“Produce the minimum amount of content for the maximum amount of impact.”
– Joe Pulizzi, Founder of thetilt & CMI.
Hey๐, Rafiqul here. Welcome to Content Marketing VIP that delivers actionable insights, the latest updates, & free resources every Monday, for free.
First time here? Read past episodes.
Letโs get started โ
Table of Contents
๐ฏ Actionable insights
๐ก 1. How Glassdoorโs Data-driven Content Engine Is Dominating The SERP
Glassdoor is dominating the SERP for queries like these:
- Microsoft vs Google (350 searches/ month)
- HDFC vs ICICI (700 searches/ month)
- Google vs Apple (200 searches/ month)
- Cognizant vs TCS (400 searches/ month), and 100s of others.
But the fact is that Glassdoor is able to rank in the top 10 for these queries without creating long-form content, custom visuals.
In fact, most of these pages rarely have 300 words of unique content.
So how did they do it?
Itโs because of the data-driven content assets.
Hereโs what a typical comparison page looks like ๐
As you can see that every element on the page is backed with fresh and unique data. It includes:
- Overall rating of the company
- Pros and Cons (based on quantified reviews)
- The number of featured reviews, etc.
As a result, they don’t need to hire content writers to write 3000-word articles, create custom visuals.
All they have to do is transform the data and user-generated content (reviews) to match the searcher’s intent.
This is not the only example of a data-driven content engine by Glassdoor.
In fact, they are even a bigger force for queries like:
- Data scientist salary (17k searches per month)
- Software engineer salary (12k searches per month)
- Business analyst salary (3.5k searches per month)
Even with less than 100 words on unique content on the page, they can match the searcher’s intent with fresh data.
The result?
- Almost 200k organic traffic per month
- 62.3k backlinks from 1k+ different domains
Data-driven content Strategy of Glassdoor in a nutshell:
1/ Focus on getting users’ data (e.g., salary, interview questions, company reviews, etc.).
2/ Use data to create content assets
3/ Leverage automated landing pages to create hundreds of unique landing pages targeting different search queries.
4/ Generate links, mentions, and traffic.
Can you also do the same?
You donโt have to be the next Glassdoor to build a data-driven content engine like this.
A SaaS brand is more likely to replicate the data-driven content strategy.
Start with finding ways to transform the user-generated content or/and internal data to build content-driven assets.
Once you start seeing results, it’s important to scale the process. Instead of manually creating new pages, build landing page templates and use them to scale the content creation process.
Surely, it’s not an overnight process, but brands focusing on data-driven content assets are more likely to see the results.
๐ Expand Your Learning On Glassdoor Content Strategy
๐ก 2. Embed Audience Concerns Into Your Products
SurveyMonkey does a great job identifying the most common concerns that lead to performing a survey or market research.
Hereโs how the above-the-fold content of their website looks like:
SurveyMonkey has strategically mentioned often asked questions to introduce their products.
Some examples โ
- Are my customers actually satisfied? โ Customer satisfaction surveys
- Will my product be a success or a flop? โ Market research services
- Are my employees happy at work? โ Employee engagement surveys
๐ Actionable Takeaways
1/ Perform research to find out the biggest concerns of your audience.
2/ Use those concerns/pain points in your copy to introduce your product/offerings.
3/ Try to make your product/service offerings the solution to their pain points.
๐๏ธ Upcoming Events
๐ก 1. How To Turn Client Websites Into Conversion Engines
This webinar is for you, whether you want to design your clients’ websites or make your website more conversion-optimized.
In this webinar, youโll learn:
> Building trust with website
> How to rank higher in search
> Optimizing CTAs for high conversion
From: Duda & Andy Crestodina
Date of the webinar: August 31, 2021
๐ก 2. How to Create Linkable Content
Creating linkable content is one of the best ways to boost the link profile of your site.
But do you know how to create linkable content that earns links organically?
Join this webinar and learn:
- How to find content opportunities for linkable assets
- Mapping linkable assets with SEO and content marketing
- Creating different types of content for link opportunities
From: SEJ
Date of the webinar: September 1, 2021
๐ Whatโs New
๐ก1. Top Learnings From Googleโs Page Title Update
BowTiedWookie studied 10 sites for 500 keywords to understand the pattern behind Google’s page title update.
Here are the top lessons from this studyโ
โ1/ The shorter the title, the less likely Google is to change it.
Anything under 50 characters is staying the same 99% of the time.
2/ Google will change the title ~95% of the time if emojis or weird characters are included in the title.
3/ High DA sites are not being forced to include the brand name. This is a disappointing but very clear takeaway.
