Content is critical, and It determines the success or failure of online businesses. To boost ROI, you need to work on increasing your user engagement and traffic. And to do this, your content has to be top-notch, as well as being optimized the right way.  

A content that ranked high in the past can lose its glory and be labeled as underperforming due to many reasons. And when this happens, it is essential to detect and improve it. Our article culminated in the top ways of optimizing content to boost traffic. If this is what you would like to learn, kindly scroll down and continue reading. 

Underperforming Content: What are they?

Underperforming Content is any content that is not attaining the ROI that you hoped. Instances where you might be experiencing underperforming content include the following:

  • Your emails lack engagement.
  • Your website is not getting enough traffic.
  • Your videos are not getting views.

Underperforming content includes content that has never performed well and those that once performed well but no longer did. This can also include web content that has the potential of performing well but is yet to. 

Optimize Content to Boost Traffic and User Engagement

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Reasons Why You Might Have Underperforming Content

There are various reasons why your content might experience this. Some of the reasons include: 

  • You failed to use the right choice of keywords.
  • Your content might contain outdated information.
  • Competitors might be publishing preferable content.
  • Your content doesn’t measure the user intent.
  • Your content is tied to old incidents.
  • There are grammatical errors in your content.
  • The content has poor formatting issues.
  • Your content doesn’t fit into the format Google is prioritizing.

How Do You Recognize Underperforming Content?

Boost Traffic and User Engagement

Image Source: Getty

Having learned why you might have underperforming content, we shall now discuss some checks to help you detect them. 

Intent and SERP Analysis

You will be able to spot various questions related to your web content concerning relevance, intent, and competition. You can access these questions by scrutinizing the SERP for specific key points. These days, all core SEO tools supply you with several substantial pieces of information on what the SERP looks like. It will provide information regardless of the keyword you are scrutinizing.

Chrome Extensions

Many chrome extensions can provide you much information on the page’s indexability status and examine things like Meta robots tags and canonical tags with a simple click.

Some extension includes:

Google Search Console

You can analyze the status of your page by using the URL inspection tool. This can enable you to answer some questions, which include:

  1. Has Google indexed my page? Are we allowing Google even to index the page?
  2. Has Google crawled my page? Are we allowing Google to even crawl the page? 

Google will provide information about your crawlability when you assess the Coverage feature. 

Ensure that user-declared canonical and Google-selected canonical do not differ. If they differ, however, you should look into the reason for it. This is because it means that Google is disrespecting the canonical regulations that are put on the page. Check URL Inspection Tool to know more. 

JavaScript Check

JavaScript is king in today’s environment because, among many benefits, it adds interactivity to your page. While doing this, it might modify some key HTML components that are essential for SEO. You can see how a page would turn out without JavaScript. You can do this by using this tool, WWJD.

To see whether your on-page SEO might not be compatible with JavaScript, you can use one of the following tools. They are all handy tools to fix any kind of troubleshooting. This is because the rendered-DOM resource showcases in real-time.

After running these, click to check the rendered HTML and observe the following checks:

  • Are my internal links visible to Google?
  • Can Google gain access to other key elements of the page?
  • Is the key part of my content visible?

How to Revamp Underperforming Content to Boost Traffic and Engagement?

1. Have a Good Understanding of Search Intent

Always analyze what the SERP entails for the topic of focus. You can better understand what search engines need by exploring the SERP and all its facets. 

While auditing the SERP, you should be able to give answers to the following questions:

  1. What content format is Google displaying in the SERP?
  2. What are the Keywords used in the metadata of your competitor?
  3. What type of content is Google giving attention to here? Is it informational, transactional, or navigational? 
  4. How competing are the main keywords and how well are the competitors ranking effectively for them?

Expectantly, the above question will give you an outlook of your possibilities of ranking high on Google’s first page.

2. Ensure that Your Page can properly be Crawled and Indexed

You want to ensure that your web page is not under any track of blocked resources.

Ensure that other pages have a canonical tag towards your URL. You want to confirm that the canonical is richly-done; hence Google will ignore them. 

3. Write Excellent Metadata

Ensure you pay attention when writing title tags. You want them to be rich and unique. 

Although Meta descriptions are not considered when ranking posts, they are also important when urging your reader to click on your search result. 

Try not to change metadata very often. However, you want to properly try new metadata once applied.  

4. Make the Right Amends to Your Content

Focus on creating great content, not for Google but for the user. While doing this, endure that your content is readable. 

5. Ensure You’re Using the Right Keyword

Know and understand what keyword you want to rank for, as well as what keyword you are qualified to rank for. Be pragmatic about your ranking possibilities. 

Conclusion

When it comes to content marketing, the most common issue is underperforming content. Underperforming content can hinder your search results. This challenge can be fixed by revamping your content. First, you want to carry out extensive research on your content, search for where the flaws are, and fix them. 

We hope that our article has provided you the information you desire to boost traffic and user engagement.

This is a guest post written by Grace P.

If you want to submit guest posts to Inuidea, check out the guest post guidelines for Inuidea.

Author Bio:

Grace P. is a professional content writer at Monify Media who harbors her love for writing and crafting killer social media campaigns. She has worked with top-notch brands and magazines, which shows off her professionalism. When she’s not typing blog posts, you can find her lounging in her bed or enjoying burritos.