The halfway point of the year is a common time for website and content managers to review their efforts and see how things are going regarding their strategies.
What’s going well? What’s missing? What can we do to improve and finish out the final six months with momentum?
A lot of website and content managers quickly learn whether or not they need to maintain, update, or scrap the strategy. Although the latter is rare, it has happened, and many of these managers will tell you that they’d rather do that than stick with an ineffective strategy throughout the entire year.
But regardless of what your business or department chooses to do, there is one thing we recommend you consider:
Refresh your content.
Refreshing your website content is one of the best, and easiest, things you can do to reoptimize your online marketing strategy. How you decide to do it depends a lot on your strategy, the goals you have, your audience’s needs, and the industry you serve.
With that said, there are a few things you can do to refresh your content, regardless of the factors previously mentioned:
1. Update messaging to meet current industry standards
Are you part of an ever-evolving industry? Have current guidelines been updated?
Make sure you take the time to adjust your content to match that messaging, especially for your evergreen content. The last thing you want is for your readers to see and implement a strategy that has fallen out of trend or is no longer the industry standard.
2. Revise wording in content to better relate to your specific audience’s pain points and experiences.
Depending on your industry, the needs and expectations of your clients may shift. Or maybe because of increased awareness and discovery, you’ve learned that there is more to speak to on a particular pain point.
Regardless of what it may be for you, make sure your content is speaking to those needs, expectations, and pain points as best it can. Being able to connect with readers through empathy and understanding is a great way to not only find business but also build a loyal and enthusiastic fanbase.
3. Review keywords and co-variants to ensure your content is being searched and found by the people who are in need of it.
If you rely on the internet, even partially, to generate business, it’s important that SEO is a part of your overall marketing strategy.
Take time to evaluate the keywords you’re using and see what people are currently searching for. But along with the keyword itself, also make sure you’re looking for co-variants (keywords similar, but not identical, to the primary keyword) and long-tail searches (phrases that are related to your keyword).
Not only will this information give you an idea of what words to use and what to avoid, but it’s also a great “idea generator” for what you could write next for your blogs, newsletters, and social media.