Do Your Blog Posts Have Topical Depth? 4 Indicators to Measure It

Your company’s founders worked hard to put your brand at the top of its niche – and today, you’re one of the largest companies of its kind. But now, upstart competitors are nipping at your virtual heels. You might be lacking in-depth blog posts that position you as the go-to authority in your field.

But there’s a cure for that. Let’s look at several of the ways to assess your blog posts for content depth.

What Are In-Depth Blog Posts?

As MarketMuse’s John Crandall points out, content depth measures how well a blog post covers all the subjects that relate to your post’s focus topic. Google has used content depth as one of its key metrics for over 11 years, but it has now taken on new significance as people use natural language to search for information about each topic.

How well your content answers most of the possible questions your target audience has about your topic is essential for providing users with a better search experience.

Content depth isn’t so much about the length of the post. It’s about how your article meets your audience’s needs versus your competitors’ posts.

Similarly, if you’re writing a blog post for topic newbies, don’t think that you must include a ton of technical details, as you might in a white paper. What you must do is address the topic with all the depth someone new to the subject might benefit from.

Measure Topical Depth by Relevance and User Interest

Relevance both to the topic and the audience’s place in the buyer’s journey, therefore, is the key to topical depth success. When you write for relevance, keywords and their synonyms will fall into place naturally.

Gone are the days when your SEO team instructed you to include the exact keyword X number of times. That only bores your readers, driving them away from your content and toward that of your competitors.

Cover topics that interest your target audience. While the inner workings of your latest gadget might be your jam, it won’t hit home with your readers if all they want to know are the four benefits your gadget will provide.

Check Your Posts’ Publication Dates

Dated content – even if the topic is evergreen – usually could use some updating to square with current thought. Do a thorough content audit and refresh pieces you published in earlier years with the latest statistics and perspectives.

Think of it from your readers’ perspective. If you’re using outdated facts, you haven’t gone into sufficient depth in your blog posts for your users to consider them authoritative. Spend a little extra time revamping your content, and you’ll find that it pays off in spades in search rankings.

Look for Content That the Top-Ranked Pages Share

If your audit turns up some content analytics that uncover poor performers, perform a keyword search for those posts’ key concepts. You’ll likely find several bits of information that the top-ranking posts in those searches share, as Ahrefs’ Joshua Hardwick points out.

Look for commonalities the highest-ranking posts have that your posts do not. Then, add some depth to your posts on that topic to not only match – but, more importantly, to exceed the level of detail on the top performers.

Find Other Searches That the Top-Ranked Pages Rank For

At the bottom of your search results, Google will usually post related searches and queries. Look for the pages that rank highly in all of the related searches.

Include some of these queries and search terms in your content so that it has depth that goes beyond the top-ranking ones. You can do this research on your own, but if you want to save time, Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool can do the legwork in less time.

After you’ve revised your content, a tool called MarketMuse can score your content and compare it against your competitors’ blog posts. If it doesn’t stack up, the tool can provide you with some relevant subjects that your posts are missing.

When You Create New Content, Make It In-Depth from the Outset

Don’t stop with revamping your old content. From ideation to content collaboration to publication, provide a wealth of information for your target audience.

Provide Tips that Go Beyond “Buy Our Stuff, and It Will Solve All Your Problems”

If you really want in-depth content, as Tony Stilwell advises, provide your readers with tips that they can put to use immediately after reading or watching it. They’ll appreciate your helpfulness and make you their go-to authority on topics in your industry.

Make it worth their time to consume your content, and they’ll start sharing it with their friends and colleagues. And, when they need the “stuff” you sell, they will be more likely to buy it from you.

Cite Industry Experts in Your Content

As an industry leader, you probably have teams of engineers, doctors, lawyers, or other subject matter experts that can provide a rich source of in-depth material for your blog posts. With a content marketing platform that allows you to do content collaboration and creation all in a single place, it’s easy to bend their ear for a few details.

Cover News That Impacts Your Industry

When the daily news intersects with what you do, it’s time to provide your perspective on the topic of the day. For example, during the past year, many brands provided needed advice to their audiences about how to handle the COVID lockdowns.

Healthcare companies provided advice on sanitation, lawyers and security firms weighed in on the legal and security hassles of remote work, and software companies helped their clients conduct meetings remotely – all through in-depth, timely content.

When You Provide Depth, You’ll Never Need Fluff

I can remember a time not long ago when even some of the top names in the digital marketing industry recommended that content creators make all their blog posts at least X words in length. Bad idea.

Either they included information that was, at best, tangential to the main topic, or worse, fluff. Frankly, unless they were something with headlines I could easily scan, I dropped out about halfway through – even though I wanted to learn about the topic.

Instead of fluff, tell compelling stories. Provide needed advice.

Use images and subheadings to break up the monotony. And most importantly, use succinct language that provides information without boring the reader.

It’s All About Simplifying

Just like with your content’s language and structure, you need to streamline the creation process. Having a single place to conduct all your work, from research to creation to analyzing the result, frees up your creatives’ time to do in-depth research and write in-depth content.

DivvyHQ can do just that. Research, ideate, collaborate, create, publish, analyze, tweak – all under the same digital roof. Get your free 14-day trial today!