Sites with a DA in the 50s were changed around half the time. Anything above DA of >80 is changed ~20% of the time.
4/ If Google changes the title, it is pulling in the H1 >50% of the time.
5/ For my own sites, I’ve gone through the top 50 pages and made sure the top keyword was in the H1.
I’ve seen a few people pasting their title tags in the H1, and for now, it’s working, but I don’t expect that to last.
6/ The average character count of Googleโs title changes were 52 characters.โ
๐ Learn Everything About Google Page Title (So Far)
๐ก 2. Thruuu [A Freemium Seo Tool] Launches New Exciting Features
This is not sponsored, but thruuu is one of my favourite SEO tools that helps to analyze the SERP, get related topic ideas, questions, and more.
Recently, Thruuu has added new features such as:
– Automated SEO Content Outline
– Scrape comments of any blog posts
– Get more questions ideas from the SERP
– Find out the most cited sources and outbound links, etc.
Snapshot of the content outline
๐ Try Thruuu And Get All The Benefits For Free
๐ฌ Expert Wisdom
๐ก 1. Elements Of A Great Seo Audit
“A great SEO audit doesn’t just suggest changes to improve traffic; it also considers time to implement and expected ROI against that time in order to help internal stakeholders prioritize.
Many SEO audits gather dust. Deliverables that justify $100k increases in 8 hours don’t.โ
– Ross Hudgens (Founder/CEO of Seigemedia)
๐ก 2. Align Content Funnel With Search Journey
โSo simple and yet so overlooked:
Aligning your content funnel to target users’ search journey with the relevant type of content.
You can consistently find pages losing rankings after each core update for not doing this right, and a mismatch when fulfilling search intent.โ
– Aleyda Solis (International SEO consultant)
๐ Have Some Fun
๐ Featured Supports Of Content Marketing VIP
- Gowardhan Doddi (Inbound Marketer)
- Prashant Karandikar (Digital marketing director)
- Anurag Kanojia (SEO consultant)
๐ค I need your support
As you can imagine, showing up every Monday with useful insights and free resources takes some time and resources.
So, If you ever wanted to show your support to my content effort:
โจ Purchase the eBook and get 50+ actionable content marketing lessons (compiled the best of this newsletter).
Canโt afford the ebook but want to support my effort?
Just share the newsletter with your people and tag me (Twitter handle @12Rafiqul) so I can feature you in the next episode.
First time here? Read past episodes.
Letโs get started โ
๐ฏ Actionable insights
๐ก 1. How Glassdoorโs Data-driven Content Engine Is Dominating The SERP
Glassdoor is dominating the SERP for queries like these:
- Microsoft vs Google (350 searches/ month)
- HDFC vs ICICI (700 searches/ month)
- Google vs Apple (200 searches/ month)
- Cognizant vs TCS (400 searches/ month), and 100s of others.
But the fact is that Glassdoor is able to rank in the top 10 for these queries without creating long-form content, custom visuals.
In fact, most of these pages rarely have 300 words of unique content.
So how did they do it?
Itโs because of the data-driven content assets.
Hereโs what a typical comparison page looks like ๐
As you can see that every element on the page is backed with fresh and unique data. It includes:
- Overall rating of the company
- Pros and Cons (based on quantified reviews)
- The number of featured reviews, etc.
As a result, they don’t need to hire content writers to write 3000-word articles, create custom visuals.
All they have to do is transform the data and user-generated content (reviews) to match the searcher’s intent.
This is not the only example of a data-driven content engine by Glassdoor.
In fact, they are even a bigger force for queries like:
- Data scientist salary (17k searches per month)
- Software engineer salary (12k searches per month)
- Business analyst salary (3.5k searches per month)
Even with less than 100 words on unique content on the page, they can match the searcher’s intent with fresh data.
The result?
- Almost 200k organic traffic per month
- 62.3k backlinks from 1k+ different domains
Data-driven content Strategy of Glassdoor in a nutshell:
1/ Focus on getting users’ data (e.g., salary, interview questions, company reviews, etc.).
2/ Use data to create content assets
3/ Leverage automated landing pages to create hundreds of unique landing pages targeting different search queries.
4/ Generate links, mentions, and traffic.
Can you also do the same?
You donโt have to be the next Glassdoor to build a data-driven content engine like this.
A SaaS brand is more likely to replicate the data-driven content strategy.
Start with finding ways to transform the user-generated content or/and internal data to build content-driven assets.
Once you start seeing results, it’s important to scale the process. Instead of manually creating new pages, build landing page templates and use them to scale the content creation process.
