Every text on the web is created for some purpose. An effective text is the one that performs the necessary tasks. Essentially, there are two of them:
- Take the first place in the top of the SERP by the keywords that you have planned;
- Turn the web page with the text into the perfect step in your sales funnel.
To achieve these goals, we recommend performing SEO content analysis at several key stages.
Analyzing texts of the competitors
Imagine that we already have collected search queries of use to us after which we want to create a page with content. We can immediately start writing or we can choose to explore the content on the pages that are already in the top of the search engine results page. So one of our posts about the error 404 was created with the goal of getting into the top by using 3 main keywords: error 404, 404 error, 404 page not found.
What can help us in this case by analyzing the text of competitors that are already in the top?
The module for generating tasks for copywriters inside Copywritely, in addition to its final product in the form of the actual task, provides the opportunity to learn the following information:
1. Which sites are ranked in the top on the entire list of all selected keywords, and what positions these resources occupy for each keyword. If you examine competitors by one keyword, you can find pages in the top that correspond to different intents of the same query. The search engine is forced to generate such an issue, as long as it can not accurately guess the purpose of the user. And if we examine the top at once on several related queries, then immediately we see our most direct competitors.
2. What bigrams and trigrams competitors use in their texts most often. The study of bigrams and trigrams brings clarity to our idea of what issues should be described and analyzed on the page. By collecting semantics, we initially think about the user’s intentions narrowly, based on the main query. And as a result, we add to the semantic core only queries that are closely related to the main one. Therefore, we can skip the topics that are important for readers in terms of this article, but are not related to the collected semantics. The following screenshot would be the best example of it:
These are the trigrams collected on the basis of the analysis of the top search results by keyword «404 error». Our page – https://sitechecker.pro/broken-links/ – takes 10th place by this query. One of the obvious hypotheses is that the expanding of content on the page will move it closer to the top three. But what content do you need to add? Bigrams/trigrams are one of the sources of such information. On the screen, we see that at least two competitors have considered issues related to the settings of the htaccess file and the practice of rewriting URLs using mod_rewrite. So, it is good idea to expand the content with these topics and record changes in positions.
The second source of data for writing and / or expanding content can be one competitor with the best text and position in the SERP. We just evaluate the structure of the text using Sitechecker and see which of the topics we definitely need to include on our page.
So we conduct a double SEO analysis of the content of competitors. The first is a generalized one, based on the all high ranked competitors. The second is the analysis of one (the best, in our opinion) text. This amount of work for the page may seem too much. Here everything depends on the expected value of the page. But in the end, the best position in the search list is taken by the one who looks at each landing page as a separate product, and allocates a corresponding amount of resources for this.
Creating tasks for the copywriter
If you create content for the site by yourself, you often do not realize the whole chain of actions that are performed in the process of work. And, if necessary, delegate the writing of content, it is better to take more time to translate your own work technology into an understandable and comprehensive instruction.
Our SEO specialists have modified their own technology of writing content into the Content Task Generator in Copywritely.
The module is useful in two vectors:
- Speed. If you regularly create a lot of texts, you will make it much faster with a module.
- Completeness of the task. When analyzing the text of competitors URL crawler analyzes the page and provide the information on how many keywords are used in the text and in the section “Title, H1, description” specifically.
But it is important to understand that this module is an auxiliary element. If you have copywriters with whom you work with on a permanent basis, it is better to create one detailed instruction, where you would describe your approach to content curation and creation. Such an instruction should include certain principles, basic points, what a copywriter must do, and what a copywriter should NOT do in any case.
And in this general manual it is already worth explaining how the copywriter correctly uses the template of the Content Task Generator, which would be applied to each page.
An important question may arise here. Maybe that instruction with recommendations on the occurrence of the keywords directs the creator of the text in the wrong way? Humans in an attempt to convey their thoughts can use various words. And this freedom in the choice of words makes it possible to create texts filled with value, meaning – because each person has a different vocabulary + the meanings of individual words can vary. By putting the task in this form, we restrict the work of the imagination and the human mind.
In this case, much depends on how the SEO copywriter works with task you have created.
The recommended algorithm of working with text after obtaining the task is as follows:
- On the basis of the task and the studied structure of the text from the selected competitor, form the structure for your text.
- Next, write the text WITHOUT binding to any keywords.
- Look through the text and see where it is better to include the keywords from the task.
The first point helps to cover all the necessary topics and create a comprehensive text. The second prevents limiting your thinking and helps to express your thoughts in the most natural way. The third helps to further expand the created content and add phrases that are much more relevant to search engines than the expressions we used.
Analysis of the copywriter’s work
The need for an analysis of the copywriter’s work arises, basically, at the stage of making a decision on long-term cooperation. Or in the case when every text is written by a new copywriter.
We estimate the copywriter’s text by three main criteria:
1. Correspondence with the formal requirements specified in the task. Here the writer must be at least disciplined, attentive and responsible. If in the first texts these qualities are not shown, then it doesn’t make sense to continue further cooperation.
2. Level of proficiency in the language in which the text is written. The English text written by the writer, for whom the English language is native, is very different from the one that is written by the translator. If you still cannot afford to find a native writer, then take a little more time to select the best translators.
3. The end result in the form of positions, traffic, conversions, virality. Although the success of the page in the SERP depends not only on the content, it still continues to play a key role. If the writer tried and wrote an interesting, understandable, comprehensive text, it is clear that this page has more chances to get into the top. It is important to understand that points 1 and 3 are not related. The text that is correct under formal requirements can be very weak in its content. The third point is the most important. Let internet search engines and the users themselves tell you which of your writers is the best.
Analysis of content on a site with a large number of pages
And the final stage – the content audit, which passed the millstones of selection during the previous stages, was published and there is feedback from users and search engines on it. The necessity for such an analysis arises from the fact that as the number of pages increases, some of them will still be ineffective, some will duplicate the topics under consideration, and some, despite the generation of traffic, will be poorly converted to the next stage of your funnel. The correct algorithm of the audit makes it possible to strengthen your powerful qualities and destroy the weak ones.
Maybe you already conducted such an audit, based only on the data of the Google Search Console. But there are more advanced ways. For example this template, which is based on Google-tables.
To run the template, you need to enter your domain, connect your Google Analytics account through the Supermetrics service and upload backlinks to your site from Ahrefs.
So you will have a list of pages of your site with such parameters: the amount of organic traffic, bounce rates, conversions and the number of backlinks.
Based on the collected data for each uniform resource locator (you can read more about URL definition on this article), one of four decisions is taken:
- Leave the page as it is. If the page receives organic traffic, it has a low bounce rate and high conversion rates, leaving it unchanged.
- Analyze the quality of content. If the page receives organic traffic, it has a high percentage of bounce rate and a low conversion rate, then it is necessary to analyze the relevance of the content and, based on such a manual analysis, choose one of the solutions: delete, redirect, or rewrite the content and, accordingly, improve the page.
- Delete the page. If the page does not receive organic traffic, and it does not have backlinks, then it does not have any value for the site. You need to either improve it, or simply delete it.
- Make a redirect to a page with a similar topic. If the page does not receive organic traffic, but it has backlinks, then to save the link value you need to redirect to another page with similar content that is receiving organic traffic. Use 301 redirect checker to avoid redirect chains.
