Stacy Willis | Playwire
Stacy Willis is one of the smartest marketers out there. I should know. I’ve worked with her for several years, across four companies. One of the things she’s really good at is content - both strategy and execution. And the content strategies she executes lead to real, measurable revenue.
Stacy has found that while many marketers understand content strategy in theory, what trips most of them up is the execution. In this episode, she dives deeply into the lessons she’s learned about executing content strategies. She covers everything from how to work with subject matter experts to get the background you need to produce great content, to how content is best organized on your website and how you can measure the impact your content is having on pipeline and revenue.
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
Resources from this episode:
Connect with Stacy on LinkedIn
Visit Stacy’s website to learn more about her topic cluster course
Visit the Playwire website
Stacy and Kathleen recording this episode
Kathleen (00:11):
Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And today my guest is Stacy Willis, who is the VP of Marketing at Playwire. Welcome to the podcast, Stacy.
Stacy (00:23):
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.
Kathleen (00:26):
I am so excited to have you here. And so I say that a lot when I introduce my guests, but like just for anyone listening, I really, really, really, really especially mean it this time. Um, and I'm gonna take a minute before you introduce yourself and just say something, which is that. So I've known Stacy for, I think since 2015. Yeah. So seven years. Um, and there are not very many times in life and in work, especially when you meet somebody and, and especially when you hire someone and you're like, oh my God, I just found the most amazing person who is so smart and so capable and just so going to go places and take over the world. And that's what I felt when I hired Stacy seven years ago. Uh, back when I owned my agency, she literally, when I hired her, I was like, this is the first person I've ever hired, where I feel like I could give her the keys and walk away.
<laugh> she could run the business for me. Um, and I'm so excited to see her doing what she's doing at Playwire, um, and creating courses, which we're gonna talk about. But if you're listening, Stacy is a person that you should be following. So head to LinkedIn right now, if you're at your computer, go to her profile, follow her because she is super smart and posts, amazing things about content. So that normally I don't do this kind of an introduction for guests. Um, <laugh> so with that, I'm going to stop and Stacy, can you please just, uh, you're you're also a second time inbound success podcast guest, which is very rare, um, and coming to us from the beach in San Diego, which is incredibly awesome. So can you take a minute and tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and also what Playwire is?
Stacy (02:10):
Of course. So, um, I've been in digital marketing for almost 10 years now, which you're a little story reminded me of and made refueled,
Kathleen (02:20):
Oh my God, you're not old. Believe me, take it from one who knows. <laugh>
Stacy (02:24):
Um, and I spent the majority of my career in the agency space and, um, very recently in the last year decided, um, a little grudgingly that it was time to go in house. So, um, the majority of what we'll end up talking about today in terms of content strategy and, and all of those pieces has been built over, you know, working with hundreds of companies over the last 10 years, particularly in the tech space, almost always in the B2B space. Um, and then Playwire is an ad tech company. They build technology for publishers of websites and apps that want to monetize with ads. And I've been here. Uh, I've worked as a consultant for them for about a year before I came on full-time at the beginning of this year. So I've worked here for about a year and a half, even though my profile might say six months
Kathleen (03:10):
<laugh> <laugh>. So I'll preface, we are gonna talk about content strategy and I, I need to preface the conversation with, uh, a story that like I've had firsthand experience working with Stacy on how she does content strategies across multiple companies. So basically until she went in house, every place I would go every time I would take a new job, the first thing I would do is say, we need to hire Stacy whatever agency she was at at the time, uh, because she knows more about this. Um, and than anyone I know, and, and what she would do is come in and very quickly, uh, assess kind of the company, the product, the audience, figure out the, the content strategy, execute on it and, and really, really quickly show tremendous results. Not just in terms of increases in website, traffic, but in pipeline, coming from organic SEO and specifically the content that was part of the strategy. So, so genuine results in terms of dollars for companies. And that's why I was really excited to have her on. And she has turned a lot of what she knows from that big brain of hers into a course. So, all right, Stacy, take it from there. Tell me a little bit about you come in. Like I said, you come into a new company and the, that company wants to get found online, walk me through your approach.
