Every year, the search engines release several updates. The common thread in almost all algorithm updates is that high quality content is becoming increasingly important for how a site should succeed. Well-planned content marketing performed by a competent SEO Expert can be crucial to ranking well.
Case study provides insight into the algorithm
In connection with each update, the SEO experts say what the new ranking factors are. What should I change on my site to make it rank well? What should I do to regain a lost position?
There are accepted theories but exactly how the algorithm works is only known to Google. From time to time, well-done case studies provide valuable insights into what goes on under the hood of the search engine.
Search Engine Land published a case study on how informative content affects a website’s performance in the SERP.
The study object was an e-commerce site that has worked with an SEO strategy since 2017. In a nutshell, the strategy was based on:
- technical SEO , mainly to make the website faster and easier for the search engines to index, and
- to improve the informative content of the website.
The content was improved by reorganizing information pages and adding new ones. Then they created internal links from these pages to the website’s category pages.
The result had a dramatic effect. The visibility in the SERP was over four times as great. Sales as a result of organic traffic increased 2.5 times!
Pages with good information played a central role
It is easy to draw wrong conclusions about what led to such a good result in the ranking. Can we be sure that it was the company’s chosen strategy for content marketing that was the reason for the success?
Yes. The case study provided insight into what happens if you suddenly delete all those well-written informative pages and their links to other pages on the website.
The company that ran the web shop was part of a larger group where one of the other companies ran a competing e-commerce site. It was decided that the two e-shops would be merged. The new website would not retain any of the information content from the previous site.
Said and done. The site removed all its informative pages. Instead, redirects were added to the main page. Just a few days later, the information pages were gone from the SERP.
That is why content marketing is important
The results from the case study are convincing. It not only shows that content is important but that pages with plenty of useful information can make an entire website stand out. This is an example of how content marketing can be important for your SEO .
But why is that so?
There are several theories. The most likely reason is that the information pages passed on a lot of linking power to other parts of the website. Half of all the website’s links pointed to the information pages. When they were removed, redirects were certainly added, but probably not only part of the link power was lost along the way, but also the context of the links.
Maybe the site also lost some of its authority (EAT) in Google’s eyes, but of course it’s hard to prove.
Summary: Content marketing is important for SEO . All types of websites can benefit from this type of strategy, not just e-commerce sites. Create good and informative content and remember to add internal links from there to strategic parts of the website.
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