In this episode, Bernard explains why SEO content has a packaging problem, introducing concepts such as perspectives to help address the issue.

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Hello, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Bernard, founder of Clearscope, and I want to talk to you about why SEO content has a packaging problem. 

Now, you're probably familiar with the skyscraper technique popularized by Backlinko a decade ago. This, as an SEO strategy, encouraged the enhancement of content by adding more and more density of subsections, related topics to your piece of content that improved its comprehensiveness and relevancy. And for a period of time, it worked really well in Google search. That era has been coming close to an end with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) overviews. 

Google has been serving users a quick answer populated by their large language model (LLM), Gemini, that's designed to answer a lot of the high consensus answers that a user is likely to care about given a particular topic.

What we also know is that Google is really keen on understanding whether or not content is meeting searcher needs with the usage of user engagement signal, which means that Google knows when somebody clicks on a site how long they spent, whether that was a long click, a bad click, or a last click. And they're using that to inform whether or not the content you're producing is relevant.

Well, you can imagine with the advent of large language models, there has been a rapid commoditization of content being generated, and a lot of these LLMs struggle with serving users unique and interesting perspectives given the topic. But what they are really good at, guess what, is creating this stock kind of content that addresses the basics of what a topic is and how to do a specific topic. 

What this means is that the traditional topic cluster model that you used in the past is really starting to lose a lot of relevance in how to create and architect an SEO content strategy. In the past, this, as an idea would work really well. You would create six pieces of content targeting the what, best, how, why, pros and cons, and for the most part, if you built some links and you had some relevant content, it would work.

Well, you can imagine with the advent of AI overviews, Google is actually cannibalizing a lot of that content from the what, why, how queries. And what they're expecting is us, as SEO content creators, to offer searchers unique, original, and relevant, engaging perspectives that are firsthand. That's why we're seeing this advent of UGC sites like Reddit, Quora, and different discussion boards really coming into the search engine results page. 

What I believe and why I think SEO content has a packaging problem, is because the traditional way that we, as SEO content creators, have been encouraged to create content looks like this. Right? If we're talking about any particular topic, let's say, “how to train for a marathon,” it'd be very common for us to include a section, in the above-the-fold experience, that talks about what a marathon is.

Again, back to the fact that Google is not only answering the “What is a marathon?” for us. They're also measuring how users are engaging with our content. And if somebody who's searching for “how to train for a marathon,” lands on your content and sees this above the fold that says, “what is a marathon?” Guess what? Chances are they're going to bounce. You're going to be counted as a bad click, and you might lose some rankings and some traffic.

So, instead, what are you supposed to do? The answer is good news, right? We have already created the content, and it's a matter of repackaging what we've already created. So instead of targeting the keyword “how to train for a marathon,” “do email marketing,” “start on a particular diet”? We have to understand that users care about different perspectives given the topic, and this how query can actually be broken into a variety of different perspectives that the user is likely to care about within their search journey. Things like: “What to consider before training for a marathon.” “Mistakes I made while starting a particular diet.” “Reasons not to do email marketing or TikTok marketing” and “Should I even get into SEO in this day and age?”

These as perspectives are going to be much more engaging and click-worthy for the end user, and they are going to have content above-the-fold experiences that are how I did this. How I did email marketing, how I tested subject lines to improve our open rates by 40%, instead of the “how to do email marketing?” “What is email marketing?” Test your subject lines, right? Very, very different but similar content.

Again, that is why I believe SEO content has a packaging problem. More or less, the content that we're producing is there. We just need to infuse it with more firsthand, relatable experiences that people are going to trust, and the future of your success and SEO content, I believe, hinges on your ability to think about the user and not the search engine. Thank you.