Isa Lavahun says: “My additional insight is all about personalization, which is quite a broad term, but I think as SEOs we really need to be thinking about it this year. Personalization goes under an umbrella of key things we need to be thinking about, which includes things like relevancy. We always talk about relevancy, but sometimes we hone in on the relevancy that Google wants or that Google experts are talking about, when we really need to think about relevancy from a customer-centric point of view.

Another part of that ‘umbrella’ we really need to be thinking about is inclusivity and diversity. My expertise, and what I look at a lot, comes from a content and outreach perspective. Google loves backlink profiles with really, really nice differing domains, and if you keep targeting the same audience all the time, you're not really going to get the links and different types of audiences and publications. This means that you really need to think about your strategy and how you're going to reach out to different audiences that are still relevant to you and your business.

I'd also say that accessibility is something we sometimes miss; we should be doing it all the time. So accessibility in terms of languages, although not everyone can afford translations, but it is something that you need to think about. Accessibility also means adding alt text to images, looking at your font sizes, all the things that ensure we're being inclusive with the kind of audiences we're bringing in.

I think it's never been more important to think about how we create content for the audiences we want to see, especially with AI-powered content creation coming hard and fast. Sometimes as SEOs we think ‘Google wants this’ or ‘Google wants that’, but actually Google wants what our audiences want. Instead, I think we need to take a step back and think about how can we reach our audiences in a way that's going to resonate with them, rather than always thinking about the sort of the ‘SEO Google handbook’.”

When you started off saying, it's all about personalization, my general digital marketing head went, that means that it's about different content delivered to different users, and personalizing everything that you do towards different individuals. But is sounds like you mean actually finding a very specific target audience that's appropriate for your business and writing to them, as opposed to personalizing your content for each individual?

“Absolutely, it's all about just expanding your segmentation. Sometimes as SEOs we're left out of the marketing conversation. When people are thinking from a brand perspective, or above-the-line perspective, people kind of go, here's that ABC customers and those are the ones that we need to target. But I think in terms of personalization, it’s expanding that out a lot more to think about who else it could be. If you think about your triangle then you've got your ABC customers, so yes, it’s absolutely relevant for you to cater to them and outreach them. But actually, you need to think about the ‘bottom’ of this triangle with the other audiences that you can reach out to at different points of the year or with different products or with different experts that you've got on hand that you can speak to. That way, you can get that wider reach if you think about that in terms of strategy.”

So, if you decide that you're talking to a fairly niche audience, but you believe that other people out there will be interested in what you do and your products and your services. How do you go about pinpointing who that new audience is, and how do you go about finding them?

“This is where insight tools come in really handy. Using tools like Answer the Public and Exploding Topics, you can literally find out what's trending in different areas where you, as a niche, your product or business or service can tap into a certain audience or certain theme where you could join the conversation in an authentic, relevant and authoritative way.”

Do you attempt to tailor the content that's already on your website to match the needs and desires of this new audience, or do you create separate content targeting these separate personas?

“I’d say that if it's not broken, then don't fix it. If you're looking at the performance of the content that you have already and there's one that is performing really well, then I don't think there's any sort of prioritization to change that. On the other hand, if you have pages that aren't performing well, that you've created for a reason, then it's definitely a good idea to go in and have a look at it and see how you could tailor it, tweak it, change it slightly to attract different audiences.

It's not always about writing a 3,000-word article, because that’s not always the best way to engage with your audience. If you've got a really visual kind of niche, like beauty, fashion or a home, then you could create how-to videos, or you experiment with different types of content formats to try and get new audiences that you can engage with. For example, let's say I did a case study that I looked at and thought about ways that they could create different kinds of content for audiences that they might not be engaging with. So the brand in question is a company that sells at-home fitness equipment, like mats and weight training stuff, skipping ropes, etc. When you go on their website, it's targeted at an audience that is right for them, like personal trainers, yoga instructors, people who are fitness savvy and like to do stuff at home. But actually, there's so much more that they could be engaging with. Take the over 50s, for instance, there are people who are like, you know, we've never been more fit, as the older we get. So there are people who want to train at home that might be a bit older, there's nothing really, there's no training tips, there's no content to engage with them when they could be a key customer that actually has got the spending power that they could be attracting. Then we've got audiences living with disabilities, which, again, really, really savvy and into fitness, and there's no content to serve them, either. Fitness is also about mental health, and there's no content in there about the different types of fitness you could do to help with mental health.

So, this is just a classic example of how you've got a brand that's doing content for their target audience but not really thinking about the different types of audiences that they could be creating content for, to bring into the fold, and get the wider reach essentially. And again, that's where you get a wider reach, a wider brand awareness, and loads of lovely referring domains from different publications. So, you are kind of killing loads of birds with one stone.”

So you’ve talked about finding new audiences and creating new content for new audiences, but earlier on you also talked about inclusivity and diversity. I would imagine that for those two particular areas you're talking about people who are reading your content and thinking, it's just not resonating with me and I don't relate to it directly based upon my circumstance. So, I would imagine for that particular scenario, it's about adapting your existing content, as opposed to creating new content?

“Again, it's just doing that bit of research and looking at all the kinds of insight you can get from search data about what people are searching for and the different types of audiences are searching for, as it gives you an idea of what you could be creating.

