The last few years have been a turbulent time in the content marketing game. As more marketers produce AI-generated content, the Internet has become bloated with even more surface-level articles that are essentially indistinguishable. This has wreaked havoc on SEO and the general user experience.
- People are frustrated, as it’s become harder to find useful, trustworthy information.
- Marketers are frustrated, as hard-won rankings have been tanking.
Although Google has announced that it will now penalize AI-generated content to try to rectify these problems, it isn’t an overnight fix. You still need ways to make your content stand out (and, ideally, rank higher than the competition). But how do you create quality content that does exactly that? The smartest strategy is to add more EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) to your content. These are the elements Google uses to determine how much value your content provides. However, although every part of EEAT contributes to your rankings, highlighting your experience in your content can be especially powerful for your brand and your visibility.
Why Experience Is the Key to Good Content
If you want to create content that is interesting, unique, and meaningful for your audience, infuse that content with your own firsthand experience. This isn’t self-indulgent; it’s a smart way to stand out from the crowd in a sea of generic lookalike articles. It also helps you create a stronger relationship with your audience. Here’s why:
- Experience cultivates trust. When you’re trying to establish yourself as a thought leader or trusted resource, you want to give people a reason to trust you. Your experience in the trenches is an ace up your sleeve, especially when you want to demonstrate a track record of customer success.
- Experience helps you make a human connection. Although AI is fairly new to the scene, people are already fatigued by content that is clearly AI-generated. They desperately want to hear from people with real-life experience who have overcome real-life challenges. The more you can highlight your experience, the more likely they are to click on your content.
- Experience gives you a unique perspective that others may not share. Every client, customer, product, and service is different—even if they’re in the same industry. Your personal experience will shape the way you approach things, which can provide helpful insights to others. Although your competition may have had similar experiences, your unique perspective will stand out.
Most importantly, your hard-earned experience is the one thing AI can’t replicate. In short, leaning into your nuanced perspective and showing off real-life examples is a surefire way to outrank the robots. But how do you do that?
5 Ways to Infuse Experience Into Your Content
No matter how big or small your marketing operation is, there are probably times when your content feels stale. Brainstorming and creating content around your experience is a great way to revive your creativity. If you’re not sure how to do that, here are a few helpful ideas to get you started.
1) Share the story of a hard-won lesson.
Every business struggles, but how you overcome those struggles is particularly inspiring and helpful to hear about. Think of a time you learned a lesson the hard way, made a big mistake, or learned something unexpected from a failure. These moments always teach a lesson, and being open about these challenges shows people you’re transparent and earnestly invested in helping them learn too. Remember to pair your story with helpful tips or takeaways to provide true value.
Example: To celebrate our first decade in business, we created a roundup of lessons we learned the hard way. Not only did this help us reflect on our own road but it also helped fellow business owners feel a little less alone.
2) Give people a glimpse of your process.
When you’re creating content as a brand, people don’t just care about what you do. They care about who you are and how you do it. Giving people a glimpse of your process demonstrates that you don’t have anything to hide—and that you are a true expert in your field. It also offers people a chance to be a voyeur. (There’s a reason why day-in-the-life videos do so well on social media.)
Your BTS content can take any form: a deep dive into your manufacturing process, a peek into your team’s brainstorming meetings, or a roundup of things your team does to work more effectively.
Example: One of our most successful pieces of content is our guide to building a brand strategy. Frustrated that we couldn’t find a perfectly elegant brand framework, we created one ourselves and shared the step-by-step process with our audience. Not only is this one of our highest-ranking articles but we’ve even received phone calls (yes, real-life phone calls) to our office to thank us for it.
3) Share the new things you’re working on.
If people are going to buy from you, they want to know that you’re always pushing yourself to learn, grow, and evolve your product/service to give them the best experience possible. Sharing these things publicly (within reason) is a great way to generate excitement and show that you really know what you’re doing.
Example: Lately, we’ve been experimenting with a test-and-learn approach we’ve dubbed agile marketing. After testing the framework on our own company, we created a case study to walk people through what we did—and, hopefully, inspire them to let us do it for them too.
4) Recap customer success stories.
If you want to showcase your experience, you want to showcase your wins. Think of fun and creative ways to share those customer success stories. Whether it’s through a unique video, Q&A, article, or traditional case study, there are plenty of ways to share the story—and even help others learn something in the process.
Example: We publish traditional case studies on our website, but we also spin them into editorial content with expanded ideas, tips, etc. to help people see how our experience can benefit them. That is how our Dropbox case study became the article “5 Things We Did to Improve Dropbox Market Perception by 7%.”
Of course, the key to a good case study is a strong narrative. Find out how to craft customer success stories that tell a compelling story.
5) Share insider data.
Data storytelling is always great for building credibility. (Did you know that adding a number or data point to a headline can make it more clickable?) And it is especially helpful to establish you as a thought leader with real knowledge.
Look at your internal data, and think about ways to tell stories around that. Maybe you’ve noticed an interesting trend. Maybe you tried a new strategy that clearly paid off in your quarterly report. These are all things that showcase your experience. (As an added bonus, that data may be picked up in industry publications.)
Example: When we increased our sales 160% with our new marketing strategy, we shared the story of what we did and how we did it to help others get insights.
FYI, if you’re not sure where to get good insider data, here are 9 places you can look.
How to Win SEO Going Forward
SEO is always changing, which means you need a strong but flexible strategy. No matter what trends come and go, these are the core things that will always fuel your success.
- Choose the right keywords. Going for the highest-volume keywords isn’t the best play anymore. Instead, see our guide to choose the best keywords for your unique audienc.
- Optimize your site. Always follow best practices to ensure your site is running smoothly.
- Measure your progress. SEO is a long game, but it’s important to track your progress over time. This can help you identify opportunities to optimize content that is falling off page one, or tweak your strategy to adjust.
Ultimately, no matter what you’re focusing on in your SEO strategy, always think of EEAT. Infuse your content with as much firsthand knowledge and insider expertise as you can, and you will always give your audience something more valuable than AI-generated content can.
P.S. If you need a little extra support for your SEO strategy, we’d be happy to chat. If you’re curious about how we work, find out how we helped Blend increase site traffic 183%.
Thanks to Columnfivemedia! This is lovely.