Surely, it’s not an overnight process, but brands focusing on data-driven content assets are more likely to see the results.
๐ Expand Your Learning On Glassdoor Content Strategy
๐ก 2. Embed Audience Concerns Into Your Products
SurveyMonkey does a great job identifying the most common concerns that lead to performing a survey or market research.
Hereโs how the above-the-fold content of their website looks like:
SurveyMonkey has strategically mentioned often asked questions to introduce their products.
Some examples โ
- Are my customers actually satisfied? โ Customer satisfaction surveys
- Will my product be a success or a flop? โ Market research services
- Are my employees happy at work? โ Employee engagement surveys
๐ Actionable Takeaways
1/ Perform research to find out the biggest concerns of your audience.
2/ Use those concerns/pain points in your copy to introduce your product/offerings.
3/ Try to make your product/service offerings the solution to their pain points.
๐๏ธ Upcoming Events
๐ก 1. How To Turn Client Websites Into Conversion Engines
This webinar is for you, whether you want to design your clients’ websites or make your website more conversion-optimized.
In this webinar, youโll learn:
> Building trust with website
> How to rank higher in search
> Optimizing CTAs for high conversion
From: Duda & Andy Crestodina
Date of the webinar: August 31, 2021
๐ก 2. How to Create Linkable Content
Creating linkable content is one of the best ways to boost the link profile of your site.
But do you know how to create linkable content that earns links organically?
Join this webinar and learn:
- How to find content opportunities for linkable assets
- Mapping linkable assets with SEO and content marketing
- Creating different types of content for link opportunities
From: SEJ
Date of the webinar: September 1, 2021
๐ Whatโs New
๐ก1. Top Learnings From Googleโs Page Title Update
BowTiedWookie studied 10 sites for 500 keywords to understand the pattern behind Google’s page title update.
Here are the top lessons from this studyโ
โ1/ The shorter the title, the less likely Google is to change it.
Anything under 50 characters is staying the same 99% of the time.
2/ Google will change the title ~95% of the time if emojis or weird characters are included in the title.
3/ High DA sites are not being forced to include the brand name. This is a disappointing but very clear takeaway.
Sites with a DA in the 50s were changed around half the time. Anything above DA of >80 is changed ~20% of the time.
4/ If Google changes the title, it is pulling in the H1 >50% of the time.
5/ For my own sites, I’ve gone through the top 50 pages and made sure the top keyword was in the H1.
I’ve seen a few people pasting their title tags in the H1, and for now, it’s working, but I don’t expect that to last.
6/ The average character count of Googleโs title changes were 52 characters.โ
๐ Learn Everything About Google Page Title (So Far)
๐ก 2. Thruuu [A Freemium Seo Tool] Launches New Exciting Features
This is not sponsored, but thruuu is one of my favourite SEO tools that helps to analyze the SERP, get related topic ideas, questions, and more.
Recently, Thruuu has added new features such as:
– Automated SEO Content Outline
– Scrape comments of any blog posts
– Get more questions ideas from the SERP
– Find out the most cited sources and outbound links, etc.
Snapshot of the content outline
๐ Try Thruuu And Get All The Benefits For Free
๐ฌ Expert Wisdom
๐ก 1. Elements Of A Great Seo Audit
“A great SEO audit doesn’t just suggest changes to improve traffic; it also considers time to implement and expected ROI against that time in order to help internal stakeholders prioritize.
Many SEO audits gather dust. Deliverables that justify $100k increases in 8 hours don’t.โ
– Ross Hudgens (Founder/CEO of Seigemedia)
๐ก 2. Align Content Funnel With Search Journey
โSo simple and yet so overlooked:
Aligning your content funnel to target users’ search journey with the relevant type of content.
You can consistently find pages losing rankings after each core update for not doing this right, and a mismatch when fulfilling search intent.โ
– Aleyda Solis (International SEO consultant)
๐ Have Some Fun
๐ Featured Supports Of Content Marketing VIP
- Gowardhan Doddi (Inbound Marketer)
- Prashant Karandikar (Digital marketing director)
- Anurag Kanojia (SEO consultant)
๐ค I need your support
As you can imagine, showing up every Monday with useful insights and free resources takes some time and resources.
So, If you ever wanted to show your support to my content effort:
โจ Purchase the eBook and get 50+ actionable content marketing lessons (compiled the best of this newsletter).
Canโt afford the ebook but want to support my effort?
Just share the newsletter with your people and tag me (Twitter handle @12Rafiqul) so I can feature you in the next episode.
Thank you so much for all the love โค๏ธ & support โจ