Did you publish relevant content in 2020?
If so, maybe you weren’t hit too hard by the Google Core Updates of May and December.
Due to those Core Updates, 2020 was a difficult year for bloggers looking to generate traffic from Google.
This post explains how to update your posts with relevant content in order to see your articles rise in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages. Naturally, this results in an increase in your organic website traffic.
Content relevance refers to how relevant the content of a website is in answering a certain search query.
This post offers strategies to boost your SEO using relevant content in blog posts. You will see screenshots and read specific examples.
This post shares the importance of relevant content in order to boost your Domain Authority Ranking and your posts’ rankings in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages.
In addition, you will discover how to find relevant content that pleases Google in your content niche.
By the time you’re done reading, you will be able to replicate my methods to see your own SEO rise.
This guide takes you through my sixth year of blogging. You will see how publishing relevant content improved my SEO and contributed to my overall blogging success.
Are you ready to learn how you can boost your SEO by publishing relevant content?
Screenshot: Courtesy of Ahrefs
As you can see from the screenshot, 28,800 links point to my blog.
Why do so many backlinks point to my blog?
Does content relevance contribute to link building?
This screenshot is from the SEO Reddit subreddit. As you can see, the speakers share the value of relevant content as long as the content is unique and informative.
Clearly, content relevance is important. You need relevant content in order to boost your SEO.
According to Yahoo, relevant content, meaningful content, is even more important than link building. Boost your content relevance and you’ll increase the number of links built to your site. Content relevance leads to link building, not the other way around.
How to Find Relevant Content
How do you find relevant content in your niche?
These free tools help improve content relevancy.
Simple Tools
Use Simple Tools as a way to find relevant content to add.
I entered “Relevant Content,” and look at all the questions that populated. I can answer them in my post or write stand alone posts answering these additional questions.
Places to look for relevant content:
All of these websites are free and show you relevant content with high reader interest.
According to the Reddit SEO subreddit’s BeBennyBe, “Good relevant content is a great way to get backlinks organically.”
He goes on to explain the way to come up with “good, relevant content” is through research. “Don’t write your articles on something you think works well, research your industry and try and come up with something that provides value.”
According to Benny,
“Good, relevant content is a great way to get backlinks organically. Don’t write your blog articles on something you think works well; research your industry and try and come up with something that provides value.”
Relevant Content and Headlines
When you write your headline, make the headline follow the same pattern if a previous headline was successful.
Look at the middle headline:
I published the post about the advantages and disadvantages of Instagram first.
After seeing its success, I modeled the other two headlines after the original post’s headline.
As you can see from this SERPRobot screenshot, the other two posts also ranked well.
SERPRobot is a free SERP Checker tool. You can also use SERPRobot to check five posts’ rankings in the SERPS at the same time. You will find a SERPRobot review here.
The Disadvantages of Facebook post initially ranked lower, but by updating the post, I boosted its rankings in the SERPs.
On March 29, my stats experienced a peak.
You need to ask yourself, “Why are my stats rising?” This way you can replicate or continue your success.
What did I do differently?
Instead of updating one post a day with fresh relevant content, I updated three or four posts a day.
Here is my content marketing workflow:
First, I do keyword research to ensure there is interest in my content and I can beat the online competition for readership.
Next, I research and outline. The outline creates the post’s subheads.
I use the RankMath SEO plugin to ensure my content is optimized correctly for search engines. Yoast is fine for this purpose as well.
After publication, I use keyword checkers to see if the post ranked. If so, I continually update the content to make sure the post rises in the Search Engine Results Pages.
Put Relevant Content in the Meta Description
Why would you need to update the content relevance of the meta description?
I discovered my post, How to Use SERPRobot and 8 More Free Google Position Tools, was in Position 2 of Google’s SERPs for the keyword “SERPRobot.” 9,200 people search for the term monthly, yet the post wasn’t receiving much traffic.
What to do?
I went back into the post, reread the meta description and realized I could improve it.
First, I like starting with a question. My meta told people what they already know. “You know you need…” It sounded stern.
I rewrote the meta. “Do you need a free SEO tool?
Better? I think so.
During the year, my organic traffic continued climbing.
Notice the clicks rose.
May 2020
In May, I discovered that Google’s Core BERT Update which helps users get more precise search results, helped my blog traffic.
This screenshot is from Spyfu.com. You can check your own metrics at SpyFu.
Put your URL in where it asks for Competitor and scroll down.
May saw a major Google Core Update.
Were you affected?
Many people were. I was– adversely.
So, I decided to clean up my tags. Off to the left in your WordPress dashboard, under Posts, you should see the word Tags.
Click. Go through your tags. Delete tags unrelated to your main keyword.
For instance, when I first started blogging, before I found my blogging tips niche, I was an entertainment blogger briefly. I deleted many tags related to entertainment.
Why waste the resources at Google? If I am to let Google know I’m a blogging tips expert and Google should show my blogging tips posts to its users, I shouldn’t confuse Google with tags unrelated to my niche.
Late May:
Nice to see that I was “great” in every area according to Ubersuggest.
