Anna Morrish says “It comes down to creating unique and interactive content, which for us, is something that we're talking to a lot of people about at the moment. Interactive content doesn't have to cost the earth. People sometimes think that interactive content is going to cost loads of money, or will take lots of time or lots of dev work, but I think it’s accessible to all, and it's just knowing what type of content you should be creating and what's going to get your audience interested.”

What does interactive content actually mean nowadays?

“Interactive content can be all sorts of different things. Something that we're looking at at the moment is creating various different things for clients, for example, different calculators. It’s the things that aren't just necessarily useful to somebody, but something that's also a little bit of fun and shareable, but at the same time, it doesn’t have to be on their own website. I think that’s also something that people get can get worked up about because the idea of creating it on their website or embedding it can feel overwhelming.

Instead, a simple thing like a poll on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook is valuable as well, and creating these polls on social media are so easy to do, they’re free, and will take literally a couple of minutes of your time. You can also think of something that you get asked very, very often which is maybe a problem that customers have, or something that you're experiencing in your everyday life. It doesn't have to always be super, super business related. It can be about your experiences in general life, because I think people invest in people, and they want to know the people behind the business and they want to feel that genuine connection.”

When I was involved in SEO agency life, we used to do things like create embedded codes, but also incorporated some HTML that incorporated link back to your website as well, and then that embedded code would also appear on other websites, so you'd then outreach to people to try and encourage them to incorporate that in their site. But you're talking about things that don't necessarily incorporate embeds, and probably not HTML links within there as well. So how do you actually measure the SEO value of what you're recommending?

“First of all it's looking at your brand and creating content that your customers want to engage with and that your customers are interested in. By increasing that customer interaction, that's going to increase your brand awareness, and that's going to then include more searches on things like Google. And then if you are creating stuff on your website, that's great, customers can interact with that and come back for the results, so you're keeping people coming back to your website time and time again. Then you can start looking at the increase in organic traffic, and you'll see an increase in keywords and visibility, and you will see the SEO benefits there.

It's no longer about creating a piece of content for links, and instead it’s about creating content that's actually for customers. When you're creating content, making sure that it's for your audience and your customers is something that we’re hearing more and more. Chasing the clicks and the links and having those really catchy headlines is not going to get you traction over time if the content, when you read it, is kind of meaningless. Whereas if you harness your audience's power and you get that buy-in from them, that's the Holy Grail.”

So then how does an SEO work as part of a larger marketing team, but at the same time also justify what they're doing from an SEO perspective? If the focus is on doing things like enhancing brand reach, then that's a fluffier metric to try and put your finger on. So how do you actually talk about the volume of what you're doing as an SEO when you're doing things like that?

“It's very difficult, and it's something that we're looking at at the moment. You probably saw that when Google announced various things in their recent talk, that they said about how they're using AI to look at content. And that made us think, that if we're going to create content, it needs to be genuine. So how do we make sure that it's still going to get traction and that Google is going to put it in its search results? Well we still want links, but now they need to be the right kind of links which are going to generate traffic. I think a lot of the time people will create links ‘willy-nilly’, and those links don't necessarily result in traffic. If we're building links, we need to look at if they are actually generating traffic for us as well as increasing rankings, and looking at overall organic traffic, and how it fits into the wider picture. It’s harder to quantify, but I think it will be something that people will be talking about over time as well.

One thing that I think I've always struggled with is when we're doing some content or PR campaign, people will often measure you on the number of links you build. They will sometimes look at the authority of those links, but it always comes down to the number of links. I've always been against that because you need genuine, quality links, and in that case, sometimes less is more. You’ll get more traction from the right kinds of people and being in front of the right audience.”

You also mentioned social media when you were talking about interactive content, and you talked about things like social media polls, which are even further away from something that's measurable from an SEO perspective. So how do you manage that?

“It is, but you can repurpose that content, which is one of the things that we always look at. If you're creating a poll, you've also got to think about the next step from that. It’s the same with any piece of content, like a landing page of some sort, what is that next step? It's all right to create a poll, but what are you going to do with that piece of content once you've actually finished that poll? Are you going to leave it on that social platform and not even tell people the results? Because if you don't tell people the results, what was the point? If I enter a poll, I want to know the results afterwards. What was the outcome? Was I right to put "yes" to something? Am I in the majority, or am I in the minority? So make sure you do follow-up content on social media and your blog. If that produces something that's really newsworthy, you can then outreach that, and that's a unique piece of content that you have, that you've created, specifically with your audience set.

Creating unique content is what it's all going to come down to, especially with how the search is changing. You can't just keep rehashing stuff, and thinking that you’re going to put loads of links on it and that will be the best approach, because we don't know what the future is going to look like. Your best bet at the moment is to be creating your own unique content.”

I like that you talk about using the results from the social media polls in other pieces of content, and talking about the results, and maybe doing outreach around that. It made me think about the possibility of doing things like incorporating other thought leaders or industry bloggers within the poll as well, or maybe even actually, housing the poll on their social profiles. Is that something that you'd recommend as well?

