Molly Ploe

We made it through the first full week of 2019. How are your New Year’s resolutions holding up?

Chances are, you didn’t even set one (56 percent of people don’t). The effectiveness of setting resolutions is up in the air; 80 percent of people fail by Valentine’s Day, but nearly two-thirds of goal-setters in 2018 stuck to their resolutions for at least part of the year.

Even if you’re not establishing resolutions in your personal life, the start of a new year and a new quarter is a great time to set some goals for your marketing initiatives. Here are some ideas to keep in mind in 2019:

Developing a Cohesive Content Marketing Strategy

Let’s start out with a New Year’s resolution to adopt in 2019: creating a cohesive content marketing strategy that works. If you’re starting from scratch, don’t worry; it’s not as hard as it sounds. Plus, EContent has this helpful guide to get you started.

Like any New Year’s resolution, success begins with an accurate understanding of where you are now, what your ultimate goals are and a roadmap to get from point A to point B.

To understand where you are now, you’ll want data. Look at statistics like:

  • How many site visits you get.
  • Who those visitors are (How old are they? Where do they live? What do they want? How did they find your site?).
  • Which pages get the most and least attention.

Next, set some goals, like:

  • Rank for a specific keyword or set of keywords.
  • Increase your traffic by a certain percentage.
  • Build out your blog or resources section on your website.

Finally, here’s a secret ingredient in meeting your New Year’s resolutions, content marketing related or otherwise: patience.

You probably won’t reach page 1 in a day, just like you probably won’t completely change your dietary habits in a day. Keep working toward your goals, even when progress seems sluggish.

Get more advice on developing a cohesive content marketing strategy at EContent.

3 Tools to Optimize Your Old Content to Build More Organic Search Traffic

Sure, “new year, new you” is a catchy phrase, and striving for a new goal is sometimes worthwhile. But there are also times when it’s just as beneficial to look back on your previous efforts with a fresh eye and build them out further. That’s why Content Marketing Institute thinks you should give your old content a refresher.

This year, don’t just focus on creating new content. Peruse through your old content to see what’s performing well and what can be updated. To choose which blogs would benefit most from a makeover, look for these signs:

  • Old articles that still bring in traffic but have outdated stats, broken links or irrelevant information. (Don’t lose those visitors!)
  • Articles that haven’t quite made it to page 1, but they’re close. (They might just need a boost, like filling in keyword gaps, revamping subheads or providing more information about the topic.)
  • Articles that are slowly decreasing or increasing in organic traffic. (A few tweaks might give them the traction they need to really gain momentum.)

For more information and actionable tips on optimizing your old content for 2019, check out Content Marketing Institute’s article.

DuckDuckGo Broke 9 Billion Searches in 2018, and It’s Growing

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that focuses on user privacy by not saving user profiles. Though it has a tiny market share (about one-third of a percent in the last quarter of 2018, compared to Google’s 76.23 percent), it’s gaining traction. Last year, it broke 9 billion searches, up from the 5.9 billion in 2017.

The search engine’s growth has been practically exponential; it didn’t reach 10 million searches per day until seven years after it launched in 2008, but reached 20 million just two years after that. By October 2018, it announced it was seeing 30 million daily searches.

DuckDuckGo doesn’t even claim a full percent of search engine market share, but SEOs should keep their continued growth in mind nonetheless. Its mission to keep searches secret and never store user data is relevant in an age where privacy is in high demand, but seemingly low supply.

Read more about DuckDuckGo’s record-breaking year and vision for 2019 at SearchEngineLand.

7 Factors to Consider Before Major Website Changes

Making major changes to your site might give a better user experience or reflect a branding change, but it could also cause a decline fall in organic rankings. As such, a site makeover isn’t a project to jump into right away.

Before you begin, keep a few key elements in mind to mute any potential negative effects that may come from changing or migrating domains, switching to a new content management system or making another major change to your site.

A few of these considerations include obvious things like fixing broken internal links and 404 errors. Search Engine Journal also explained that other helpful steps could include getting rid of duplicate content and building out thin pages.

Get more advice at Search Engine Journal.

Are you ready to set a 2019 marketing resolution yet? Check back next week for more content marketing inspiration.