How to Repair Underperforming Content

Marketers are leveraging a variety of channels for promoting their business and including content marketing in it. 60% of the marketers have given content creation as their top priorities which include interactive content, long-form content, and visually appealing content. But not every piece of your content would be the winner. There are millions of posts being published and many of them are never seeing any traffic. 

It is very discouraging to see the content is underperforming, but the main issue arises when you leave as it is the underperforming content. For preventing this, in this article, you will find ways to identify, optimize, and reposition your content. This will help you in generating more leads and views on your content.

How the Content is Failing?

First, try to understand between the underperforming content and the content which has still not gained any traction. Extensive research has been done by the marketer for finding out the underperforming content. In this research, they will get to know which posts are influencing and generating more leads. And which posts are not pulling any weight. In this, they have found out that most of the views and the leads are generated from the old posts and it is very interesting.

Sometimes content will take several months to gain traction. Before you declare your content as underperforming you need to set the time scales, KPIs, and the measurement strategy for success. You can also create the performance benchmarks for the contents.

Identifying underperforming content

You need to understand the components of the content which are contributing to the performance of the contents.

• Entertaining
• High Quality
• Fresh
• Solutions based
• Educational
• Non-promotional
• Highly relevant
• Innovative/Thought leading

It is very easy to hit a lot of these points and you also feel like your content is including all these components. But, it is not that easy as it appears. Marketers are still struggling with creating engaging content after including all the above components. So then how can you identify that the content is underperforming?

Loss of traffic

A simple post also will sometimes gain traction in a substantial amount and then suddenly it will lose all the traffic. This will happen in the social promotion, loss of the referral links at the high traffic sites, or in a shift for searching rank. 

No direct engagement

You will notice the poor traffic even at the will creative post. This will point back to the issue of the call to action and the concerns that the content is not matching with the user search intent.

No organic traffic

It is frustrating to see the post which you publish is not getting enough traffic, this can happen when the content is optimized poorly.

No social engagement

When there is no share on social media that it is also a sign of an issue with the content, especially when you are not getting steady traffic on your post and article.

Poor Post Metrics

This is another indicator for the underperforming content, when you are seeing the low session time, page time, and high exit drop off rate. Ideally, people are just lingering and showing that they are reading the long-form post. You also want the reader to visit your page as opposed to just the landing page. You don’t want your reader to be a bounce from your site without taking any other actions.

No follow-ups

When you are seeing a very fair number of the shares, but not seeing any follow from the extended audience then you can consider that conversion shares are very low.

Ways to improve the performance of contents

1. Reoptimized content

Pages that are optimized for the long-tail keywords are performing better on the search engines. This is because the long-tail keywords are very specific and less competitive. It is also easy to rank them. Every piece of the content should have

Answer question

Address to the keyword

But here we are not mentioning stuffing of the keywords in the article. When you are producing the content online then the main purpose of it is for the people who are searching for the specific information and ending up in your content in their searches.

Google is not the only company that is making use of the keywords in ranking the algorithms. There are other sites like Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Yahoo, Bing, and many others who are relying on the keywords in the search functionality.

Before a user finds any of these resources which are helpful to them they must enter the keyword and the phrases in the search box. You can also see the search bar on the websites for some reason.

So here you will notice that the keywords are not important on many levels. But you already know that some keywords are just too competitive, and you will not be able to compete with multiple sites in the industry. There are ultra-competitive head keywords.

It is also possible that the old posts are underperforming because these head keywords are being targeted. Head keywords usually contain 1 or 2 words and will generate merely 18 percent of the search traffic. As compared to these the long-tail keywords would generate up to 75% of the search traffic.

It is very difficult to rank the head keywords. They are usually having huge search volumes and it is the major reason for the site to target them. You have created one of the best pieces of content anywhere particularly on some topic but when the target topic is very competitive then the content will suffer. Don’t forget that over 4 million posts are published every day.

This is a very crazy amount to compete with. So let’s assume if you want to improve the performance of your older posts then you need to focus on the keyword and study it well. And after your study, you would agree that it is the head keyword.

