mart ways to improve your SEO and content //

Content is still the key to successful consumer engagement, experiences, and conversions. This is especially true in this new era of advanced AI technologies.

We are now in a new landscape of content. The explosion of content production has reached epic proportions, making it difficult for content to be noticed, discovered and converted.

It is important that humans and machines work together better to create content that is useful, relevant and differentiated for readers.

It is also important to balance SEO with content best practices in order to optimize content and websites for humans rather than robots.

Despite all the resources spent on content creation, many of them could fail to engage audiences. It disappoints the creators, and robs consumers of an opportunity to experience something new, useful, or meaningful.

The Opportunity:Marketers who have a solid understanding of SEO, content best practices, and AI will gain an advantage in the market. By striking the right balance between AI and human insight, they can achieve outstanding results.

By 2027, content marketing will experience a huge growth. It is estimated to reach $584 Billion.

This year, the use of AI in SEO and content will grow five-fold.

This article explores content using the SMART framework for goal-setting.

• Specific.
• Measurable.
• Achievable.
• Relevant.
• Timely.

Answering with speed and being specific wins out every time

Customers want information that’s timely, useful and relevant.

Content marketers today need more than ever to have insights quickly delivered so that they can use them to create their content.

It is not just about what you or your marketing team want to say. Content is not about what your marketing team wants to say.

Content that is SMART is tailored to a specific audience, based on their preferences, needs and intentions.

1. Understanding your audience and the markets in which they operate is important

Keyword and conversational keyword research (more about that later) is important to understand the intent of consumers, including where they live, their search terms, and when they are in the purchasing funnel.

To create SMART content that serves a purpose, you must first know who your audience is.

What is your understanding of the competition in the verticals for which you are creating content? You are competing more than ever to get attention, clicks and eyes.

You may compete with other companies but also media brands, bloggers and influencers.

You’re flying blind without a bigger picture.

You can create compelling content that resonates with the people at the right time by analyzing how your competitors are failing to address certain topics.

2. Be aware of and accept generative AI but be cautious

Conversational AI revolutionizes the way marketers interact with customers. ChatGPT Bing and Bard allow content strategies reach unprecedented scale.

ChatGPT reached 100 million active monthly users after only two months. This shows how powerful these tools are when used correctly as part of a content-marketing strategy.

Experimentation is the best way to ensure that your content will be engaging and successful. But do it carefully, while keeping in mind your current goals.

Use Generative AI with caution. To prevent unintended effects, always ensure that the technology is overseen by a human.

When creating content, always keep in mind who you are writing for: the reader.

You can use Google’s guidelines for helpful content or E.E.A.T to create a fun experience and achieve lasting success with AI.

AI is expected to explode in popularity. Experienced content marketers are responsible for testing, selecting and overseeing the use of AI. Make sure you understand its risks and limitations.

3. Use images and videos to enhance your content.

What media will you use to engage your audience, illustrate your message and reach them across platforms?

Don’t limit yourself. You can combine several types of media into a single piece, such as socially shareable photos, video clips and embedded media like SlideShares.

Visual content, including infographics, images and SEO visuals, is increasingly important to online businesses.

It is important to offer alternatives to text-based information. This can simplify complex topics, and increase consumer engagement. New trends, such as short-form videos, are becoming powerful tools for B2B marketing across platforms like TikTok or Instagram Reels.

Measurable Content delivers the metrics that count

Content marketers still struggle to demonstrate the value of their efforts. CMI’s survey also found that 42% of respondents said they struggled to achieve consistency in their measurement.

How can your content marketing efforts be measured?

4. Select metrics that are important and aligned with your business goals

It is important to evaluate the performance of content at all stages of the funnel, from audience building and lead generation to conversion and sales.

B2B marketers generally monitor key metrics, such as traffic to the site, lead quality scores, social sharing and time spent on site.

In B2C, however, the focus is on converting customers and measuring conversion rates.

5. Search engine optimization should be a key component of your content creation

Optimized content will help you to stand out, maximize engagement, time spent on the site, and conversions.

SEO success still requires the use of readability standards for title tags, meta description, subheadings and imagery.

Smartly linking within your site will encourage visitors to stay longer and return. This enhances the user experience, and brings back popular content.

Optimize your content to make it stand out. Featured snippets are a powerful tool which can help you gain an advantage in terms of visibility and click through rate.

Prioritize Core Web Vitals for a faster loading time, greater interactivity and better visual stability to improve your user experience.

Use topical research to find conversational search terms that match the user’s intent, so that your content is relevant for both engines and people.

Growing many businesses requires connecting with local customers. Improve your brand’s visibility by improving your search ranking locally and driving traffic to your store or website.

Schema markup helps entities, including AI, to understand context and content. Search engines will be able to understand better and present more engaging results.