Stacy (04:33):
Yeah. So, um, I mean, there's, there's a lot that goes into evaluating where somebody's at to begin with, right. So has content production been a part of the past history of the company? Is it something that's completely new? What do we have in place to support it in terms of a website architecture and, and all of those pieces? So there's a lot that goes into like current status, but in general, from there, the, the process is relatively similar. Once we figure out where we're starting from, uh, and that's, that's finding a way to weave the benefits, the product or the company or the service, whatever it is we're really trying to get out there provides into content that serves the pain points of the individuals that are the best fit for the company. And, um, it's the mentality that I always approach it with is, is give first ask second.
So really I look for ways and it, it sometimes takes a little bit of, uh, coercing when you're talking to the sales team or to, you know, people in leadership that we're, we're really trying to help first and talk about ourselves second, but it works in the reverse it's, it's almost counterintuitive approaching your content that way, always results in more leads than if you approached it in the OB, the, the inverse where you're talking about yourself first. Um, and I, I know most people who've been in marketing or digital marketing for long enough know what a topic cluster is. It's not this like groundbreaking new idea, um, nor is it something that people have, have not tried necessarily. I think the, the real difference maker is in having a repeatable strategy to execute because it's not a short term strategy. It's a very long term strategy, particularly when you weave multiple clusters together.
And so it's about having that foundation of the playbook to jump in, start execution quickly and make sure that you're repeatably executing over time. Um, and because I've had the benefit of doing this so many times with so many companies, I've figured out a lot of those pitfalls on my own through trial and error and built that repeatable strategy. So it's, it's really a process of come in, figure out where we're starting from. Okay, great. We're at this point in the process, dig in, use the playbook, figure out how it matches up with the products and services that the, the company itself offers.
Kathleen (06:50):
So let's, I, I love that we're gonna talk about execution cuz you're right. A lot of the people who listen to this podcast have kind of been there, done that they understand organic SEO, but just in case, can you give a, a concise definition of, of a pillar content and topic cluster strategy so that anyone who's not familiar with those terms understands what we're talking about.
Stacy (07:12):
Yeah. Um, and I'll even back it up a step from, from there, the, those purpose of executing a topic cluster or pillar content strategy is 100% to get found on search engines. And, um, the way that search engines evaluate whether or not they place you first is if they determine you to be an expert on a subject. And so if you think back to like having a conversation with a human in person, how do you judge, if someone's an expert at something. And, um, it's usually, uh, what I refer to as thet model, it's a combination of depth and breadth of expertise. So you have a breadth of expertise across your entire subject area. So, uh, let's take a, a neurosurgeon, for example, they would have a breadth of expertise across medicine as a, as a whole category, but then they have really strong depth of expertise.
So that's like the down part of the T in their very specific field, which is neurology. Um, and so just listening to the person talk, you'd be picking up on cues to, to look for those two indicators and say, okay, yeah, this person knows what the heck they're talking about. Um, unsurprisingly, Google those, the exact same thing. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> um, they look for both of those. And so a topic cluster strategy is actually meant to help show the team model to Google through the architecture of your website and the content on it. So, um, a pillar piece, if you're not familiar is a very long form piece of content on a general ish subject area. So the example that I always come back to is, is exercise. Um, so you might have strength training as the, this area of expertise that you wanna show that you know, a lot about.
So your pillar shows the depth, right? So it shows the, the down part of the tea that, you know, a lot, 4,000 words, a lot <laugh> about strength training and then the breadth piece. So the top part of the T is you're supporting or subtopic content, which is usually written in the form of blogs that are closer to like a thousand to 1500 words. Um, depending on which keywords they're going for. And it's showing, uh, breadth of expertise across all of the topic strength training might have to offer. And that's where you might be doing things like how to do a squat, how to get better at pullups things like that, where they're like smaller pieces that show a breadth of expertise across the entire category of strength training. Um, and the way that we demonstrate this is through interlinking architecture. So you have your pillar long form piece. That's like, I know everything about this subject at the center. And then all of your subtopic content is folks around the outside and everything links back and forth to each other, creating that very common hub and spoke model that people associate with, um, pillar content strategies.