“Yeah, it's creating that whole community of people and using your contacts and people in your industry. It's not just in an agency; it's in a lot of industries. What we see is that they're scared of talking to other people in their industry. If you can create different partnerships with people, even competitors, and actually work together, then you're going to have more impact. You're not just working alone so don't be scared to use your contacts. When we do any kind of PR campaign, we will say to people, ‘well, who do you already know?’ and we’ll look at using some of those people. They might be partners, or they might even be customers that they've already got who could also share the content or create content for you. It's creating that community. People are going to think, well, it's not just me on my own, so look at the wider audience and build that community hub.”

A lot of SEOs might be a little bit concerned about linking out to influencers, for instance, if you have a great relationship with an influencer and you've done something like perhaps created a poll on their social profile, and you naturally want to perhaps write a blog post on your site summarizing the results, and linking out to them as a resource to your own audience, but your SEOs are maybe saying that we shouldn’t be linking to them and we should actually be trying to get a link from their site instead. How do you deal with that?

“If it's genuine, I think you should just do it, because otherwise people will overthink it. You can't think that you need to keep it for yourself, because search engines and AI will look to display the most relevant content regardless. So even if you're linking out to them, if your content is the hub of information and you've used their link, and you've included a link to them as a relevant thing that is going to be interesting for the audience and is adding something to that piece of content, then do it!

People are probably going to link to that because they're like, ‘Oh, this is the information and this has got everything I need because it's got links to other influencers in their links to maybe other companies’, and then they're going to use you to link to as that resource piece and as that hub of information. And with AI, they will see that and see you as that unique piece of content that they will want to potentially show in the results.

So thinking that you can't link to them is definitely the wrong mindset. It's should be about doing what seems right and what's natural.”

Where does AI fit into either the creation or the marketing of interactive content?

“If you can create something that's user-generated using your community or your audience then it's going to be unique in whatever shape or form that takes, and that will be the most beneficial type of content you can create. Time and time again, I see people trying to mention ‘rehashing old content’. Yes, it's okay to repurpose content, but rehashing someone else's content isn't the right thing to do. If you're going to create content, it has to have a unique hook. So, if you're creating something, create a poll, and get some unique data, because then that has the potential to be found in search.

AI is going to be looking for that unique data. It can go out and find all of this other content, but if it's unique to you, it's more likely to then show you for that piece of resource or that resource data. Using what you've got is going to be so, so important, and user-generated content is brilliant. Why wouldn't you use that?”

What are your starting points when it comes to actually deciding what to talk about in a poll? When looking at which options to include, do you do keyword research? Do you use tools? Do you look at Google Suggest or something else?

“We always do keyword research anyway, and we have full content plans for clients. We know what different things are going on in their industry, the things that will be unique to them like if they're holding certain events, or they're acquiring a business, or even if there's something else going on, such as they're launching a new product. Then, we tie that in to different keyword research tools and trends. TikTok is a platform that’s being talked about more and more because there are so many different trends on there. I think it’s crazy that people are using TikTok as a search platform, but they are, so that another tool to use to look at keywords.

Something that we don’t always think about is if you're going to create a piece of content, has it got traction on other social channels? It's a good idea to look at what social channel is going to be the best place to create or share different types of interactive content. We also ask our customers what their audience wants, what are the common questions that they get asked, is there a certain problem or concern that people have, is there something going on in their industry? And we ask them because they're the best people to know about all the different things that are going on in their industry. When we get answers to those questions, that’s when we can look at whether it will get traction based on search.”

So what you're basically saying is that you can't necessarily rely on keyword tools to decide what is the most pertinent topic to be talking about now. Perhaps there isn't enough keyword volume for that at the moment, and you need to check out maybe cutting-edge people on social media to see what the current trends are?

“Definitely. I think just looking at Google can be a bit old fashioned almost, now that you have got to look at other different tools, and it's definitely something that we're looking at. There's so many different social channels out there now and people are starting new trends all the time. It's all about starting conversations with people and asking some of the influencers about what they are seeing and what's interesting. Don’t be scared to ask other people what's going on and if they've got any ideas. So again, it's starting these conversations and actually asking people first off, what are they interested in? That way you can start gauging interest and see what research there is around that which can warrant us doing a piece of content on it.”

You’ve shared what SEOs should be doing in 2023. So, let's talk about what SEOs shouldn't be doing. What's something that's seductive in terms of time, but ultimately counterproductive? What's something that SEOs shouldn't be doing in 2023?

“What they shouldn't be doing is taking their foot off the brake. As SEOs we tend to become a bit complacent because we this that we've got it down. Instead, I think we need to be looking at other social platforms like TikTok, Pinterest, etc. Probably the best thing, especially at the moment things are changing so fast, is to not become complacent.

Something I’m starting to see more and more is SEOs looking at how to optimize certain things on website, such as your title tags, meta descriptions, headings, etc. But I think with AI and the route that Google is going down, that it's not going to be about that anymore, it's going to be about your actual content. You can have any title you want, and it can be optimized to high heaven, but if the content isn't good enough, then you are kind of shooting yourself in the foot. You've got to focus on having really good content.”

Anna Morrish is a Founder and Marketing Director at Quibble.