6. Automate insights and distribution to accelerate your business

Machine learning is becoming more important as data sets grow and become dynamic. It can help identify relevant patterns in real time.

Automation technologies allow businesses to maximize their impact while reducing time spent on repetitive work. This leads to faster growth of the business.

Insightful reporting can also help pinpoint opportunities to further boost success.

The content that is ready to be activated and acted upon is always available.

When I say actionable content, what I mean is that it is not only able to answer questions from users but is also valuable well beyond the initial promotion period after publication.

7. Technical SEO support for content creators

Technical SEO becomes increasingly important as search engines become more sophisticated.

If you don’t do the things behind the scenes, your page or website will never be fully optimized.

Site structure, hierarchy, metadata and mobile readiness can all impact your content’s ranking. Internal linking, site speed and coding errors are also important factors.

They can also affect the ability of readers to enjoy and access the content, and then proceed with the next step. Set your content team for success by combining technical and non-technical search engine optimization.

8. Optimize activation across multiple channels

Search Engine Marketing is second most commonly used paid content promotional tactic after social advertising.

Don’t just focus on Twitter and Facebook. Also, don’t neglect other social media such as LinkedIn, YouTube Pinterest, Instagram TikTok etc.

Understanding your audience and customizing messages to their needs is essential for staying ahead of the curve.

Optimizing content across all channels is crucial to maximizing outreach.

The same copy and content types are not guaranteed to work across multiple media landscapes or parts of the customer’s journey.

R: Resonate on relevant channels

Even if it is built, people will only come if they are attracted. The competition to attract eyes and minds has become fierce with the explosion of AI generated content.

Targeting the right people at the right place and time will increase the effectiveness of your organic efforts.

9. Content strategies and processes need to be adapted for the next generation of content marketers

AI technologies are a new battleground for content, where the challenge is to balance quantity and quality.

Humans can offer something technology cannot: differentiation.

Writers and content marketers have the opportunity to bridge this gap, between those organizations that are willing to embrace new technology and those who require help in integrating it while optimizing risks.

To stay ahead, it is essential to harness both AI and human creativity.

If you track and measure properly, you can identify which audiences are engaging and converting.

You should allocate your budget to content promotion, not a fixed amount per channel. This will run regardless of the performance of each piece.

10. Use paid promotions to reach audiences outside of your network and syndicate.

The syndication process involves republishing content that you have already published on your website in another publication, which exposes you to the audience of another publication.

There are many paid and organic syndication services available.

11. Prioritize E.E.A.T. and helpful content guidelines

To ensure your content gets found and converted, it is more important than ever to make sure your content is authentic, authoritative, and helpful.

Search experiences are evolving. They can be integrated into search engine applications or as stand-alone applications.

The extra E in E.A.T. shows how important experience is.

Your content will be unique and differentiating if you add human experiences, and use AI to help and inform.

T: SMART content can produce tangible business results

Social interactions and site views are great KPIs to get an idea of the performance of your content in search and social. But you also need tangible results from business to prove its value.

12. CTAs can drive content performance and make it profitable.

What would you like your readers to do? Which conversion pages on your website convert best and generate the highest quality leads?

The insights above will guide you in selecting your CTAs, but don’t forget to match your CTAs with the consumer intent that you are targeting.

Don’t forget about embedded performance tracking, both for site traffic and conversions.

13. Integrate elements that support multiple business activities

Multidimensional content is important to inspire and educate your users about a service or product. This will increase engagement.

Add customer testimonials in your content to show off the positive experiences other people have had with your company.

Create author personas that will bring credibility and life to the profiles of key employees, allowing them to become industry experts.

14. Increase ROI through ongoing content management and optimization

What is the amount of content that your company has on its website and elsewhere? Every piece of content is a chance to generate traffic and leads, but only when it adheres to the constantly changing SEO standards.

Update your entire content catalog every time Google releases a new update.

15. Humans and machines must work together

AI is now a part of SMART content. Content that is useful, discoverable, and (most important) converts is created by combining human inputs with supervision and empathy.

AI exists to enhance human success, and not to replace it. It will not replace your job. Other content marketers who use it correctly might.

The key to success is a balance between AI and human input, supervision judgment, and skills.

AI can’t replace:

• Empathy and emotional intelligence.
• Connectivity, creativity and human experience are all part of the creative process.
• Common sense and contextual understanding.

By embracing AI, SEO and content, intelligent marketers are starting to make a difference in the performance of their content.

These disciplines may have varying degrees of specialization, such as technical SEO or branded contents and AI use-cases. However, the most tangible and prolific results are achieved by combining them all.

The first Search Engine Land article to appear was 15 smart ways to improve your SEO and content.