Kathleen (09:47):
Nice. All right. So we talked about, um, kind of what they are, and I think most folks understand this. Like you need to create in-depth pieces of content. You need to create associated articles, your content, your kind of thesis is that a lot of people get tripped up in the execution. First of all, why do you think that is? Because I feel like on the surface, it seems super simple, right? Like just gotten, write all the stuff and like, like back <laugh>.
Stacy (10:13):
So, um, the, the problem is that it takes place over time. And if anyone's ever been in charge of marketing, they'll know, it's really easy to get distracted. You get thousands of requests, you have a thousand things that you're doing across, you know, multiple different areas. Content is maybe one sliver of that. You have a CEO over here who has ideas and thoughts and things that they wanna do. You might manage events. It's just really easy to get distracted. And the volume of content it takes to execute a pillar strategy is not small, right? You have a 4,000 word pillar and at least, so you want somewhere between eight and 22 subtopic blogs, depending on you know, exactly how, you know, voluminous the keywords are, you know, how much you're trying to show that you have. And so at minimum, it's an additional eight, 1500 word blogs.
And so that's not a small task. Usually people are working on a cadence of maybe two, the best is like three blogs a week. Um, and so it takes a solid month to even get one written, right, to get all the pieces written and you're gonna be producing them one at a time. And you have to remember it each step to come back and put in the interlinking strategy and make sure that it works and then track results over time and not to mention, continue to optimize that content over time. It's something that's, um, kind of, I, I, similar to the example, I just use, it's like working out, right? Like, you know what you need to do to get better at a pullup you need to practice pullups, but what's the cadence. How often should I do it? How often should I be measuring myself? When should I rest? When should I, you know, there's, there's so many variables to how you actually execute that, that people either get tripped up because they're distracted. They're not sure what they should be doing. And usually the first thing you do, and either of those cases is stop. So inaction is the biggest barrier that there is to completing a content strategy. And it's really simple. It's most people even know that that's the problem. Sometimes it's just, you need that gentle reminder from outside of yourself that you're doing it.
Kathleen (12:15):
So let's start with, which comes first, the chicken or the egg. And in this case, it's do you write your pillar first or your cluster first?
Stacy (12:24):
Oh, um, I, I don't that there's not a set way. I do that, usually what I do. Um, so I have a combination of different ways that I've worked with writers in the past. Sometimes I write content myself. Um, I have a very trusted company that I work with for outsource writing. Um, and I even use them in my current job. And, um, so their, uh, capacity and what they have going on feeds into that. There's a lot of things that feed into that discussion. If we need a blog right away to address something like that's immediately happening. So, um, real life example is happening right now. Um, at, at Playwire, we just got approved to be a part of the Google family ads program. And that's part of a cluster I have planned in three months, but we need to announce it today.
So we're gonna write the blog first way before we write anything else. So there's a ton of things that lead in. So there's not necessarily a do this or that. Uh, first that's like a standard that I use. What I do is at the beginning of executing a cluster, I usually interview for content for the entire cluster, and then I can write it in whatever order I want. And, um, the process that I've built has reminder tasks at the end to come back and update the interlinking structure, no matter what order I produced the content.
Kathleen (13:36):
Okay. So let's back up. You just talked about you interview for the whole thing at the beginning. So based on what you just said, and from my experience, I know that your approach generally is, is to do interviews with subject matter experts and then to give that interview material to writers. Um, I think that one of the things I've seen a lot of marketing leaders struggle with is finding writers that they are comfortable with. And, and a lot of that tends to come down to people think they need writers with industry experience. Um, what's been your experience there.
