How to Write Content: Why less is more

The world is drowning with digital content. Unfortunately, marketing success is generally assessed by quantity rather than content’s ability to increase awareness, generate leads, and convert customers.

We’ve transformed the web into innumerable low-insight listicles that capture keyword searches instead of giving meaningful insights.

Digital experiences sometimes lack a content strategy that effectively delivers relevant information to the right audience at the right time. We have a free-for-all that produces content without audience value.

Increased use of ChatGPT and other AI tools will lead marketers to produce excessive blog material to increase clicks.

However, that does not benefit an information-hungry public.

Content overflow is sinking your ship

We surprise clients by suggesting they decrease and consolidate their material. We often hear, “But we can’t remove these landing pages because of SEO.”

Content overflow

We tell them, “You can!” You must.”

Overloading your readers with unnecessary content will hurt site performance and searchability.

Nearly 91% of material gets no Google traffic. This is partly due to restricted ranking space: when millions of articles compete for the same audience and keywords, only a handful will rank well, while the rest fall below page one.

Bloated sites can drain crawl budgets. Google just crawls a portion of your website per visit.

If your site is packed with material, search engines may never find your best work. Slow site load times and bloated code waste crawl budgets.

Successful content consolidation: A case study

We experienced this with our U.S. Army recruiting website project. For almost a decade, Goarmy.com had not received substantial modifications, including SEO strategy.

The site used outdated SEO practices of building a page for each keyword rather than deep topic pages.

Due to this and a tendency to use the site as a “dumping ground” for constituent content, the site has over 10,000 pages with minimal information about entering the Army.

The site got 19% of the top-three keyword rankings and a small number of highlighted snippets.

Google found goarmy.com unreliable for brand information.

Content quality and inability to find content contributed to this.

Bloated taxonomy, absence of sitemaps, non-responsive sites, and slow page loads prevented search crawlers from finding valuable pages, leaving plenty of content unindexed.

Our SEO and content strategy changed everything.

Step 1: Proof of concept tests

In “proof of concept” tests, we added FAQs and schema to chosen sites, accelerated them with AMP, and tested consolidated content and responsive pages.

Even minor improvements had a big impact, compelling the customer to remodel.

Search data and website analytics helped us identify audience-relevant content and gaps.

We found that firearms and car pages attracted traffic but did not convert.

This information attracted military aficionados, not recruits. Anything that didn’t progress the purpose had to go, not only traffic.

Step 2: Content consolidation plan

We turned “thin” content into pages that covered every aspect of joining the Army and addressed prospects’ queries.

This project cut the site to 445 URLs, 95% smaller. This can be confusing for clients who worry about losing traffic and rankings by removing pages.

It was the contrary. As we consolidated pages and prioritized Remember content that answered user questions, Google recognized GoArmy as an Army brand authority.

In just one year, the number of captured answer boxes increased by 295%, from 994 to 3,724. Google has found GoArmy material more easily and raised keywords in the top three positions by 115%, from 9,160 to 19,732.

Most notably, the slimmed-down site increases organic visits 31% FYTD and primary conversions 78% YoY.

slimmed-down site

We focused the Army on prospect-relevant material and produced a recruiting website that exceeded expectations using a less-is-more technique.

Another example of action

One example is the Army website. IBM’s Director of Digital, Bryan Casey, discussed their project to reduce webpage bloat on X.

website bloat

Like the Army, the IBM site had become an organizational structure with information that internal audiences wanted but customers may not.

As Casey noted on Twitter:

  • “The site was impossible to manage for our teams and too hard to understand and use for our customers.”

Data was used to illustrate user-resonant material and gain team buy-in to remove non-essential information from the customer journey.

The key was reminding internal stakeholders that the congested website hurt everyone’s traffic. This collaborative effort will demand sacrifice from each group, but it will benefit all stakeholders.

  • “We consolidated everything we could. We had places where we had three pages that could reasonably target the same keyword. Now we have one,” Casey wrote.

Like the Army project, IBM’s massive reduction of pages increased traffic and conversions.

Google demands quality

Google has addressed material saturation by prioritizing quality content over quantity with the helpful content update, focused on E-E-A-T principles.

Google’s latest addition of “experience” to good content adds a rule that AI chatbots cannot follow because they cannot experience our environment.

A knowledgeable author with a point of view and reliable data will produce repetitious listicles with nothing new to say.

Slow down your content creation machine, says Google. Focus on providing valuable content only your brand and specialist can deliver.

Key tips to create an audience-focused website

Some lessons here can help you create a leaner website that is more attuned to the needs of your audience.

Know your niche

Not “everybody!” – know who your content is for. Expert websites are sought by Google.

Use this content mission calculation to evaluate each prospective piece:

  • Our website is where (audience A) gets (content B) to (achieve C).

If your content doesn’t fit that mission statement, it doesn’t fit in your niche.

audience website

Consolidate and eliminate

Look for ways to consolidate comparable content on one page. Multiple short pages on a topic might split traffic and link equity, and search ranking signals.

Combining content increases keyword ranks by consolidating links and traffic. The average length of the top 10 Google results is 1,447 words.

Word count does not affect ranking. Because longer, more in-depth content covers a topic, uses more keywords, and answers more client questions.

Consider your customers’ goals and remove irrelevant stuff.

Explain content deletion criteria and goals to internal stakeholders so they understand why their content may be eliminated.

Provide value

Website content must initially focus on customers and their demands.

Eliminate ego-driven content that serves internal needs but not client needs.

Your website need not represent all internal constituencies. The site and its content should continuously help customers reach informative or transactional goals.

Value #2: Offer something buyers can’t obtain anywhere.

“Five Ways to Save for College” is low-value material for a financial website. These basic listicles on financial websites provide similar information.

Original, informative information is valuable. This can include expert-only research or opinions.

A financial expert might offer a fresh perspective on a tired issue like “Best Retirement Investments During a Recession” instead of “Five Ways to Save for Retirement”.

Eliminate the editorial calendar

You should still plan your content. It means avoiding content quantity goals.

When we establish a goal like “create 20 articles a month,” we create material to meet a quota.

Reduce content production and focus on longer, more in-depth, topic-covering material. Focus on performance (traffic, links, shares, email signups) over output..

Remember why we’re here

We’re content marketers. Customer-relevant content is essential.

Our material must be informative, complete, innovative, and meet a specific client need in a sea of low-quality information.

People crave info. Be careful not to drown them.

Ready? Let’s talk about
your dream project.