One of the Google search trends for 2023 is to think less about keywords and more about topics, at least according to this clip from CMI: Google search trends for 2023 #shorts - YouTube
How do you make sure your content is written on topic? (aside from using content written or vetted by experts, of course) Are there any tools you use? Is topic optimization synonymous with entity optimization?
For example, one of the questions in the test project for the CXL talent program relates to editing a CXL blog. Just reading the blog, the content seemed to me to be on topic. However, when I ran the content through the Google Natural Language API demo and another tool, the results showed that the content wasn’t on topic or the entity had a low salience score. So now I’m curious about topic optimization.
Thank you!
Hi @violet.maftei Great questions. Do you mind pasting here the specific question?
@Rene Do you mind tracking down and sending us the link of the specific course that question came from?
That way we can track down the background. Maybe there is better context to better answer the question.
@pablo This sounds like your area of expertise? would like to rope you in, any ideas till we track down the source?
The question in the project test was “Explain how you’d edit this blog post to drive higher organic traffic and become a reference, authoritative page that will get linked from other media: https://cxl.com/blog/messaging-strategy/”
Hi @violet.maftei,
If we take a look at the entities that the post tries to cover, it seems that content is indeed on topic. I’d agree that topic optimization is synonymous with entity optimization: a post that covers a topic with clarity and provides information on it will definitely have a high entity salience for that entity/topic.
Considering that CXL articles are likely to drive high organic traffic, I wouldn’t bet that improving that traffic depends solely on the entity salience score, as our website already has a lot of content that is well positioned and which fits properly into each different topic. So we should look at factors other than topic coverage.
In this case, I’d look at on-page SEO (title, metadescription, url, headings, how above the fold content is presented), off-page SEO (backlinks, marketers mentioning our content), and technical SEO (PageSpeed, cannibalization, or structured data).
If I wanted that post to drive higher organic traffic, I’d probably start by looking for content ideas in the on-page SEO elements from better-performing websites that may be missing in the post, and try to include them in our structure while keeping our tone and voice and maintaining our original writing and expertise. If the content is on topic, then we need to look at smaller signals that may be differentiating organic performance between this post and other sites.
I’d do this not only to bridge any gap between this site and competitors, but also in order to become the most complete page covering this certain topic. If I want this page to get linked from other media after updating and improving it, I would probably also reach out to other relevant media that could link to our content. Just some ideas.
Amazing. Thank you so much for the in depth, 360° perspective.