Stacy (14:08):
So I will say every company that I've ever worked with as an outsource provider, I walked in and didn't know anything about it before started. It's, um, it's part of the learning process. I will tell you, I am, and everybody else will, will confirm this. I'm a perfectionist and I struggle to let other people do things. I, I want to do them all myself. Um, so often the best way for me to learn is I typically do start out writing a lot of the content myself. Then I feel really confident in being able to judge another writer's ability to speak on the same subject that doesn't always work. Sometimes, you know, we start out right into the right, outta the gates with an outsource writer. But the most important thing that I do is involve the subject matter experts that do know what the heck they're talking about in the writing process, but take as little of their time as possible.
So a great example of this is no matter how much I could learn, I did a ton of time in cybersecurity, but I didn't, I never was programming any of that stuff. Like I don't know it at that level. And no matter how much content I write, I, I will not know it at the level of the people executing. Um, and that's, that's true across the board. So I always work with subject matter experts to run interviews and ask really insightful questions during those interviews and make sure I get what I need. And then they're usually helping to review and execute the content on the back end as well, to confirm that it's all correct. Um,
Kathleen (15:27):
And I'll just jump in and say, so we, that one of those cybersecurity experiences was a company where we worked together on this strategy and it was a highly technically complex like intelligence grade cybersecurity solution. Um, and we were fortunate. We had a CTO who was awesome to work with. Um, and, but I think it, it still comes down to, and you were successfully able to produce a lot of really good content on it still comes down to like knowing how to write, ask the right questions. So like, what advice do you have for somebody listening? Who's thinking of taking this approach about like, how to prepare for an interview so that, you know, you're gonna walk out with the information you need.
Stacy (16:09):
So, um, one of the reasons I do like to group the interview for the entire cluster together, so it's usually once you know, the subject, you could do it all in an hour. You might want two, one hour sessions at the very beginning when you're getting to know a company and a product. And, and all of that, um, is because you've done all the keyword research right before. So, you know, what questions people are asking. And then the other thing I really would recommend doing ahead of the interview is reading existing content on the subject. If you can find it, like, start to understand what else is out there, get like a, like a very high level understanding of what other people have produced so that you can start to answer some of the basic questions for yourself. Um, and then during the interview, the way you pose your questions is really important.
So, um, when we're working with, you know, really, really technical people, it's sometimes hard for them to step back into the level that they need to, to be able to explain things to somebody who doesn't understand about as much about it as they do. So, um, one of the, the common things I'll do in almost every question is if I was this person, how would you explain that to me? Right? And so it's, it's putting the subject matter expert in the position of the reader. So knowing who your reader is, is very important. Um, and that's that really easy to say, Hey, if I was, uh, a prospect company that typically struggles with X, how would you explain to me why? And that usually helps the subject matter expert, place it in the appropriate kind of frame of mind. Um, and then the last thing, while it's not a super tactical piece of advice is if you are preparing to write any of this yourself, or to produce the content that somebody else is writing, remember you are teaching somebody about it. So your job during the interview is to understand it well enough to teach it to somebody else. So ask the questions. You need to understand it. There's no stupid questions and I'll even like, preface it, like, Hey, this might seem like a dumb question to you, but it's new to me. So I'm gonna ask you what the heck that acronym meant, or, you know, whatever it is, make sure you ask questions. Don't worry about sounding stupid during the interview because your content will sound stupid later.
Kathleen (18:14):
Okay. So let's back up. Cause I feel like I just jumped into the middle of the story, but I was interested to hear your answer, that question. Um, you have an actual process for all of this. Can you give me like a, an overview? What are the steps in that process?
Stacy (18:29):
Yeah, so, um, I have a defined like task tree if you will, that I've used for years now. Um, and it, it goes from the beginning to the end, in chronological order. It's we do the strategy first. So you dig into the keywords, you ask the questions, you need to understand what are the pain points that people are having. What are the products that we, you know, have and serve? So you you're building one cluster strategy at a time, and that's a good chunk of what the course that I just finished producing is about is, is how, how do you build that topic cluster strategy in the first place? Um, from there we step into content interviews for the execution. So we've got an idea of the working titles of all of our blogs and our pillar that can still be moved and changed based on the outcome of the interviews.
