. Use these topic priorities to create content that will capture the ‘low-hanging fruit.’
CREATE TOPIC CLUSTERS
Target keywords on a specific topic your business has expertise in is a content gap. Rather than going after these keywords in a single page or post, develop a series of related posts around the subject. With this approach, you build a core of quality content around valuable keywords while also building expertise and showing Google your authority on the topic.
ANSWER BURNING QUESTIONS
There are many types of questions. Find out what they are and build content that answers each one. Typical questions include:
VOICE SEARCH QUERIES. Questions that start with “What is…,” “Where is,” or “Who is…,” are common to voice searches. These long-tail keywords follow natural language patterns often have location-specific intent.
HOW-TO QUERIES. Google’s Year in Search 2017 centered around “how” queries. From “how to help refugees” to “how to watch the eclipse,” users search to find simple, clear instructions. Provide answers for any “how to” queries related to your offering.
INFORMATIONAL QUERIES. Featured snippets, or Answer Boxes, are often seen as “position zero.” Brands in this spot are perceived as topical authorities. Platforms like seoClarity can help find terms that your site ranks for that also triggers a featured snippet.
Identify these areas of opportunity and research the current featured snippets. Can you answer the query better than the current snippet? Match the keywords, write better answers, and align your content with the user intent.
seoClarity researched more than 40 million keywords to understand the importance of the featured snippet. You can see the steady increase in the number of queries that included an Answer Box result, topping out at nearly 23 percent of queries.
In February of 2019, however, we noticed a huge decrease in frequency. We attribute this to what Google describes as a reintroduction of the featured snippets. In summary, Google says that they are working to improve the featured snippets so we anticipate this frequency continue to build as they refine the accuracy and helpfulness of this section.
Data through March 2018 from seoClarity Research Grid based on a sample size of 40 million keywords.
“PEOPLE ALSO ASK...”
This section appears right below featured snippets. Google presents the searcher with other common questions related to their original query--along with results that quickly answer them. Like featured snippets, make sure that your content is high-quality and quickly provides all the information the user needs to know.
In looking at the same 40 million search queries, Google returns People Also Ask in about 9-percent (or ~ 4 million times).
Based July 2017 through March 2018 results of People Also Ask on SERP from a sample of 40 million queries
from seoClarity’s Research Grid.
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