Use Data Or Be Used By Data!

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The January 22 issue of Seotistics is here for you!

Content Optimization is a hot topic... even though there are best practices, it's not universal.

Many brag to be "data-driven" but I want to show you what you can do today to actually optimize content.

This is an overview, the topic is long so I will split it up across different Seotistics issues.

So, you will only see the big picture today.

P.S. If you liked this issue, express your gratitude with a post on LinkedIn/X.

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A Process Rooted In Data

If you are like me and you like a process, this is (more or less) what I often do:

My past issue on my SEO Analytics stack and Content MGMT & Ops show you how I do most of the stuff.

Don't worry, the next issue will lift a lot of doubts.

The process can be summarized as follows:

• Clean your data and join what you need (remember, you often have to combine GSC with GA4!)
• Filter your data accordingly
• Detect opportunities and find pages

My process also includes keyword research, mainly by getting queries with 0 clicks or high impressions... and clustering them.

Your results can be used by AI to generate briefs. This workflow is already covered by Keyword Insights/Neural Text.

Tagging pages refers to classifying the pages of a website to fit into groups.

This is a hyper-common problem for publishers or big websites as your CMS' categories and tags may not be enough.

P.S. This process is the detailed and operational version of my general framework:

Content Decay & Evergreen Pages

This is the topic I talk the most about... and with all these new Seotistics subscribers, it's important to give you a quick recap.

Quite straightforward; you should keep track of your content to see what's going on.

On the other hand, anyone mentions evergreen content but doesn't know how to quantify it.

My subscribers get the BigQuery handbook for free, where this problem is addressed and shown in practice with SQL.

The code to score Content Decay is covered in my ebook, which also teaches you how to get value out of SEO data and save a lot of time.

Natural Language Processing

I confess I am not using this process as often as before but the idea is quite simple.

You can scrape your content to detect which entities are present on your page. Are they representative enough?

The next step would be to scrape SERPs and extract articles to then get entities.

The reason why I am using it less and less is because this task can get quite expensive soon, so think twice before you do it.

Other software like InLinks can also help you if you don't want to DIY.

Content Optimization

Content optimization isn't a panacea to all evils.

Sometimes you just need good links... as you are not always working with DA70 websites.

The most common optimizations involve:

• adding new content
• updating content
• deleting outdated information
• adding images/infographics/videos/snippets
• adding tables/bullet lists

So optimizing a page can also involve "de"-optimizing it if the content is excessive or not necessary.

Please, avoid this pseudo-science:

• LSI keywords
• Keyword Golden Ratio
• Keyword Density

In practice, it's possible to rank with spam and by abusing specific words...

but there is a reason why you shouldn't do it anyway (see below).

Distribution & Repurposing

If your content is clearly "SEO" oriented, people are going to notice and you won't convince anyone.

Even the most simple article can be used to show your prowess and that you can connect the pieces.

Good distribution amplifies quality if you have good content... otherwise, you are broadcasting your lack of skills.

The best way to distribute your content is to have a plan. What does this mean?

Know in advance what to do, for example:

Covering all the channels is impossible budget-wise, so try to be effective rather than repurposing because I told you here.

Risk Management

More content often equals more work later on. This is something that brands forget when delegating to agencies 100s of articles.

Now, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to do some quick math and realize that:

if it takes 30 mins to update 1 article and on average you update 30/month... it's 15 hours of your time minimum.

But... I said often, the image below shows that more content doesn't (always) mean you will work more and more because:

• Some pages you will prune/noindex
• You'll learn how to scale work (hopefully)

The time spent to update content is an opportunity cost, so the price to pay for NOT doing something else.

The same time you spend can be invested in Digital PR or repurposing content.

So this excess of content is stealing your precious time if you go all in and publish without afterthought.

The Mindset

I like thinking that content should be updated anyway, just to nurture a culture of content management.

For big websites, this isn't the case and you need to prioritize correctly.

This is my thinking:

• if we are not the best, we are the worst.
• rankings are borrowed.
• machines don't understand great content.
• Content Marketing > SEO.
• ranking high doesn't (necessarily) prove or show your content is good.

SEO isn't the only channel but this doesn't mean you can ignore the SERPs.

Use them as a benchmark for the minimum quality you can offer.

Not all businesses are ready for SEO or can rank nationally. Local SEO is also another opportunity.

Homework & Takeaways

Next week I am going to double down on the details of this process and show how agencies and big websites can do it.

That said, this is how you can spend your time:

• How would you classify pages and queries?
• What would you change in the process?

👥 Join Our Community

Our Discord community offers a small place where we can talk business and SEO.

If you hate all the noise of social media, then this place is for you.

🔎 Analytics For SEO Ebook (v6)

If you want to expand on the use cases I showed and get the best resource on Analytics for SEO, this is for you.

It will teach you or your employees to:

👉 Prepare audits that make sense and are actionable 🔥

👉 Avoid common pitfalls that cost you money 💸

👉 Create analyses that add value and money💯

👉 Move the needle faster with efficient SEO systems ⏳

This comes with periodical updates to keep the content fresh.

v7 will include additional info on DataViz and topics on request and I am trying to release it by this month!

📚 Recommended Reads - Peak Content

Some great resources again so that you can enrich yourself:

• ​The 8-Step Content Auditing Framework For SEO & Marketing​
• ​How To Fight Content Decay With Data & Prevent It​
• ​Entity SEO Book: Moving from Strings to Things​
• ​Google’s shifting approach to AI content: An in-depth look​
• ​10 practical ways to implement entity analysis in digital marketing and SEO​
• ​🛡 Diversification in SEO: Protect Your Assets - Part 1​
• ​🥷 Part 2: Diversification in SEO - Protect Your Assets​

My BigQuery handbook covers most of the technical stuff I have mentioned and how to run SQL code.

📞 One-Hour Call

Want to make money with your SEO data and build efficient systems to speed up SEO?

Look no further, I can help you:

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❗️ Feedback and Recommendations

If you have ideas/recommendations for the next issues of Seotistics, you can simply reply to this email.

Marco Giordano
​SEO Specialist & Data Analyst

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