But we've got a good idea. So we know what questions to ask. Um, and then from there we go into content production would, can kind of all happen in whatever order we want, but there's a set task tree for the execution of each piece of content to make sure that the linking structure stays intact by the time you get to the end, um, and that you are optimizing each piece of content for the appropriate keyword. And then, um, at the very end, once all of the pieces of content are produced, staged, published, shared there is finalization tasks to make sure you get the most out of the cluster, it's updating the interlinking strategy to make sure that everything matches. There's like adding a related content section to your pillar is one really tactical, specific piece of that, where you just list every blog that you've created.
That's part of the cluster and link to it, right. Um, people love to look at related content. So it's just an easy ad. Um, there's, uh, post cluster topic nurturing. So if you have automated, nurturing in place and you know, somebody's interested in this topic, they've read a blog, they've downloaded a piece of content, great. You have this prebuilt nurturing sequence that just can provide them more content that you already know they're interested in. So there's a couple of those finishers like that, that are things that you probably forget to do if you didn't pre-plan for them that are great to do with the completion of a topic cluster. There's also, um, guidance on reporting that comes in. So you wanna keep track of your cluster and then, um, ongoing like monthly or quarterly tasks for continued optimization.
Kathleen (20:46):
Okay. I have a ton of questions. <laugh> yay. Um, so, so there's things you have to do when you write each piece in the cluster, then there's things you have to do when the whole cluster's written and then there's things you have to do down the road. When you're looking back to see the performance of it, let's start with things you have to do for each piece. Um, can you dive a little deeper in there?
Stacy (21:09):
Yep. Um, so for each piece, you're gonna wanna optimize the content. Once it's written, you usually want your writer to have a good knowledge, what the keyword is as they're writing, because most good writers, those particularly you have, um, experience and SEO will work the keywords. And, um, I'm just gonna be really nerdy, LSI keywords in with it. So LSI stands for latent semantic indexing. Those are essentially related keywords that show, you know, about the primary keyword. Um, so they'll know to do that when they're writing, if they're a good writer,
Kathleen (21:38):
Uh, can I just stop you there? Do you write a brief, like, do you give your writer a brief on, on the con the article that you're looking for?
Stacy (21:45):
I give my writer the full strategy. So, um, I don't want them to be myopic and focused on a single blog at a time. I work with them, uh, to zoom all the way out and understand the strategy and how all the pieces are gonna interlink. Cause it might change the way you write run blog. If you know, you're gonna have this other blog to link to that can give a lot more information about this topic that you're just briefly hitting on in the other blog. Got it. So we review the entire strategy as a whole. So I, the template that I use for creating strategies, I share that with my writers, my writers know how it looks and works and, and functions together and what the ultimate end goal is gonna look like. So that's all they need. And then the interviews, for the most part, we don't do a, a brief for each individual blog during the interview process, we end up kind of creating that brief, cuz we'll sometimes talk about, oh, you know, if we make sure in this blog that we covered this, that or the other, um, they can do it depending on how long you've worked for a writer that might change, you know, worked with a writer that might change for you, right?
Like I've the writer that I work with. I've worked with for years. And, um, he knows the strategies, like the back of my hand, he gets all of those things kind of naturally. So I would say it's, it's that part's gonna be a little trial and error between you and the writer, how you end up working best together and what the writer feels like they need, but the interview should be so full of content that it should do most of that for them so that you shouldn't need to do a ton more besides provide them the keywords and things that you wanna do.
Kathleen (23:04):
Are you ever interviewing multiple subject matter experts for single cluster?
Stacy (23:08):
Um, sometimes it is on the rarer side. Um, usually what I do is I pull them both into the same interview. That way they can bounce off of each other. You end up you just listening to them, you learn <laugh> a boatload of information. So when possible I do try and if I need more than one, combine it all into a single interview.
Kathleen (23:29):
Okay. Um, so, and, and just, you mentioned LSI keywords and, and kind of related phrases and words. Do you have any particular tools that you really like to use to surface those?
