Content not ranking? 5 questions to ask ASAP

Developments like AI, SGE and Helpful Content are making SEO exceedingly complex today. They make it feel like the goalposts that measure whether we’re doing a “good” or “bad” job are constantly shifting.

But I have good news: SEO evolves daily, but the underlying principles of what you’re solving for haven’t changed much over the past decade.

Yes, things change. Yes, they get more complicated. And yes, the bar rises.

But the silver lining is that you can take a “balanced scorecard” approach, grouping together the fundamental principles you can control (the “inputs” of future performance, from content quality to backlinks) to better predict why your results are lacking (the “outputs” you can’t control directly, like rankings and traffic and sales).

Here are five simple questions that will address the most relevant ranking factors that continue to drive (or prevent) your ranking success.

Question 1: Is the content actually good enough?

1. Actually address customer pain points from their perspective

2. Present the problem and symptoms that readers would recognize

3. Discuss potential solutions that the product in question can help with

Question #2. Is the content optimized properly?

Let’s start by comparing the page’s overall structure, length, and format relative to what’s already ranking.

Focus first on the top four metrics: number of words, headers, images and links.

Next: focus on overall structure.

• Top ranking pages content-driven? Don’t try to rank a product page.

• Top ranking pages have commercial intent? Don’t try to rank a TOFU page.

Read through the top-performing competitors. Look at:

• The structure of H2s

• Semantic keywords that cover search intent

Literally, any content optimization tool will help you find these instantly.

Two important caveats to optimizing content with semantic keywords:
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1. You should be aiming for a “B+” or “A-”. Don’t optimize for 100%. Otherwise, the content comes out robotic and keyword stuffy.
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2. Nearly all of these tools pull semantic keywords similarly. So there’s a lot of commoditization in this space. It’s more important you focus on the overall holistic balance.

Question #3. Do we need multiple new pages or one in-depth?

More and more SERPs are trending towards prioritizing unique, narrow pages that target individual queries.

This is backed up by an analysis of Google’s recent Helpful Content update.

So this begs the question: should this struggling page be one in-depth page vs. multiple targeting unique intents?

Take a look at what the page-in-question is already ranking for and check for SERP overlap.

Are the same content pages ranking well across multiple related SERPs? If you see this, it means that one good piece is probably fine for now (vs. many targeting unique intents).

Question #4. Are you hitting a “glass ceiling” without proper topical authority?

The biggest brands and sites often dominate SERPs. That means two things:

1. You need to build a bigger brand and site. This is why you need both “quantity” and “quality”.

2. To compete against bigger sites, you need to double down on building out topical authority to give yourself a “beachhead” foundation that will help you launch more successful attacks in the future.

There are three areas highlighted in the example above:

1. “Send in-app messages”

2. “Collecting user feedback”

3. “Improving onboarding”

Now, do we have good content already ranking on these supporting topics? If not, write new articles or update existing ones.

Question #5. Off-page competitiveness (referring domain quality & quantity)

Talk to any real practicing SEO working in million and billion-dollar spaces. Every single one builds links to every single important piece of content they publish.

The simplest way to analyze this last point is to zero-in on two basic metrics:

Domain-level strength: DR and UR can help give you a quick proxy for whether you belong in the same ballpark (or not).

Page-level strength: Drill into the actual quality and quantity of referring domains to each individual page ranking above you in the SERPs.

All in all, create a scorecard for your existing content ranking them on these five questions I covered.

It will help you focus on what needs to be addressed immediately to drive the best, fastest turnaround.

-Brad