Is SEO dead? No, but here’s how we’re adapting
If creating search-optimized blog content used to feel predictable to you, but now feels like you’re stuck in the middle of a windstorm, welcome to the new internet era. SEO is undoubtedly changing. But is SEO dead? That’s a hard “no”.
Between Google’s major March algorithm update, Search Generative Experience (SGE) rollout and May data leak, the SEO landscape is starting to read like a Lady Whistledown gossip column straight out of Bridgerton. If you know, you know.
When you can’t hear yourself think amidst all of the noise and hype, it’s a clear sign you need to refocus on the foundations. In the case of creating search engine-friendly blog content, this comes down to:
Doubling down on high-quality, original content
Learning how to work with subject matter experts (SMEs)
Building brand equity
Refining your content distribution strategy
Let’s talk about what we’re doing at our content writing agency to adapt in these wild times, and how your B2B company can adapt, too.
Why double down on original content?
Instead of asking, “is SEO dead?” ask how you can better serve your audience with your blog content. When you create content they actually want to consume, they’ll spend more time reading and sharing your articles.
This sounds simple (obvious, even), and it is simple. But it’s not necessarily easy to accomplish – which is why original content, specifically, matters.
When your content is the same as everyone else’s in the top search results (and I understand why you’re trying to emulate them – you’re trying to rank for the same keywords!) it can get a little boring. When your content is generic or surface-level, it’s not highly valuable. It’s less likely your audience will want to read or share that content.
Here’s the tea, straight from Google:
“The [March 2024 algorithm] updates led to larger quality improvements than we originally thought,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land. “You’ll now see 45% less low quality, unoriginal content in search results, versus the 40% improvement we expected across this work.”
This sheds a bit more light on how to write SEO friendly blog posts. Originality matters – that’s clear. When we think of originality, we often think it’s the opposite of AI-generated content. That’s partially true. But there’s nuance I need to explain, because Google has also said:
“Not all use of automation, including AI generation, is spam. Automation has long been used to generate helpful content, such as sports scores, weather forecasts and transcripts.”
This leads us to believe that Google isn’t outright saying not to use AI in your content creation process. However, using AI to write the entirety of your blog posts for you is likely not going to pan out well because the content would be unoriginal in nature. Therefore, it could potentially harm your search rankings.
Many of the conversations with content marketers that our team is part of on LinkedIn and in Slack groups share this viewpoint. This is likely why original research is on the uptick among bloggers and has been almost every year since 2018.
So, does blogging help SEO? It absolutely still can – if you go about it the right way. Let’s walk through what we recommend to our clients and explore one of our favourite types of original research: SME interviews.
What is an SME and why work with one?
We’ve been working with SMEs for years to create content for our clients. In light of everything we’ve just discussed, we’re doubling down. Here’s what you need to know.
An SME is someone who specializes in a specific field and has a thorough understanding of their niche (for example, product development, operations or finance). They can often share information on technology, strategy and more. As a B2B marketer, you can leverage their expertise to create original content that takes a deep dive into a particular topic.
There are two types of SMEs to have on your radar for content creation backup: internal and external.
Internal SMEs work within your organization. With relative ease, you can usually ask them to sit for an interview with a content writer who will craft a piece based on their conversation. (We say “relative ease” because SMEs are often busy people – more on this later). They can explain complicated concepts, discern trends from data and make a fantastic partner for a content writer, who can then weave a compelling story from the SME’s knowledge.
External SMEs also have specific expertise, but they don’t work within your company. For example, you may need a Chartered Public Accountant (or Certified Public Accountant for our American readers) to weigh in on a piece of content you’re creating. If your company doesn’t employ that role, you’ll need to find an external SME to help.
Teaming up with an external SME is a great option when you require the know-how of someone with a specific credential or skillset. They can provide quotes for your content, give their insight to confirm your brand’s position on a topic, and ultimately offer information to create content that your audience is as eager to read as a Lady Whistledown letter.
