An appropriate content strategy is essential for websites to carry out Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and attract leaps and bounds of web traffic in a given frame of time. If your website has been curating content for some time around various topics pertaining to the website niche, you are likely to reach a threshold where the new content may seem like it overlaps with the existing content. Or as losing its ranking to competitors, who have put forth a better representation of the same content. Either way, one needs to take up necessary action to elevate and add value to the already existing content. If the issue is left unattended, it can affect SEO performance and website traffic.
Now the question is, how can we resolve this issue of content losing its value overtime, which once contributed significantly to attracting traffic and business growth. This is where the concept of content consolidation comes handy.
WHAT IS CONTENT CONSOLIDATION
Content consolidation, in simple terms, refers to an SEO process where different forms of contents like articles, landing pages, blog posts are merged together into a single, long-form cohesive piece of content. The ultimate goal of this practice is to improve SEO performance, increase organic traffic and website reach. This written long-form cohesive content should be topically deep, and must have a strong value proposition or main content and supporting content that compliments the main idea. Targeting unique topics for creating content can be an added advantage while content consolidation and in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
For effective content consolidation, the written content must be relevant and accurate. That is, care should be taken to consciously avoid incorrect and outdated content. Everything must go hand in hand with the overall content strategy, whether it be in generating content or page visibility, or answering use case queries to direct the user towards your conversion-oriented web pages. The consolidation process must focus specifically on the content and try to keep the page type rational.
WHY CONTENT CONSOLIDATION IS ESSENTIAL FOR SEO PERFORMANCE?
Content consolidation forms a quintessential part of your SEO strategy. It helps in boosting content reach and improving the page rankings to the desired level. As per SEO update 2022, SEO rankings are expected to be more competitive by providing high quality content that is sure to create a better user experience. And for this content consolidation is one of the key elements. Content consolidation and SEO together plays a vital role in decreasing bounce rates, drastically increasing web traffic and thereby making the site user-friendly.
It also helps in improving a site’s link building efforts and can make it easier for users to accurately locate the data or information they are looking for without any time wastage. And this, in turn, will help in detecting and getting rid of underperforming content that may be preventing the site from being visible and attracting organic traffic. Content consolidation is all about quality over quantity. Incorporating the right SEO strategy into a consolidated piece of long-form content drastically influences the quality of a web page.
Also, each web page carries a unique purpose of its own. Some focus on providing data, whereas others aim at selling a product or service. Content consolidation and SEO can drastically help improve the relevance of a website, making it even more visible and user-friendly on search engines including Google.
Given below are some solid reasons in a nutshell as to why consolidation is essential for SEO performance:
1. Content consolidation focuses on quality and helps make a website relevant as per the standards of search engines like Google.
2. Consolidation ensures that the content is regularly updated and checked, hence providing site visitors with the best, updated version of blogs or articles.
3. Content consolidation is an ideal way to make old web pages rank again by judiciously updating them.
4. When we consolidate content, we provide relevant information in the most concise quality manner, and this is best for implementing SEO strategy and in ranking on the search engines.
5. You can turn your similar competing pages that are destroying each other’s potential into something truly helpful that would successfully compete with other websites, not with your own web content.
CONTENT CONSOLIDATION PROCESS
In content consolidation, you may need to erase some blog posts or articles, update a few of them and consolidate them into a cohesive, long-form content that appears useful to site visitors and offers better performance for SEO. Some data sources can be used to identify potential problems in your content and help you with the consolidation process. These include Google search console, any rank tracking tool of your choice, and common analytics tools for entrances, pageviews and exits.
1. Pay attention to keywords and delete contents that are irrelevant
The primary step in content consolidation and SEO optimization is to shortlist pages that no longer add value to you, your site visitors and search engines in general. You can make use of Google Analytics to detect pages with low performance and take appropriate action- either audit them carefully or erase them.
Google Search Console can be used to gauge the situation with impressions. Care should be taken while deleting impressions as pages with many impressions have a large-scale potential to improve web page rankings. The web pages, posts that are copied and pasted from different sources, other automatically generated content, and those with least quality, should be deleted.
Another important aspect to focus in content consolidation and Search Engine Optimisation is Keywords. Ensure that your contents are optimized with appropriate target keywords and that they have a good search potential. One can make use of SE Ranking to shortlist the most relevant and profitable keywords appropriate to the topic in hand and analyze their level of competition in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). The content title should be optimized with the main keyword and URL should be structured in an SEO friendly manner.
Only the content that is UpToDate and relevant will attract crowds and improve search rankings. Examine the publication date, number of reads and shares of your posts. Evaluate the word count of each post. Every content should follow a specific keyword count, for it to become countable among thousand other contents on the web. For instance, blogs with low word counts are generally considered as poor and thin content. Also, low quality keywords must be replaced with best ranking keywords to boost visibility and traffic.