Before some years ago if your content is underperforming and you are nowhere close to the organic results of the keyword then you have to research your keyword. Find the longer variation of your keyword and try to include that in your article. You can first enter that keyword in your Google Keyword Planner and see which longer variation could be added to your content.

The Keyword planner is not that much helpful. Some of the keywords which are suggested by the planner are very competitive. So what can be done next? You can use Uber to suggest and find the main head keyword. Ubersuggest will give you a lot of the long tail keywords based on the search.

After you find out long-tail keywords then you can add them to your content. If the first keyword is long-tail then skip that because the topic is not relevant. What will happen to this experiment? You will see the improvement in the search results. So don’t just manipulate the search rankings with long-tail keywords; also try to focus on the value in the content. 

 2. add powerful headlines:

headlines are the power words that give power to your content. Using the right headlines will attract users to the content and it will increase your CTR. 

200 ranking factors are used by Google in its search algorithm which is used to rank websites. Most SEO experts and digital marketers have tried to decode the specific factors that contribute to the success of SEO. 

Recently, they have noticed that click-through rate is a major contributor to boost your search rankings organically. 

If your website has got the 5th rank on the search engine page then you will get 15% of all the clicks that are done for the keyword. But if your click-through rate is around 25% then Google will push your page up to a higher ranking. 

The reason for this is because Google cares a lot about customer satisfaction and serving its users with the most useful, relevant, timely, and interesting information. 

Since more users are clicking on your results, even if your position is 5th in the search result, Google will improve your ranking so that more search users can land on your page. 

Simply speaking, click-through-rate is the rate at which there are clicks on a particular website appearing in the search result. 

By adding power words in your content headlines you can prompt your website visitors to stop their work and read the content. The headline consists of words, so make sure that they are action words. Using the right words in the headline is very important. This can inspire social, search, and blog users to make a click on the link or the headline. 

It is a fact that most people share content which they have not even read themselves. So the only determining factor here is the persuasive headline. This can determine your content’s success. Using powerful headlines can increase a user’s trust and captivate them. 

If you are making use of weak words in your headlines then you will not be able to make a success as a content creator, blogger, or writer. Some power words can also be incorporated into the content to make it catchy. 

If you are looking to attract potential clients and build the trust of your audience then you should have content that can be shared and promoted by your users. 

Some power words that you can use in your content are:

• Backed
• Certified
• Authentic
• Endorsed
• Results
• Proven
• Best-selling
• Cancel anytime
• Guaranteed
• Ironclad

Make sure that your headlines do contain any of the following words. You can even verify the power of these words in the top organic results of search engine pages. 

Prevent using words that are boring to your readers and search users and make sure that you change your headlines that are underperforming. By using wrong headlines you are putting a brake on your organic traffic. 

3. Make the meta description keyword-rich and persuasive: 

There are 3 main aspects to optimize your website. They are on-page SEO, technical SEO, and off-page SEO. People do understand on-page and off-page SEO, but what about technical SEO?

This is concerned with things such as your website speed. If you want high organic traffic then you must make your web pages insanely fast. But along with making a website fast you should make sure that your meta description is strong and relevant so that your content gets traction in organic search results. 

Search results do not see speed before clicking on any website. A meta description is a factor that makes a user click on your search result. Search users read this meta description before they click on a website or not. 

That’s the reason why you should make it persuasive and keyword rich.

This does not mean that you should optimize your keywords excessively. But make sure that your focus is on user-intent. Integrate your main keyword in the meta description so that it mixes smoothly with the rest of the copy.

4. match your user intent: 

The main factor of content marketing is the intent of the user. If the content does not meet the specific needs and answers the user’s question, then you will require to think again. It is possible that your content is not matching the search of the user’s intent. If visitors are landing on the page in which they are not finding any reason to keep on reading the article, then they will leave.

The solution to it is very simple, you must deliver the right content in the right format. If your audience is looking for the step by step instructions, then never give him the tips or hacks. Always focus on the intent of the user. Keywords would always point out what users are looking for. When you are finding the keyword long-tail or head keywords then you will get to know what exactly the person is looking for. When a user is searching like flat abs then it is an indication that users don’t look for any gyms. The article should be such that it should make sense to the users.