Have you been generating content for your brand for several years? If yes, you could have duplicate content about the exact same subject. Content consolidation SEO is the key to success for this type of issue. It seeks to merge several content pieces targeting the same keywords for the same intent. This prevents similar keywords and pages from competing with one another. It improves content quality, relevance, and SEO efforts such as link building. In this article, we will define content consolidation, discuss its process, how it improves SEO, and quality content overall. Let’s get started!

What Is Content Consolidation?

Content consolidation involves merging several articles or SEO pages into comprehensive content. The resulting content is a high-quality resource with great authority on a specific keyword. It also has a robust value proposition and content quality, including supporting content. Consolidating your posts entails auditing, removing, merging, and updating your content strategy. It helps fix overlapping on-site pages and keywords to match your strategic goals.

Process of Consolidating Content

An effective content consolidation process depends on several data sources like Google Search Console. This tool provides useful data to help identify possible overlapping content. Here are a few steps that can help consolidate your existing content:

  • Open Google Search Console’s Performance Section. The section provides all the pages and keywords that drive organic traffic to your site. You’re able to identify the content targeting similar search queries.
  • Determine Keywords with High Impressions. Go to the “does not contain” section to sort out branded queries and keywords. Select the keywords with high impressions but lower click-through-rate. Consider search queries with a ranking between 20 and 50. They have greater potential for optimization.
  • Identify Competing Posts. Analyze the page report to identify similar posts competing for clicks and impressions. If several posts are competing for impressions, it means many contents overlap.
  • Search for Queries Ranking On Google. Check to see if the results are comprehensive or brief posts. You get to understand how well to merge the content into unique, long-form content.
  • Check Consolidation Potential. Review every post to see if it matches the content provided by the SERPs. This enables you to structure your new content and align it with Google’s first-page results.
  • Consolidate Your Content. Consolidate your competing posts to get single, long-format content. Remember to remove any low-quality, thin, and invaluable content affecting your SEO performance.
  • Create Your New Content. Give your consolidated content a new title in relation to your target keyword. Keep the content easy to read, unique, engaging, and relevant to meet the searcher’s intent. Optimize the content for user-friendliness and add proper Meta tags for better ranking.

How Does Content Consolidation Help Improve SEO?

Content consolidation helps with content auditing and seeks to improve your SEO strategy. The process involves recording, measuring, and analyzing your web content’s performance. You can:

  • Remove or fix low-quality, incorrect, irrelevant, or outdated content for better SEO results. Delivering up-to-date, helpful, and unique content makes you an expert in the given topic. Google can rank your site higher, improving your SEO strategy. 
  • Make necessary edits and revisions for accuracy, relevancy, and clarity. Your new content meets Google’s E-T-A principles for higher SEO performance.
  • Identify pages with similar topics and combine them into a comprehensive resource. Content consolidation seeks to remove duplicate content for SEO success. The process prevents Google from penalizing your site due to duplicate content.
  • Analyze your audience and revise the content to meet your target audience’s needs. Update your keyword usage based on buyer behaviors and search trends. This allows you to outrank your competitors, improving your SEO efforts.
  • Optimize your existing content to match the online searcher’s intent. Content consolidation: let’s optimize your current content to meet the latest SEO practices.
  • Strengthen your content strategy. Reorganize your content for users to find what they want at any time with ease. This improves your content rankings and helps meet your SEO needs.

Conducting proper content consolidation helps improve your SEO performance. Your content starts to appear on Google’s first page. This attracts more organic traffic, increases audience engagement, and boosts sales.

Defining “Quality” Content

High-quality content includes having corrected grammar and is free from errors. It completely covers the topic and answers the searcher’s question in detail. Such content is engaging, well-structured, and written with the reader’s needs in mind. Google uses the Expertise-Authority-Trustworthiness strategy (E-A-T) to define quality content.

Expertise

For content to rank high, readers need to view you as an expert in your niche. Your content, credentials, and biography should show and prove your skills.

One way to show your expertise is to create quality content. Google views high-quality content as one which is relevant to the search query. The query entails the keywords and key users type into the search bar to get the SERP. Proper keyword research helps determine what your target audience is looking for online. Create unique, quality, accurate, relevant content for the keyword.

