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Past Issues

  • #37: Content marketers need product marketing
  • #36: Google’s Helpful Content Update, in simple terms
  • #35: Make your site more browsable
  • #34: Which pages should you delete?
  • #33: Scaling up the good stuff
  • #32: No more atomic blogs
  • #31: How IS it going?
  • #30: Detective work for declining traffic
  • #29: The helpful test
  • #28: PLC = TLC
  • #27: It could be BMail
  • #26: No content weft behind 🧶
  • #25: Documenting your content strategy
  • #24: A checklist for content UX
  • #23: A new guide + tool from Ercule
  • #22: Getting aligned
  • #21: About that blog post from six years ago
  • #20: Find new content in the stars
  • #19: Why lemons deserve your attention
  • #18: Encourage your wallflowers
  • #17: Popular, but lazy
  • #16: Direct traffic, idk
  • #15: Where is this revenue coming from???
  • #14: What content people need to know about paid search
  • #13: An issue about smooth jazz 🎷🥱
  • #12: MUM = next BERT???
  • #11: The pages are *eating* each other! Is that a problem?
  • #10: Cue the dramatic hamster
  • #9: 🎶 This issue has a soundtrack 🎶
  • #8: 30% more cuddles
  • #7: SEO Speedwagon
  • #6: It's like living in the future!
  • #5: How sketchy could it be?
  • #4: Hieronymous Bosch levels of detail
  • #3: We miss you, Kid Pix
  • #2: GPT-3 is coming for your job, or it isn't
  • #1: The first one

#18: Encourage your wallflowers

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📰 What to do with posts that are strong but unknown


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You probably have some blog posts where:

  • The content is brilliant
  • The bounce rate is low
  • The traffic it’s attracting is perfectly targeted

And yet: it’s not getting enough traffic. So the net conversions are low.

At Ercule, we refer to these posts as “shy”. These pages could be superstars – if only they got out into the world a little more.


🦢 Why aren’t these pages more popular?

Since the content itself is already strong, its problems are probably rooted in optimization and distribution. Things like…

  • Isolation. If it’s a one-off piece, with no related posts, no internal links, and no clear place in your service offering, then it’s going to be hard for users to find.
  • Keyword volume. If the post is discussing common pain points, but does it in heavily branded or niche language, new leads won’t find you in search.
  • Meta-tags. If your page doesn’t look appealing in search results, people won’t click through.
  • Page experience. UX basics like site speed might not derail bottom-funnel leads, but they will hinder your overall conversion performance.
  • Distribution. If you don’t tell the world about this post, and repeat the message strategically across platforms, you can’t expect anyone to know that it exists.


🏄🏼 What you can do

Revisit your optimization and distribution strategies for this post. Some things to look at:

  • Update the page title and h-tags to meet Google’s recommendations. Make it easier for the search engines to see, comprehend, and promote you.
  • Update the meta description. Each Google result is like a little ad for your content, so make yours descriptive and engaging.
  • Assess the page experience. We mentioned this is important for driving conversions. It’s important for driving traffic, too.
  • Add relevant internal links for the shy post on other pages of your site. It’s a kindness for readers and a proven method for boosting visibility.
  • Confirm the search volume for the post’s target keyword, and explore adjacent keywords. A slight change in terminology can lead to a wider audience.
  • Adapt the post for other formats (eg. social posts, video, newsletters 😉). It makes content more accessible and extends the mileage you get from each post.
  • Tell the world! Across all of your platforms. Then remind the world. Then do it again.

And keep doing all of these things. Distribution is a cycle and not a one-and-done sprint. (And optimizing old content is crucial to a distribution strategy.)

Feel free to schedule office hours to look at this together!


xoxo, Ercule

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