the frequency trap
DESCRIPTION
Slides on Melt Content's white paper The Frequency Trap, which analyses the output of three travel blogs and makes a case for a 'less, better' content strategy.TRANSCRIPT
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The Frequency TrapWhy the most prolific travel bloggers need to refocus
“While I was gone, my blog didn’t explode. My readers didn’t all hit unsubscribe. The world didn’t end.”Matthew Kepnes, Nomadicmatt.com
"There really is no ideal length, but there is an ideal question: "Should this page exist?""Grant Simmons, director, The Search Agency
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That was then...
• Average time spent on a news site is two-and-a-half minutes (Pew, 2010).
• Studies say screen reading is bad for consumption and production of information.
• Commercial publishers favour short, pageview-boosting material.
• Lengthiest pieces online are poorly optimised dumps from print media.
• Blogging experts recommend ‘goldilocks’ length: around 500 words.
• Leading aggregation tools have limited filtering options - reader sits at the centre of multiple firehoses.
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This is now
• RSS readers are in decline.
• Social filtering is the norm.
• Twitter and Facebook replace RSS as ‘following’ mechanisms.
• Bookmarking tools are ubiquitous, from Twitter favourites to Instapaper.
• Advertisers want engagement metrics, not just high pageviews.
• New-breed publishers are questioning ‘goldilocks’ word count (Quartz aims for under 300 or over 800).
• New devices are helping to bring long-form in from the cold.
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Content lives longer
Reader as ‘hub’ for content feeds Reader as node in overlapping networks
Social sharing acts like a collective memory, keeping the best content alive.
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The long-form revival
• 42% of news readers regularly read in-depth news articles and analysis on their tablet (Pew, 2011).
• Content driven social movements begin to emerge:
‣ Longreads.com
For articles “perfect for the iPad, iPhone or Kindle, and apps like Read It Later, Flipboard and Instapaper.”
‣ Longform.org
For articles “too long and too interesting to be read on a web browser.”
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Google’s quality drive
• 2011: Panda hammers keyword-stuffed articles, duplicate pages and poor user experience.
• 2013: Hummingbird cements shift from simple keyword matching to analysing purpose and context of query.
• 2013: Google trials ‘in-depth’ box designed to highlight long, detailed and authoritative work (US only).
• Some commentators identify a link between search success and length:
‣ Top-ranking pages for a sample of over 20,000 keywords run to over 2,000 words (serpIQ, 2010).
‣ SEOmoz finds a correlation between content length and backlinks on their own blog (SEOmoz, 2011).
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“I don’t know what it is - if it’s social media fatigue - or what’s happening out there in the marketplace, but it seems like people want
higher quality content less frequently.”
Michael Hyatt, Michaelhyatt.com
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Content analysis• Three travel blogs over the course of 140 days:
‣ Everything Everywhere
‣ Nomadic Matt
‣ Planet D
• Each post assessed for page authority (MOZ), shares and comments.
• Each post assigned an aggregate ‘efficacy rating’.
• Benchmarked against a publisher successfully doing ‘slow’ content:
‣ A List Apart
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Frequency is not a condition of success
In fact, efficacy and authority scores increased as post frequency decreased.
Everything Everywhere Planet D Nomadic Matt A List Apart
Posts in samplePost authority (av.)
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Length and authority
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
Word count
Of the 20 best posts by page authority, 17 were over 1,000 words and eight were over 2,000 words.
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Length and efficacyOf the 20 best posts by efficacy rating, 16 were over 1,000 words and 10 were over 2,000 words.
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
Word count
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Why might long articles perform well?
• Detailed
• Structured
• Goal-focused
• Exhaustively researched
Not every long article has authority, but truly authoritative articles are often long.
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Space-filling posts performed poorly
• Of the bottom 20 posts by efficacy score, 13 were single-picture photo posts.
• Every photo post had an efficacy score below the sample average.
• Guest posts were more complex:
‣ Detailed, expert posts showed high efficacy scores
‣ ‘Keep the site moving’ posts showed low scores
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Less, better
• Brands are increasingly interested in partnering with bloggers
• They will look beyond reach, at professionalism, engagement, authority, user experience.
• Refocus energy away from ‘junk posts’ and into:
‣ Design and UX
‣ In-depth posts and ongoing themes/projects
‣ Other writing opportunities
‣ Proactive pitches to travel publishers/marketers
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The full paper includes extensive tables and footnotes.
Read and download at meltcontent.com.