The Future of Content

As the end of the year nears, there are two things we can be certain for in 2020. Content marketing will become even more important, and content creation and content distribution will change. The reasons behind content’s importance is because it is useful, authentic, and reaches the younger generation who are predominantly found online. This makes keeping up with content marketing trends even more essential.

But how can you get your content seen in such a saturated market?

You may have heard that the typical piece of content that ranks on Google’s page one of results contains 1,890 words, yet this doesn’t automatically secure you more search traffic. Over 440 million blogs exist, meaning getting yours seen is a tremendous task.

To drive awareness of your blog, you need to write unique content but also adapt your content strategy so that it encompasses rising trends.

What trends should you look out for, and how should you adapt your marketing strategy for 2020? Well, let’s find out.

How should your content strategy look for 2020?

Learning how to write pillar content should be the main priority. While pillar content isn’t new, having a foundational piece of content that stands the test of time on your website, will help drive awareness to your website but also establish your brand as a thought leader and boost your business’s SEO.

Aside from pillar content, you should also focus on snippets, keyword researchKeyword research helps websites unearth the best keywords to drive traffic and visibility. This research is supported by a number of powerful web-based tools, the best of which we’ve listed here., the competitor gap, and ‘enriching content.’ These are going to be prevalent in 2020 and should be incorporated into a marketer’s content strategy.

Let’s go into further detail.

Pillar content, what is it and why do you need it?

Pillar pages are much more than a really long piece of content. While pillar content is a detailed and comprehensive guide on a particular topic, it also forms a ‘topic cluster’ in which it linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. to other, related topics. This makes pillar content incredibly useful for SEO purposes.

A ‘topic cluster’ helps search engines recognise you as an authority figure on a specific topic. Basically, a pillar piece consists of multiple topics that can interlink with other blog posts. Due to these links, you create a ‘hub’ – and with this hub, you have the ability to explore other subject in more depth too.

Typically, a pillar piece has three main components:

1. Pillar content
2. Cluster content (those topics you’re linking to)
3. Hyperlinks

With both your pillar piece and connected blog content optimised with relevant keywords, this interconnected ‘cluster’ of content allows search engines to prioritise your website ahead of your competitors as you are viewed as an authority on the subject.

So, pillar content must form part of a wider content strategy if it is to drive value and be seen. It is not to be seen as “a big blog post.” It is so much more than that.

How to write pillar content

Creating the perfect piece of pillar content requires substantial research time and resources. You need to treat content creation as an investment, especially when it comes to developing pillar content.

You cannot write a free-form piece of content, include a few links and hope it achieves results! Here’s a guide on how to write effective pillar content.

1.    Plan before you start writing

It’s all too tempting to throw yourself deep into content writing with no clear map as to how you’re going to make your points and end the piece properly. You need to conduct keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business. research, know your topic inside out, and highlight relevant sub-topics so that you can form your ‘topic cluster.’

The process of planning your pillar piece can be in-depth. You will want to consider:

• SEO – researching for relevant keywords for topics and sub-topics
• Plenty of research time so that you can refine your pillar piece
• The structure – does it make sense and flow properly?
• Supporting topics – as well as the anchor texts and links used

2.    Consult your wider content strategy

There’s more to a pillar page than planning, writing and distributing the content. Pillar content needs to align with your overall content goals and SEO strategy. What’s more, you need to have the relevant blog posts to link to, otherwise what’s your pillar piece a hub for?

Tip: If you are linking to old blog content, ensure this content is updated and optimised. This may involve changing keywords so that they are more relevant.

3.    Pen to paper, fingers to keyboard – time to write your pillar piece

When everything is planned and your keyword research completed, it’s time to write your content and hit the points you’ve laid out. First drafts are important here; you will want to get your thoughts, stats, and statistics on the page, ensure your sub-topics are included, and then refine the content.

Once the content is completed, you need to review your linking strategy. Cross-linking correctly is essential if you want search engines to recognise you as a thought leader.

Research tips: where should you find the relevant information?

For your pillar piece to be successful, you need to ensure the content you’ve written is up-to-date and factually correct. But where do you find facts and figures you can trust?

Luckily, you have the whole of the internet to conduct your research. You can simply look up your topic online and search through authoritative sites that are known for their reliability. Drill down on your topic by researching – dig deep so that there is no room for error.

The Snippet, and how to utilise this trend

Google is known for sniffing out relevant information and answering a searcher’s query by providing a very brief summary in a box below the search bar. This widget is called a Snippet, and it is highly competitive with the amount of “no click” searchers on the rise.

How do you rank for a snippet, though?

Certain words have a higher chance of being featured with a snippet. They are:

• Recipe
• Best
• Definition
• Vs
• Make
• Meaning
• Review

Include these words in titles and within the body of the text so that it is clear and concise for when Google is searching through your content.

However, it isn’t just the words you use, but you also have to decide on the type of snippet too:

• List
• Table
• Paragraph

Fun Fact: The most popular type of featured snippetA featured snippet is a search result that is specially formatted to include a summary of the answer, extracted from a web page. is the paragraph.

