Author: Elizabeth

The difference between long-tail and short-tail keywords comes down to popularity. Many people search for short-tail keywords, while few search for long-tail keywords.

Because of that, long-tail keywords are generally easier to rank for and tend to attract searchers with more specific intent. This has made targeting them a widely adopted SEO tactic. 

So should you follow suit and prioritize long-tail keywords at all times? 

It’s not about how many words they contain or how specific they are. 

Short- and long-tail keywords got their respective names from the position on the “search demand” curve. 

If we take all search queries that people have performed in Google in the course of a month and order them by their search volumes, it’ll look somewhat like this:

As you can see, long-tail keywords are literally in the “long tail” of this graph. It’s because they are

Don’t expect Google to take a sabbatical this year.

Do expect SEO to be more nuanced than ever in 2023.

My best advice? Track your SEO key performance indicators (KPIs) more often to identify positive or negative trends in your organic results.

But don’t worry about every shift in search rankings because they fluctuate. Pages that drop could quickly rebound a month later, even if the fall happened because of one of Google’s frequent algorithm tweaks.

Instead, focus your SEO strategy on producing as much useful and original content as possible.

I stop short of saying “quality” content because that’s subjective. Google doesn’t give a good explanation in its guidelines championing quality content. Does “quality” refer to exceptional writing, the depth of content on a page, the design of a page, or other factors?

If you provide relevant, original content that answers searchers’ questions and addresses their concerns, you’ll

The year’s end tends to prompt reflection on the previous 12 months and plans for the year ahead. You may spend time assessing what worked in your content program, what didn’t, and what you can do differently next year.

If you’re a content executive or leader, these reflections might influence where you direct those precious content marketing budgets and resources in 2023.

For individual contributors and managers, these reflections might influence how you feel about your current role and future career moves.

As you take this time to reflect and plan, use CMI’s recent research findings to add context to your analysis and reinforce any decisions you make.

What to know about your content marketing career – and your team’s

Our (first) Content Marketing Career & Salary 2023 Outlook (registration required) found:

As we wrote in the report, many content marketers are “poised and ready to leap when the right

Have you heard a lot about ChatGPT lately?

I thought so.

In case you haven’t (maybe you’ve been too tied up with holiday shopping or closing the fourth quarter), ChatGPT is a prototype artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI that’s gotten a lot of media and social media coverage. This class of generative AI technology receives prompts from users, then generates new text or images (based on the data set used to train the model) in response.

That means if you’re a software engineer, you can ask it to write (or check) your code for you. If you’re a writer, you might ask it to write a blog post on technology (reasonable) or a history of London in the style of Dr. Seuss (Why? Because you can). If you’re a student, you might use it to write a college application essay. You get the idea.

The results are impressive

How do you measure content’s impact on the bottom line? That’s the question on every manager’s mind during budgeting season. And for the content marketing directors of the world, this is one of the most challenging parts of the job.

“What metrics will matter to the C-Suite?” “How can I show the value of my content and get more budget to produce better assets?” There’s a reason why everyone asks these questions ­– and why they are so difficult to answer. Let’s dive in together to unpack them.

Why is it so difficult to measure the impact of content?

Chances are your boss doesn’t “get” content. They don’t truly understand why you can’t give them solid metrics to prove why content matters or what impact it has on your brand’s top and bottom lines. (If you’re in that boat right now, I feel for you, friend.)

Let’s break down why