In many areas of life, it is important to ask not just whether you can, but also if you should. This principle does apply to building blog content, although unfortunately there is no one correct answer for how much is too much. However, while you won’t find a big yellow “Dead End” sign, you will hopefully take the hint before circling the cul-de-sac too many times.
This is not to say, though, that just because you are reaching the end of your rope with new content that you don’t still have a lot of room to expand your overall SEO strategy. There is no real ideal endpoint for that, or else we would call it maximization rather than optimization.
Furthermore, even if you have exhausted your creative limitations for blog content now, that doesn’t mean there won’t be more room for new content in the future. Ultimately, blog content needs to be as relevant as possible, and what information is relevant in your online space will evolve over time.
Relevance vs. Quantity
Not all content is created equal. Even if you have reached the end of your rope in terms of queries that you can address, that does not mean that you have optimized your keyword signaling opportunities. This is because the relevance of your content is more important than the quantity of your content.
It is better to have a handful of thorough, highly relevant pages on your blog rather than an entire catalog of lazy half-answers. A bowl of one hundred marbles is fuller than a bowl of a hundred grains of sand.
Diminishing Returns vs. the Pareto Principle
The Pareto Principle asserts that approximately 80% of all results will come from approximately 20% of the input factors. In the context of blog content, this would mean that 80% of traffic would be driven by 20% of the content. On its face, this may make it seem like there would be diminishing returns after you have built that core 20%. However, in the context of blog content development, this would be an oversimplification.
It is important to keep in mind that these major traffic-driving pages are supported by the other content on your website. Supporting pages play vital functions such as establishing your generalized expertise in your field and earning authority through backlinks. These pages can then pass on these valuable signals directly through internal linking, or by more generally improving the authority signals of the domain at large.
In short, while the majority of your content will likely not drive substantial traffic in its own right, it should play an important role in optimizing the potential for the few pages that do.
Expanding Your Scope
If you feel that you are reaching the end of your rope in terms of opportunities for building valuable blog content, it may be helpful to reassess your goals and methods. Notably, you may be overlooking valuable opportunities to expand your topical scope or leverage other SEO avenues. While you should not turn out content for the sake of turning out content, there is often room to shift and broaden your SEO strategy.
Establishing General Expertise
As mentioned, some content on your website can serve the purpose of establishing general expertise in your field. For example, a snowmobile rental company may create blog posts such as “How to Choose Appropriate Clothing for Winter Sports” or “Safety Advice for Winter Trails.”
While these topics do not directly deal with the operation of (or the rental process for) snowmobiles, they are still very pertinent to an audience who is interested in using a snowmobile. By providing high-quality information on such topics, you can teach your readers how to use your product and develop a brand association with broad expertise in your field.
However, when it comes to keyword content, you should still avoid wandering too far from the core topic. Using the previous example, if you began to build content related to summer sports, you would be making too much of a stretch. Although you may still be targeting a similar audience, that subject area is not meaningfully connected to your product.
Targeting Different KPIs
Often, when marketers talk about building blog content, they are referring to keyword content. However, strengthening keyword signals is not the only KPI that you can or should pursue through your blog content.
Notably, it is also valuable to make efforts to earn backlinks through linkable content, as a strong backlink profile can strengthen authority signals on your website. Linkable content is built differently than keyword-focused content, as the goal is to appeal to a wider audience than your target demographic, to provide value for other websites.
While strengthening keyword signals is an important part of SEO content marketing, it is not the only KPI that matters. If you feel that you are running out of ideas for how to proceed with your content, it can be helpful to assess whether there are any weak parts of your strategy that can benefit from the pursuit of another KPI.
Employing Alternative SEO Strategies
Just as keyword content isn’t the end-all-be-all of SEO content marketing, content marketing isn’t all there is when it comes to SEO at large. For example, you could conduct a technical audit to improve your on-page SEO. Technical SEO can help ensure that factors such as the structure of your website and coding tags are optimized to help search engines more easily crawl your web pages.
Or, you could tackle alternative off-page efforts such as listing yourself in local directories or registering your business on Google My Business. These options can significantly improve your visibility online. There are many ways to optimize the quality and visibility of your website without simply turning out blog posts.
Improvement vs. Creation
Again, the relevance of your content is far more important than the quantity of your content. That being said, there are strategies you can use to lengthen your content’s lifespan in terms of relevance.
Most notably, you can revise your older content to ensure that it is still doing its job as much as possible. For example, you can update facts and figures, add more relevant detail, and ensure that all of the links included are still live and valuable. All of these steps can ensure that your content’s value doesn’t degrade as much or as quickly over time. This is particularly important for articles that revolve around information that is likely to change quickly, such as listicles for top brands or products.
In short, you shouldn’t build content that isn’t relevant, but you also shouldn’t throw in the towel too early. Oftentimes, there are many other approaches you can take to improve the quality and visibility of your website.
