Several of the posts on the Simple Machines blog have dealt with the task of generating effective, optimized content – whether it’s website copy, blogs and articles, social media content or press releases.
If content generation is a significant piece of your marketing strategy, there’s a good chance you have some old content floating around out there that could benefit from a touch up as well. Rather than letting it collect dust, why not optimize where you can and make the most of the work that’s already been done?
1. Optimize Highly Visible Content for Conversion
Use analytics to take a snapshot of your proprietary content (web pages, old blog posts, white papers, slideshows etc.): which of these pieces of content are getting the most views? How do the conversion rates for these compare to your strongest, conversion-friendly pieces of content?
Because there are a strong number of impressions for this content, you have much to gain by ensuring that it has been adequately optimized for conversion. Now, if you have a well-crafted, archived blog post or white paper on your site that is still getting shared regularly, the last thing you want to do is ruin it with an inordinate amount of hard-sell marketing-speak. That said, you’re not likely to ruin anything by including pertinent forms of contact info and a relevant call-to-action.
2. Increase Visibility for High Quality Content
Are there any pieces of content that you feel are especially strong but perhaps haven’t received much visibility? There are a number of ways to give these a second shot at receiving the impressions they deserve:
- Search optimization: Use one of the many keyword research tools to determine if there are relevant key phrases worth optimizing for. If there is a strong opportunity, make sure to use the best key phrase in the title, H1 tag, and at least three or four times in the body text. If there are other pages or new posts that you can link back to, do that as well.
- Share through social media: Unless you’ve recently done so, share the content through all social media channels. As long as the content is still relevant and you’re not oversharing it, there’s no reason not to use these channels for distribution.
- Advertise. If the content has a high potential to engage your target market, you may consider using PPC advertising to drive impressions. Be sure to carefully monitor and analyze visitor behavior, making adjustments as needed.
3. Sharpen Dull Content
Not that I would ever imply YOUR business would possibly create any dull content – you can feel free to skip this section – but some OTHER businesses might find this pertinent. Browse through your content and consider whether any of the following tactics might help to sharpen it up or improve click through rates:
- Add interesting and/or helpful visuals
- Update the bio to include Google Authorship
- Make the content concise and easily scannable
- Maintain a consistent, genuine and authoritative tone in your writing
- Include real-world examples to illustrate ideas where possible
- Use a compelling meta description to improve CTR where applicable
If you have a lot of old content out there, it’s a good idea to prioritize this task by starting with the highly visible and strongest quality content rather than wading in and waiting for shortcomings to jump out at you. By making the most of your existing content, you’re essentially creating a low-overhead new facet to your content marketing strategy – and who can say no to that?
What ways have you gotten extra mileage from your existing content? Share with us in the comments!
cnadler
Simple Machines Marketing