While selecting the type of snippet may seem trivial in the whole grand scheme of things, you need to know how your competitors are ranking. By doing so, you know how to create and format your content so that you can knock their snippet out of pole position.

How to find your competitors’ snippets?

Easy. Use SEMrush to find out which featured snippets your competitors are ranking for (as well as any snippets you may be placing first in). Once you know what your competitors are ranking for, you can optimise your content so that you are competing for the same keywords.

Tip: When checking your own snippets, see whether there are any other keyword variations you could rank for as well as the ones you are already using.

Don’t forget Google

How could you, really? Get into the mindset of your audience and Google queries or questions they are likely to search for. This is a great exercise in itself when it comes to understanding your customers better.

For instance, are you a budding baker with a blog? If so, Google one of your recipes and see what pops up, or other related baking questions like “what is the cup to grams conversions?” so that you can also focus on your audience outside of America.

You can also use the “People also askThe People Also Ask (PAA) SERP feature is a Google Search feature that displays similar questions to the one you typed into the search box.” section for more information on what your audience is looking for regarding your industry.

Both SEMrush and Google are quick, easy and inexpensive ways to conduct research for your snippets.

Keyword research: a walk through

1.    Find all the relevant keyword questions

You should already be performing keyword research, but you can greatly improve your featured snippet luck by optimising your keywords to this marketing tactic, too.

There are many tools available, but you can also enlist the help of a digital marketing agency. You can use Keyword Explorer or Serpstat as they show which keywords bring up certain snippets. This is crucial information for those who are looking to rank #0.

2.    Answer multiple questions

Typically, the keywords for featured snippets will be in question form. As mentioned above, you can get into the heads of your consumers and Google questions they may ask, but you will want to include more than one question in your content.

Why?

Because once one piece of content earns a featured snippet for one question, it is more likely to be featured for other related queries. That’s why an FAQ-style piece of content is so optimal when landing rank #0.

Tip: Keep your questions and answers to the point and simple.

3. Keep your word count low

You may have numerous keywords to hit, but that doesn’t mean overstuffing and oversaturating your content. Keep your content concise and to the point. You may have lots of questions and points to hit, but overall, your content may only be 50 or so words long.

According to SEMrush, the most common length of content for featured snippets is between 40 to 50 words – no more, no less.

4.    It’s all about the headers

Long sentences and paragraphs are falling out of favour. We want bite-sized content that we can easily and quickly digest, much like listicles. Make sure to break up your content by including headers (your questions/answers) when formatting your copy.

Be sure to organise your headers by the correct size; that means using h1, h2, h3 or h4 appropriately. Organising your content with headers, and in chronological order, will make your copy more likely to feature in Google.

Read our eBook on how to land position zero.

Use competitive gap analysis

Knowing why you are losing out on customers to your competitor is the holy grail – you can use this information to improve your business and locate what is stopping consumers from choosing you.

You may be asking how competitive gap analysis can benefit your content… if so, the reasons are below.

Content gap analysis

Basically, competitor analysis is where you look at your competitor’s content to identify keywords and topics. By looking at their topics and keywords, you can see how well they are ranking and know which keywords are worth your time.

But that’s not enough, nowadays.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, fewer than half of content marketers are seeing a return on their content efforts. This is because, rather than focus on topics and keywords, you need to consider the consumer’s journey as a whole.

Many content marketers are using content gap analysis so that they can identify the gaps in their content and improve overall engagement.

Still unsure of what content gap analysis is? Content gap analysis is the link between your current content performance and the results you desire. It helps you create the content strategy you need next if you are to attain your content goals.

Common content gaps include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Usability: Can you read and understand the content easily? Do you need to update the format or content type (e.g. turn an article into a video)?
• Content freshness: Is the content still fresh, or do you need to revisit the copy and update stats and facts?
• Thoroughness: How in-depth is the content? Does it give all the details or is it lacking?

Undergo a content audit

This is the best way to gain a full understanding of your website content, and once the audit is complete, you will know which content is performing well and where you are missing content that could help you sell and promote.

A content audit can help unlock your content’s potential. How? Here’s a scenario to help explain.

Imagine you sell cheap dresses and you’re ranking #1 for “best cheap dresses” online. Well, so far, your content is only being found by one type of customer – those who are looking for cheap clothing options.

But do you also sell designer dresses? Dresses better suited for petite women? Dresses that can be customised? If so, then you have a content gap which your competitor may be filling. You will want to fill this gap so that you are not neglecting a customer segment.

You do not want to leave a space in the market for your competitors to swoop in and forge bonds. If you can build a relationship with a type of customer, be sure to do so; otherwise you will miss out on great business opportunities.

The content gap analysis process

1. Identify your main goals – what is it you are trying to achieve? A big question, but an important one, nevertheless.
2. Understand your audience – picture your customer and build a persona for them. Know what they look like, their demographic information (age, gender, etc.), the business they work for, and their goals (what do they want to achieve, etc.).
3. Audit your content – as mentioned above.
4. Match your content to a stage of the buyers’ journey – each touchpoint that you lack content for, that is an opportunity for you to create content that will connect with your customers.
5. Competitor gap analysis – find their pain points and look up keywords they are ranking for (and use them for your own content).

