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The weird reason we’re slashing client blog posts by 73%

less content is more in google's eyes
In terms of ranking well on search engines, sometimes less is more.

Google used to base a large part of their ranking signals on update frequency. But that’s not necessarily the case anymore.

Now more than ever, the Google Gods place more value on QUALITY of content over QUANTITY.

This means one stellar piece of content has more search engine “oomph” than, say, four or five average-quality blog posts.

Once you know the reasons, it’s easy to see why. People will stay on a page with awesome content longer. They’re also more likely to share that content.

These are two things Google holds dear when determining rankings. Google wants to give users THE most relevant and engaging content on the web. And average time on a page and “share-ability” are very good metrics for that.

To accommodate Google’s former thirst for frequency, we used to create 15 blog posts a month for our SEO clients. We’d post this content on their blogs two or three times per week.

The posts themselves were well-written, but not earth-shaking. And they weren’t meant to be. Like I said, we were going with what would make clients rank the highest. And that involved creating new blog fodder constantly.

Until very recently, this strategy worked. The posts would rank well, and everything was peachy-keen.

Over the past eight months or so, however, we noticed our onslaught of “pretty good” blog posts were not ranking as well as they once were. Not even close.

Here’s why…

Google launched another algorithm update, as they’re so fond of doing. Emphasis on FREQUENCY went down; the importance of QUALITY went up.

Google now penalizes you for posting too many articles a month with too little content. For example, if you’re posting 20 articles a month—and they’re all 300 words or less, have obsessive amounts of keywords, and you’re not a news site—you’ll get dinged with a Spam/Keyword Stuffing penalty.

We’re always on our toes to keep up with Google’s constant algorithm changes. As soon as we saw what we WERE doing was no longer working, we immediately called an audible.

MYM COO Bryan Bauman and the entire SEO team got together to work on a new blog-content strategy for our upgraded SEO clients. We determined we needed to “beef up” the posts we were delivering to clients. This meant creating better, cornerstone content that is powerful, informative, interesting, sharable, and laced with all the SEO elements Google eats up.

To achieve this, we had to do three things:

  1. Reduce the number of posts we provided from 15 to 4. Creating truly captivating content takes time; writing 15 A+ posts per month just isn’t possible.
  2. Bring aboard some more high-caliber content writers. We hired a new, highly experienced content writer a few months ago. (And we’re looking to add two more in 2018.)
  3. Set up one-on-one time with our content writers and upgraded SEO clients. We now have regular content-strategy calls with our upgraded SEO clients. We go over the clients’ goals for their blogs, see what products they want to push for that time frame, and how hard they want to hit particular keywords.

Here are a couple examples of the kind of meaty blog content we’re NOW producing:

  1. How To Manage An Unhappy Home Remodeling Client
  2. Does James Hardie Fiber Cement Cost More Than Vinyl Siding?

Read through these posts and think about what this type of content can do for your internet marketing.

It’s engaging. It’s shareable. It’s SEO-friendly. It ticks all the boxes for what a quality blog post is SUPPOSED to be.

Get more information about our SEO Services here. Then, get in touch with us if you want to take your blog—and search rankings—to new heights.

 

P.S. Don’t get me wrong… quantity IS still important for search rankings. Your website needs a steady stream of content to remain relevant in Google’s eyes. But that content must engage your audience. If it doesn’t, no one will read it… and your rankings will sink faster than a fishing boat made of Swiss cheese.

© 2017, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.

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