Medical, financial, or legal websites influence the reader’s health and wellness. If you want to excel in such competitive niches, display the utmost expertise levels. That’s by creating accurate and well-detailed content that users want. This increases the number of shares and time spent on a page and reduces the bounce rate.

Authoritativeness

Quality content proves your authority in a certain keyword or topic. Such content has many authority indicators pointing to your article and web pages. Some of these indicators include:

  • Backlinks from credible sources like governmental bodies
  • Affiliations
  • Reviews
  • Awards

Trustworthiness

You have to prove that readers or the audience trust you for Google to rank your site high. The content you create should be relevant and helpful to users. Besides content, everything your website displays should make users feel safe.

Trustworthiness depends on your web activities, the latest user reviews, and website security. For instance, about 82% of online users won’t visit unsecured websites. As an eCommerce business owner, secure your website to gain content readers’ trust.

E-A-T is a factor Google uses to help users get the quality and valuable content that users want. It determines whether your content adds value to the user looking for a specific answer. Creating valuable content increases your credibility and trustworthiness. It keeps users returning to your website for more, increasing SEO success.

Google Guidelines

Google provides general and quality guidelines you need to follow strictly. They help Google bots find, index, and rank your website. Some of these guidelines include:

  • Creating easy-to-read content to engage readers.
  • Making pages for users and not for search engines.
  • Organizing your website pages clearly to engage readers.
  • Generating unique and useful content to outshine competitors.
  • Clarifying your expertise and authoritativeness for credibility.
  • Ensuring all links point to secure web pages for trust-building.
  • Optimize your site’s mobile-friendliness to increase user experience.
  • Providing enough content to satisfy readers.
  • Using proper backlinks for higher domain authority.
  • Avoiding advertisements that prevent users from consuming your content.
  • Focusing on what makes your content engaging, valuable, and unique.

What Google Looks for In Ranking Content Higher

Content forms a major part of your SEO and digital marketing strategies. For Google to rank your content higher, consider the following factors:

  • Usefulness/Relevancy. Google favors content and web pages that are useful to searchers. Such content answers the user’s questions and provides a solution to their problems. Creating content relevant to a specific keyword enables Google to rank it higher on SERPs.
  • Credibility/Trustworthiness. Audiences who feel comfortable consuming your content stay longer on your pages. They visit your posts frequently, review them, and share them with others. This tells Google that your content is credible, resulting in higher rankings.
  • Accuracy. Google emphasizes providing quality content that provides correct and accurate information. Provide statistics and facts from trustworthy sources for credibility. Google finds it easier to rank your content high for better results. 
  • Uniqueness. Original content allows Google to set you apart from your competitors for better rankings. It promotes and awards you for your creativity and originality in relation to a specific topic. Unique content protects you from facing strict penalties Google imposes on plagiarized content.
  • Comprehensiveness. Google prefers web pages that completely cover a specific topic or keyword. Creating detailed content that covers a topic proves your niche expertise. It enriches your audience with useful information for their query or problem, allowing Google to rank your content high.
  • Readability. Generating easy-to-read content makes it crawlable. Google algorithms navigate through your pages fast for proper indexing and rank your content high. 
  • User-friendliness. Google values web content and pages that provide an excellent user experience. It uses unique algorithms to check your content’s loading speed and responsiveness. The more user-friendly your content is, the higher Google ranks it.

Boostability’s SEO Professional Services

Are you struggling to align your content with what search engines, such as Google, provide on the first page? Boostability’s SEO experts have got you covered. Learn more about our SEO Partner Program and learn more about our SEO services today!

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Ansley is the former Content Marketing Manager at Boostability. Since graduating from Utah State University with two degrees in Communication Studies and Journalism: Public Relations, Ansley specializes in creating engaging and informative SEO content for readers, customers, and partners through different marketing channels. Along with creating new content, Ansley works to keep content organized and creates and executes new content strategies. When she’s not writing, she loves to travel, visit National Parks, and loves all things Disney.