Enriching content, what is it and how do I do it?

With the overabundance of content on the internet and digital content on the rise, it is imperative for publishers to connect content and users. All this involves is enriching your content so that it is agile enough to withstand the appearance of new tools or applications.

You need to understand consumer behaviours, user experience, and viewer engagement if your content is to target the right people and be successful in resonating with them. Sounds simple, but really, enriching your content is a methodical task. You can’t write a few articles, no matter how entertaining they are, and expect your words to reach and affect everyone.

Why should you enrich your content?

Enriching your content means giving your content agility – it is no longer static but something dynamic. There are many modern content processing techniques like AI and natural language processingNatural language processing is the ability of a computer to understand human speech in the form of sentences. so that structure, metadataPut simply, metadata is data that describes data. It’s a labelling system designed to help machines and humans understand what is contained within a packet of data. and context is added to content. These modern processing techniques allow your content to resonate with humans and computers.

How can you enrich your content?

It’s more than stringing a couple of words together; it’s about turning static content into content that is agile and flexible. You may be wondering, “how can you make content flexible?” Well, fret not. This is how:

Add data to your copy

Think about it, which of the below statements are you more likely to quote/share with others?

• Many animals are left homeless
• Out of 70 million, only six to eight million cats and dogs enter the nation’s 3,500 shelters every year (source)

The second statement provides us with fleshed-out information that has meaning; it shows that there is a real issue at large regarding pet homelessness.

Although, this doesn’t mean you can throw in a few stats and expect your content to flourish. Your content still needs to serve a point, with each stat adding to your content’s point.

For instance, with the above stat, this could help animal-focused charities or vets speak to pet owners/those who are considering getting a pet. The stat shows that a pet is for life, but it also helps persuade animal lovers to donate so that charities can help rehome the animals.

Data should not clutter your content; it must add to your point.

Follow these below tips for finding and using data properly:

1. Set Google Alerts for keywords relating to your desired topic/industry. Add the words “data” and “report” so the alerts can focus on finding data-driven research.
2. Look through social media for relevant research results that’ll lend a hand to your content. You can narrow down your search by using hashtags.
3. Ensure your data is credible. Not doing so can land you in a lot of trouble as it may tarnish your brand’s reputation and make your brand look less authoritative/trustworthy. Review the data by looking at the sample size, the date of the report, as well as the source of the report.

Content needs to be dynamic, not static

Something called semantic enrichment will help you create better, more dynamic content. Semantic enrichment is adding value to your data because you’ve given it meaning; you can do this via semantic mark-up and metadata.

Fun Fact: By ensuring content is well-structured and semantically tagged, your content becomes more discoverable!

Your content should not be viewed as a “one and done” piece, but rather content that you revisit and edit and adapt as the world around us changes. While it seems like added work, the pay-off is priceless.

Make your content dynamic by:

• Locating and revisiting popular articles (you can find them via your social media channels) and updating the information if it is outdated.
• Regularly link back to past posts that have ranked well, but only where relevant. By doing this, pages that may have become lost in the archives can be found again and see a regular influx of visitors again.

Include rich media

You’ve got a lot to say, but nowadays not a lot of people like reading or watching long-form content. Content should never be longer than it needs to be; otherwise, you’ll lose your readers due to impatience.

The average person skims content; they look at the sub-headings and only engage with the sections that sound of use to them. Content needs to say more with less, it seems.

Rich media allows you to keep your customers engaged. How? By condensing the content into smaller, bite-sized chunks of information that is embedded into longer (more boring) content.

Popular rich media types are:

• Videos
• Images
• Infographics
• Floating ads
• Tear-backs

For example, you may need to write a piece of long-form content, but you’re worried about losing readers due to the sheer length of the piece. Each word is crucial, though. Appeal to all audience types of embedding an infographic summing up all the vital information so that it is easier to digest.

You can add rich media throughout the copy so that it breaks up large paragraphs, turning what seems like a massive piece of literature into a more engaging presentation piece – one that is engaging.

Lastly, make your content interactive

We’re a generation who likes to ‘share’ and ‘like’ content so that friends can see our activity online. But there’s much more than having a comment section or asking people to hit the social sharing buttons.

You want to build a community where your audience doesn’t feel like a passive observer. Ask them to partake in your business and to have an experience of their own making.

Do this by allowing them to:

• Tag photos
• Speak to live streamers (if you use Twitch)
• Engage with music

It’s all about creating your community.

This isn’t goodbye…

We get it, creating content is no easy task, especially with so many updates and trends emerging at an excessive rate. There’s plenty you can do, though.

The above guide highlights the crucial elements of content marketing and its future, and we have many further eBooks and guides to help you with your quest to position zero and landing the top place on Google.

Our team of marketing professionals are more than happy to speak with you about your content strategy and how it can be further optimised. Call us on 877 533 8022.