Involving SMEs in your content marketing strategy requires some legwork. You’ll want to develop a solid process for doing so. But it’s worth the effort. If you’re only sharing other brands’ research online, you’re missing a valuable opportunity to establish your company’s credibility and provide your unique perspective. And you could be missing out on brownie points from Google’s algorithm gods.
How to get the best insights possible from your SME interviews
Keep these tips on hand, or if you’re using SEO blog writing services, share them with your content writer. This will help make the SME interview process smooth and productive.
1. Choose the right SME
Look for a team player! You want an expert who not only has extensive knowledge on the subject you’re writing about, but is also eager to help your organization and work with your content marketing writer. If you’re sourcing an internal SME, it should be someone who is supportive of your company’s content program.
2. Craft solid interview questions
Your questions will impact the type of responses you receive, and ultimately, the quality of the finished content. Think like a reporter and avoid yes or no answers (which make for bland content) by ensuring that you or your writer asks powerful, open-ended questions. This will give the interviewee lots of space to provide compelling comments. Consider the 5 Ws — who, what, when, where and why — and phrase questions in this way to elicit interesting information from your SME.
Remember to always ask your SME what the key takeaway for the reader is on any given topic, and if they have any recommended resources to share, so you can highlight key points while encouraging your audience to investigate further.
3. Help your SME prepare
SMEs are busy people with day jobs and other demands on their time. To ensure you get the most value possible from every SME interview, give your interviewee the opportunity to prepare. When requesting an interview, communicate your expectations and make it clear why you’re asking for their time and how the interview will help your company. This is especially crucial with external SMEs.
It’s not only good etiquette to send your SME the interview questions a few days in advance, it also ensures they have time to review them and understand exactly what information you’re looking to include in your content.
4. Listen deeply during the interview
Limit distractions and actively listen to your interviewee to show them you genuinely value their time and insight. You can give yourself more freedom to be engaged in the conversation by recording the interview and not taking notes. This will also make it easier for you to ask follow-up questions in the moment and encourage the discussion to flow naturally. Or, if you’re a seasoned interviewer, you may want to record the call and take notes.
Practicing techniques like reflecting, summarizing and clarifying throughout the interview can help you get the best insights possible for your content.
What else you can do to improve content quality
You might not always be able to conduct original research. Here are a few other things we do regularly when writing for our clients. These practices will help ensure your blog content meets the mark on quality. (No more guessing if blogging helps SEO).
Tell a compelling story
When I was in journalism school in the aughts, our instructors were always challenging us to come up with story ideas. Flexing this creative muscle is one of the best ways to ensure your company is publishing original content that doesn’t sound like everyone else on the internet.
Story-based content will be even more important going forward, as more AI-generated content is created and brands look for ways to stand out.
Consider someone in your life who tells great stories — the kind that you can visualize as they’re telling you, and that you’re genuinely interested in until the end. These are the stories where emotion and action shine through. Weave narratives like these in your writing. Find the human angle and look for how your product or service makes people feel.
For B2B marketers: what questions does your sales team often get asked about your products? See if you can turn those topics into stories with the help of your customers.
For founders: where can you be a little more vulnerable or show a little more personality in your content? Think of a few pivotal moments in your life/career and tell those stories.
Get your point across clearly and concisely
Your content needs to be easy to understand and to the point. This may seem straightforward, but even seasoned marketers get caught in the traps of tangents, jargon and run-on sentences.
This matters for a few reasons.
First, you want to create content that matches search intent. I think this is pretty self-explanatory, but here’s more on that from Ahrefs:
“Google prioritizes relevance in search results. So if you want to rank in Google, your content must be the most relevant result for the query. First and foremost, that means creating content that aligns with search intent of the target audience.”
Second, no one can engage with your B2B company if they don’t know what you’re talking about in your content (or worse, if you’ve bored them to death). Your writing needs to make your readers want to find out more about what you have to offer.
