What Does Context Have to Do with Content Marketing?
After Google’s latest algorithm change, context is the new king of content marketing. This means that regardless of how much keyword-optimized content, how many words you have on your page or how great your content is, you may not rank the way you’d like to if you aren’t answering the questions users pose with search queries related to your site.
We’ve talked extensively about Google’s Hummingbird update. This and other changes by Google ensure that context is the most important criteria in a user’s search. Users aren’t just looking for info about a certain topic, they’re looking for information that specifically answers whatever questions they’re trying to pose.
Context and Content Marketing
This is where you come in. These days ensuring you’re giving users the right context can be about over explaining things. In the pre-Hummingbird days, one of the most important things you could do in developing site pages is keep the user on your site for as long as possible, not overwhelming them with content and giving them the right navigation to “fall down the rabbit hole” in your site – exploring page after page to browse content in several areas. Post-hummingbird page strategy isn’t that different. You still want users to get happily lost in the wealth of information you’re giving them – but you want the pages they land on to answer the specific questions they’re looking for answers to.
For instance, “What kinds of flowers should I plant in spring” should bring up an intro page on a site with a wealth of information about different kinds of spring flowers and individual pages on how to best plant them – not just an article about “The 10 Best Spring Flowers to Plant.” This may not happen just yet, but keep in mind Google is crafting search to lean toward content, so the more information you can provide that answers user questions, the better.
How Do I Change My Site?
Less is not more – don’t worry about rewriting existing pages on your site. If anything, add more content to those pages or link to content that ensures users will get their questions answered. And most importantly, if your content marketing isn’t truly answering any questions, start by thinking about what your users want to see from you. If you don’t know the questions it’ll be hard to come by the answers.
Lead Liaison has a truly unique content marketing platform unlike any other marketing automation dashboard out there. Our writers can craft content marketing focused around the general questions your site visitors want answered. Let us show you how!
