How to Prolong Your Content's Lifespan by Improving Discoverability
Content is more than words or design or something you “have to do” to remain relevant or fill your content calendar.
Each piece you create is an asset—whether it’s short-term topical content or long-term premium eBooks. Yet content performance in the long run, regardless of quality or even purpose, is tied to a question content marketers literally can't afford to overlook:
Is it easy for visitors to find content on your blog?
The harsh reality is that 60 to 70% percent of B2B content that organizations create simply gathers dust instead of being consumed by visitors and would-be buyers. While this could in part be a distribution issue, content visibility across your blog or resource center directly influences your ability to connect visitors with the content they want.
Whether the goal of your content is to reach a large audience or reveal purchase intent at the bottom of the funnel, it does you no good if visitors can't find your content.
Your most recent content might be immediately apparent on your blog and attract plenty of clicks, but what about that viral infographic from a year ago? How do you ensure your best content doesn't lose out to your most recent content?
Well, luckily there are several ways you can increase the discoverability of your content and extend its lifespan.
Organize your content into a meaningful menu for buyers
How you sort your content is a question you answer after you've figured out who you're sorting it for.
Organizing by "Type of Content" (eBooks, blog posts, infographics. etc.) is only a shade better than sorting your content alphabetically. It lacks significant meaning and expresses no real intention.
Visitors may have formats they prefer (I'm more of a blog post guy) and this may help YOU find your content, but you're not creating content for yourself.
A menu based on specific interests, verticals, and your buyer personas' needs is better at accommodating a meaningful visitor journey.
Check out how Booker, a service management software solution and one of our customers, immediately caters to two niches: Salons & Spas and Fitness.
There's also a broader Business Insights section for buyers who might fall outside of those niches, along with Product and Resources for visitors with a developed interest in their platform. Structure your menu and organize your content in a way that's meaningful for your would-be buyers.
Enable Search to give visitors control over content discovery
Not all who visit your blog are lost. Some enter knowing exactly what kind of information they want to find.
Search bars should accommodate specific search intent.
Remember basic SEO: Be mindful about including keywords in your blog post titles that accommodate searcher intent to make sure the right content floats to the top of your blog-wide search results.
For example, if I visit CMI's site and want to learn about B2B content marketing specifically (which isn't explicitly covered in their menu structure), I can find something that interests me in seconds.
Recommend related content at the content-level
Your entire content experience should be interconnected. Otherwise, your content serves as a dead-end instead of a short stop on a longer journey.
Instead of offering a one-and-done experience or overwhelming your visitors with the paradox of choice, give them options that are easy to choose from.
Think channel surfing on cable TV versus binge-watching on Netflix where recommendations are relevant, easy-to-use and there's direction for further consumption.
There are plenty of ways you can achieve the "Netflix effect" with your content.
- Content recommendation platforms: While displaying a stream of recent content at the bottom or to the side of a post is a step in the right direction, the best experiences offer contextual suggestions. Platforms like BrightInfo can help you surface related content that aligns with the context.
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Internal linking: While you should be engaged in internal linking for SEO, you can hyperlink meaningful keyword phrases to direct visitors to older pieces of content when they land on your fresher ones.
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Relevant call-to-actions: CTAs can take the form of action-oriented text set apart from the body of your content, ad-style images that link to eBooks and webinars, or (like we have with the Uberflip platform) contextually placed forms or buttons beside your content to link to landing pages or premium content.
Don't make visitors play Hide & Seek with your content
As marketers invested in content, we spend time and effort developing content assets for different purposes.
But in order for your content to bring in results long after it stops being "fresh", you need to start associating visibility with longevity.
Content discoverability could mean the difference between a pile of content that confuses your audience and an experience they can get lost in — in a good way.