Challenge yourself to write for one person only
This may sound obvious – but, our agency has received numerous content briefs from clients that don’t include a defined audience for the piece they’re asking us to write.
You can’t (and you shouldn’t try to) speak to everyone. It will be easier to create content with substance if you have a specific reader in mind – one who has a specific job to be done.
B2B companies whose blogs stand out know their customers and what makes them tick. Before you start writing, get clear about how your products or services solve your market’s problems (and not just on a surface level — how does the transformation you offer make your buyers feel?).
If you make these three simple yet powerful changes today, your content will be better for it. When the internet is debating the question “is SEO dead?” you can be confident that you’ve put your best content forward.
Building brand equity
Knowing how to write SEO friendly blog posts can only get you so far. You also need to be marketing in other ways – and focusing on building your brand.
By now, I don’t think it’s up for debate that building a strong brand is critical to any company’s success. The May 2024 Google leak reinforces this point yet again.
Rand Fishkin, co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, said it himself in a blog post where he wrote, “If there was one universal piece of advice I had for marketers seeking to broadly improve their organic search rankings and traffic, it would be: ‘Build a notable, popular, well-recognized brand in your space, outside of Google search.”
Here are a few simple ideas to help focus your efforts:
LinkedIn: This is the perfect platform for B2B companies to write and share content that helps position the founder and the brand as thought leaders. You can experiment with different types of content like carousels that can capture attention and convey complex information quickly. Also be sure to engage and comment on others’ posts regularly.
Podcasting and other speaking platforms: You may decide it’s time to start a podcast focused on trends in your industry and interviews with experts. Only do this if you can release episodes consistently and if you’ve got a plan to repurpose the podcast content. If you don’t have the bandwidth for this, try suggesting that your company’s leaders appear as guests on other popular industry podcasts.
Partnerships and collaborations: Partnering with complementary (but not competing) brands for joint marketing efforts and cross-promotion is an excellent way to build brand awareness. Try hosting a joint webinar. This can attract attendees from both of your audiences. Or, co-create a research report. This can also amplify your reach.
Refining your content distribution strategy
“If you build it, they will come” is not a sound approach to blogging. Although blogging does help SEO, you should be sharing your blog posts multiple times across numerous channels – not just relying on search engines to serve the content up to your audience.
To keep it simple (as I always like to do), I’d focus on these two things:
Repurposing blog posts into short form content
Sharing blog posts in your marketing emails
Why these two things? The first will save you time, and the second will help put your blog content in front of more readers, since your email list is already statistically likely to be more highly engaged than your social media audience.
Another way you can refine your distribution strategy is to conduct a content audit to see which of your best performing pieces of content could be updated, reshared, repurposed and shared again. This will give you a valuable bank of “new again” content.
Stick with us! This post is part of a series on developing a 10-step content creation workflow for exceptional results. Read the next post.
Reliable SEO blog writing services
The bottom line: it’s futile to worry “is SEO dead?” – instead, it’s a better use of your time to focus on creating high quality blog content. Consistently.
Stratabeat and CMO Huddles recently released a fascinating SEO report based on the website performance of 250 B2B SaaS companies from January 2023 to January 2024.
Here are some of the findings I found most interesting:
B2B SaaS websites that published five to eight blog posts per month during that year increased Google top 10 organic ranking keywords by 47.9% vs. 10.8% for those blogging one to four times monthly.
While companies that stopped blogging in 2024 experienced a 15% decline in organic traffic on average.
The websites with original research achieved 2.3 times the Google rankings growth rate of those that lacked original research.
Among the websites conducting original research, 93.4% increased the number of referring domains (the average increase was 28.5%).
There is so much more in this report, and as the creators of the report do, I want to emphasize that the goal is not only content quantity, but also quality. If you’re looking for help with this, have a look at our client results and reach out if you want to learn more about how we can support you.