Related Reading: Here you will find an Ubersuggest tutorial.
Look:
As the red box shows, 2.9K people started on my blog, and 2.7K left. This would cause my bounce rate to drop which will hurt my SEO.
My business partner and I made it our goal to improve these metrics.
How?
The second quarter of 2020 ended today. It’s June 30. Do you check your metrics? I do.
I was interested to see how many posts out of my Top 7 for the month since the Google Core Update have the year in the headline.
Do you see what I see? All but 2 posts in my Top 7 have the year in the headline. Google likes fresh content. If you add the year, Google knows how fresh your content is.
This empirical data shows the importance of putting the year in the headline.
By the end of the summer, I started using Ahrefs and discovered I made the coveted Featured Snippets box, often called Position Zero, on Google many times.
Encouraged, I now make a point of adding lists in my posts since Featured Snippets boxes show lists.
September-October
I experienced a bit of a traffic spike starting September 28 with traffic coming from Google.
I researched the Reddit SEO thread:
Let’s analyze the Redditor’s observation. He reported “regularly updated” sites improved. This anecdotal evidence shows you need to update your posts with relevant content.
October 2020
Google stopped indexing relevant content. Reportedly, the company was fixing infrastructure problems.
If you want to know if your content is indexed, follow these instructions:
Open a new tab and type in the URL site:yourdomain.
People reported their rankings fell in October, after October 14.
I was told to get Google to crawl your content, you need to put your links on other websites.
Here’s how:
Put Your Relevant Content on Other Websites
Write for blogs in your niche.
November 2020
In November, I returned to writing for MyTrendingStories.com and SelfGrowth.com.
I am consistently putting my links to relevant content in Quora answers as well as linking to my posts from other websites.
Related Reading: More information about Quora can be found here.
I spent the year consistently pitching HARO (Help a Reporter Out) reporters who needed relevant content for their blog posts in my content niche.
In November 2020, I had my best performing month.
Mostly Blogging received 36,729 page views in a month, and 3,893 page views in one day.
What caused the November 9 traffic peak from search engines?
My MeWe review was on Page 1 of Google when Facebook shut down conservative groups.
The spike was a result of the November 3 U.S. Presidential Election. Politically conservative Facebook group members, looking for a new social media site to call home, found and read my MeWe review. The post had visibility since the post was on Page 1 of Google’s SERPs.
This is why Search Engine Optimization is so important.
It’s true: I got lucky my review was on Page 1 when former Facebook users looked for information on MeWe. However, they never would have seen the review unless the post was on Page 1.
Related Reading: This post on SCO marketing explains how to boost your search engine rankings.
As you see, the traffic spike generated by interest in my MeWe review continued after the November 3 U.S. Presidential Election.
December 2020:
On December 3, Google had another major Core Update.
According to sources, links may not have as big a factor on rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages as they previously did.
According to Marie Haynes of the Search News You Can Use podcast, Google is giving priority visibility to sites with authority content, relevant content that could pass as guides, even encyclopedia articles, on your topic.
E-A-T, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, is more paramount than ever when Google determines rankings, more so than links according to these sources.
Long time readers of this blog know that I am a huge believer in link building as a way to improve your standing in the SERPs, but according to authoritative sources, relevant content has taking priority as an important ranking factor. Haynes explained the Core Update is global, across niches and internationally.
The Core Update occurred on December 3. While the rollout may occur over a 14-day period, any change you see should be felt as soon as 24 hours after the update.
Look:
As you see, I experienced a spike on December 3. Haynes explained we can expect any changes to last which occurred as a result of the Core Update. Since I experienced a spike, I’d be happy if the changes last.
Internally Link to Older, Relevant Content
I learned a new blogging trick in December.
Internally backlinking within your post to older articles boosts your SEO. When you backlink to relevant content, Google believes you are an expert on that topic and shows your posts to search engine users.
How will you decide which posts to backlink to?
How to Choose Internal Links
Here’s a blogging trick:
Input this URL into your browser:
site.yourblogname your focus SEO keyword
In other to find what is Google’s opinion of my older relevant content, I entered this into the browser search bar: site.mostlyblogging.com relevant content.
You see in the screenshot what populated: blog posts about content.
By backlinking to them, I create what Google considers a link network.
Wrapping Up: Relevant Content
Clean up your tags.
Update your content so you blog posts contain relevant content.
Add the current year to your headlines.
Internally link to relevant content.
Readers, please share so bloggers learn the importance of relevant content and how to pick relevant content as blog post topics in order to boost SEO.
I look forward to your views in the comments section. Do you have suggestions for using relevant content to boost your SEO or comments on the importance of relevant content?
Janice Wald is the founder of MostlyBlogging.com. She is an ebook author, blogger, blogging coach, blogging judge, freelance writer, and speaker. She was nominated as the 2019 Best Internet Marketer by the Infinity Blog Awards and in 2017 as the Most Informative Blogger by the London Bloggers Bash. She’s been featured on Small Business Trends, the Huffington Post, and Lifehack.
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