2. Identifying apt URL targets
Identifying priority URL targets form a primary step in content consolidation and Search Engine Optimisation as per the standards of SEO update 2022. In Google Search Console one can find potential issues with page quality and URLs. The URLs could be valid but may be down in quality for indexing. Other issues include: duplicate page without user selected canonical tag, alternate page with proper canonical, crawled pages but not currently indexed, Soft 404 errors etc.
3. Grouping similar pages
Grouping content pages that have similar topics and keywords form a significant part of content consolidation. This is because, when users search for a particular result, they are also seen to show interest in related information. And here content consolidation comes handy as it will group similar pages, create relevant topics and subtopics.
Many established websites possess multiple blogs and articles that deal with similar topics and keywords. And content consolidation offers a good opportunity to consolidate and realign these pages. While grouping content, look for which all pages rank for similar keywords and which all posts rank for similar search terms. One can take advantage of the SE Ranking Keyword Grouper to segment keywords and plan appropriate SEO strategies.
There is no set framework to carry out content consolidation, as all websites and their contents follow different strategies and structures. But the advantage can be similar, as post consolidation process, your website would be able to offer high quality blog posts and articles instead of low quality articles with similar keywords and search terms.
4. Revamping content pages
Content quality is vital for page ranking and visibility. Studies have shown that it is the quality and relevance of the content and not the number of words that determine the ranking of a web page. The article or blog quality is gauged based on the length of page visits, and the amount of time spend by visitors on a particular page.
While Refreshing content make sure that:
• The website content is updated and relevant. Add inputs that would raise the credibility of the content and webpage.
• The content is complemented with great visuals- infographics, charts, videos, tables, relevant pictures etc.
• Relevant internal links are included within the content. Just like Backlinks, interlinks too, play a significant role in enriching content and giving related info. The main topics and subtopics should also link with each other and create a flow.
5. Measuring Results
Consistently measuring results is important to understand the effectiveness of content consolidation for your website. Analyzing results help you to examine the changes that have happened after addition, deletion or realignment of the website content. SEO performance can also be gauged and we would know whether any new strategy should be employed in the future to better the website performance.
Regularly checking the page rankings and refreshing outdated content can drastically improve the effectiveness of content consolidation, which will eventually contribute to the better performance of your website. The whole process may seem like taking a lot of effort and time, but once the system is in place, your website can expect a top ranking on search engines.
BENEFITS OF CONTENT CONSOLIDATION
Although the process of content consolidation may buy a hefty amount of time and effort, it is worth implementing in your content strategy. The process offers numerous benefits that can help your website attain top rankings on search engines. The advantages may appear slow, but they last long.
Major benefits of Content consolidation include:
COST EFFICIENT: content consolidation is considered one of the top cost-effective methods to streamline your content strategy and boost SEO performance and website traffic. Many digital marketers consider the process as a cost saving tactic, that would give out good results if carried out judiciously.
BOOSTING WEB TRAFFIC: one of the major advantages of content consolidation is quick traffic growth. If content consolidation is carried out properly, taking into consideration all the necessary factors, one could see an increase in web traffic within a matter of days or weeks after publishing.
HIGHLY RELEVANT CONTENT: content consolidation gives out relevant, updated content that sufficiently covers every aspect surrounding a particular topic. The end product of a successful consolidation would be a thoroughly curated piece of write up (articles, blogs etc), that would prove highly significant for businesses and possess a commendable SEO performance. This type of content has a high re-sharing potential across various social accounts around the web. They also help in kick starting outreach campaigns that can build new, powerful backlinks to your website. As a whole, well optimized consolidated content serve as a social media and link bait that can attract scores of organic traffic and improve user experience drastically.
TIME MANAGEMENT: content consolidation is a time efficient process that helps in ranking websites effectively and attracting organic web crowds. The time and effort you put in this SEO process is completely worth it. Content consolidation enables your business or brand to focus on topics that are proven to work and can continually give out best results.
WEBSITE CLEANSING: for meeting the standards of the latest SEO update 2022, it is very important that your website retains and promotes content that is most unique and relevant for your business. For this, regular auditing of content is required, which will eventually lead to addition, deletion or updation of content.
If unwanted content is not timely cleaned, it would eat up what we call “search engine crawl budget”. This will divert user attention and give them a messy experience. Content consolidation ensures that the content is updated, relevant and search engine optimized (SEO) which is sure to decrease bounce rates and give an excellent user experience.
CONCLUSION
In the past, it was effective to generate a chain of content and attain higher SERP rankings. But at present it doesn’t work that way. And content consolidation stands as the ideal solution to cope with this situation. It proves as the finest way in boosting SEO performance and attracting quality web traffic. All you need to do is to conduct a thorough website content analysis, detect all the best and worst performing web page contents and make necessary additions and deletions. If content consolidation is put to work following all the SEO 2022 updates, it can significantly boost organic traffic and drastically improve and provide a consistent user-friendly experience. Our SEO agency in Kochi is equipped to carry out effective content consolidation works that can help your brand stand out amidst the tight competition. Our quick and unique consolidation techniques can help lift your business and attain top rankings in the SERPs.