Adapting your content can range from changing an image to make sure the image has representation, or accessibility improvements to make sure that you've got your font and everything is clear enough for people that might not have the eyesight of the bigger audiences that you're catering for. It can even be locality as well, because if you're a brand that can target people from a local point of view, it's something worth thinking about.

So, again, coming back to what I was saying at the start with referring domains and backlink profiles; Google loves when different audiences are pointing to you and saying ‘these guys know what they're talking about, and they can completely relate to me because they're saying something in a way that resonates with me’, and that tells Google that you must really know your stuff because it's coming from different audiences who are all saying ‘yeah, these guys are good, they know what they're talking about.’.”

Going back to your earlier point, when you say that Google love when you've got these unique domains pointing to you. How do you get those links? Are you a fan of doing outreach, or is there a certain style of content that you're good at producing that naturally produces links?

“Well, I'm a ‘DigiPR girl’ as they say, which people might say it is one of the hardest kinds of link-building tactics there is, but I think it's got longevity because it's a kind of brand awareness tactic at the same time. So, in terms of getting links, it's using your "EAT", using in-house experts and making them famous. One of the clients I have sell B2B Cybersecurity, which might not be the thing that's ever talked about all the time or on a daily basis, but actually, they're really going to be at the forefront right now, because everyone's talking about AI. They can come in and say, right, we’re experts in this and talk about fraud prevention and why you need to be more aware of this with AI. Another example would be using your customer data, if you've got any insight internally, either through sales insight or customer insight, and where you can say you are seeing a trend, or where your customers are changing their behavior or buying certain things at a certain time. You can use that data and say, look, we've got this information for you.

With link building, in terms of the tactics I love to use, thinking about content that the news agenda and the news cycle are going to find interesting is key, because once you've got that, and you've banked that, it's kind of the gift that keeps on giving because then you can go forward with that as a brand, as a business, as a service and offer them different stories, different angles, different expertise, to then get coverage.

One thing I want to add is that sometimes in traditional PR tactics, they get the coverage but not really think about getting that link back. You really do need to work hand in hand with getting that new story out there, and then making sure you've got that content online that supports that and gives a wider explanation of what you're saying and why you're saying it.”

I loved your first example there of talking about a B2B company that might want to get involved in the conversation when it's about AI. So do you tend to recommend your clients, or suppose you do this for your clients, and defining certain categories of topic that happen to be being discussed as part of the news, and then when that happens, immediately jump in there with a different perspective on things?

“I recommend approaching this in two different ways. Firstly, you’ll need a pre-planned kind of diary, for example, there’s always a budget every year, or when summer always comes around when there's hay fever, Christmas is something else that comes around every year. So, if you pre-plan that diary, and you work out where your expertise feeds in, then you can prep for all that content to be ready to put out and offer commentary on.

Secondly, there’s a lot of Reactive PR or ‘newsjacking’ stuff that comes up that is really all over the news. For instance, we've got a member of the government here who's got a speeding fine, and that's something that's all over the news at the moment, so any car insurance company or car brands should really need to be jumping on that news cycle and coming up with loads and loads of different tips on things from how to avoid speeding, what are the steps that you should take, and what options you have when you receive a fine. When it's topical, this is how you can jump on any kind of news agenda, because that's what people are going to be wanting to talk about.

Essentially you have a ‘proactive content plan’, and then you have your ‘reactive content’. Something could come up any minute, so you need to think on your feet and see how you can use your clients, your brand, or your service in the best way so you can join the conversation as quickly as possible.”

You've shared what SEOs should be doing in 2023, now 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?

“This might be controversial, but I know people who still focus on the idea of ‘we must do 3,000 words on a page’, and I completely disagree. When it’s needed, long-form content, is absolutely something you should do. But sometimes people do it when it’s not needed, and it is a waste of resources. We’ve all seen situations where a page is ranking higher that's got less content on it, because it's not always about the volume of content you have on a page, but about getting the point across and making sure you're answering the query as quickly as possible, and making sure that when the user visits your page, that they're not overwhelmed by the type of content that you have. It's probably controversial because I think some people might disagree, but I really don’t think that you always need to write loads and loads of content for a page.”

That’s a very pertinent point because with AI and ChatGPT, creating as much content as quickly as possible is very tempting, but it's not necessarily the right thing to do.

“Exactly, and this was the case in a training session I recently for a client. We looked at a backlink profile, and there was one page where we looked at the top five positions of the SERPs for certain term, and the client in question had the all-singing, all-dancing page with loads and loads of content on it, loads and loads of FAQs; and it's like ‘scroll, scroll, scroll’. But the page that ranked number one was really simple, about three or four paragraphs. So I talked to the team that I was training and I asked them why they thought that this page is ranking number one, and your client is ranking like number nine? They didn't really want to say, because they were quite a junior team, but they sort of had it on their mind and they just said that when someone goes on their client page, even though it's all-singing and all-dancing, it's overwhelming, and the topic is quite complicated. So, any kind of user that would go on would look at it and go, ‘I can't understand what this is. I don't even know how to get into this’.

This was a great example where people create for Google, but we should be creating for the user. That's what Google wants. I think it's really important to think about things like that when thinking about content creation. It's not always about having loads and loads of text on a page. It's really thinking about how your customers like to consume content because the best-performing content isn't always the one that's got the longest word count. So as I was saying before, you should really focus on making everything customer-centric and personalized.”

Isa Lavahun is an independent Digital Strategist, and you can find her over at digiprcomms.com.