Stacy (23:42):
Um, so I tend not to worry about them so much when I'm writing and more when I'm optimizing. So the step that always happens after the completion of the article. So we'll write the article. We'll we'll involve the subject matter expert. They'll make sure the content of the article is accurate. Huge tip here. If you do not produce articles and people's names, they're much easier to get reviewed.
Kathleen (24:02):
<laugh> um,
Stacy (24:03):
Depends on your company. Depends on your strategy. If your subject matter experts are trying to build their personal brand and want to, by all means, you know, publish it in their name. I have found for me, my life is a lot easier if I publish things through the Playwire strategy team or the Playwire technical team, because it's what we're doing. Right. We're interviewing the technical team to get information. And then people aren't so concerned about things showing up in their voice. Right. Do you ever
Kathleen (24:26):
Worry though, that like, I, I feel like people, people naturally form connections to people and not having that single author. Do you ever worry that that's kind of like putting you at a disadvantage?
Stacy (24:37):
Um, it's a,
The case by case basis, if it's going to hinder me so much that I can't get content produced, it's not worth it, right? Yeah. It's it depends on the person. And oftentimes I find a nice hybrid in the middle strategy, which is this person was interviewed to create this content. And then we do a little bio of the person almost like if you were to produce a guest post so that we can say it's by them, they don't feel like it has to be in their voice cuz it's clarified that it was done by interview. Got it. So there's, there's a couple of different strategies and it's just gonna be based on how your team functions and what's best for them. I find if it's a hindrance to getting content produced and it's going to literally like break my ability to hit a, a certain volume of content, it's not worth it.
Kathleen (25:19):
Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. So going back to the keywords, any, any like keyword research tools you really love?
Stacy (25:26):
Yeah. I use, um, SIM rush for the research itself when I'm building the strategy, but then on a, um, content piece by content piece basis, I always run content through an optimization tool and um, market muse is my all time favorite. There's a couple of them out there. There's like surfer SEO and a few others that I've used that are all great. Um, market muse recently made, uh, free version of their tool where you can have 15 free optimizations a month and it is number one, they figured out how to gamify the experience of optimization <laugh> so it's fun. And it's like winning and if you're like me, you like to win <laugh> so every time you make a change to the, the piece of content, you'll see your score go up. Um, so it actually, it makes it not very arduous. It's quite entertaining.
Kathleen (26:08):
Oh, that's good. That's a great tip. Mm-hmm <affirmative> okay. So there, so you've talked about what you do for each individual article. You come to the point where your cluster is done, your pillar is done. What's your process at that point?
Stacy (26:21):
So now it's time to make sure we're executing the interlinking strategy. Um, and like you mentioned, the order that you produce stuff, some of the linking might be done, right? If your last blog was produced, you might have put in links to some of the other blogs and all of that stuff. Um, but I've, I've essentially tried to pull a lot of the effort and brain power involved in interlinking out, um, by creating a standard set of call to action that I use across every blog in the cluster. And so if you're unfamiliar with a call to action, there's usually like some visual element with a button that links you off to some, um, deeper offer. So that might be a piece of content. It might be an application form, you know, whatever it might be. Every blog in my cluster has a CTA to, um, the pillar itself.
And, um, one of the other closing items that I didn't mention earlier is a resource center where it's basically like here's the resource center for video ads and it's got every piece of content we've ever written on video ads and the pillar linked right there. So it's kind of like the overarching, if you need to figure out what you wanna dive deeper into, you can. So every blog in the series has CTAs to those two pieces of content. Boom, they've already got the links back to the pillar and back to the resource center. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to figure out which words in the blog to, to link there. You just you've put the same CTAs in all of 'em you say you're good to go.
Kathleen (27:44):
Yeah. I love that resource center strategy. We did that, um, back at the company where we worked together on cybersecurity and it was really powerful and it makes sense. It's so intuitive. Like if you're gonna build out all this content on one subject, um, you know, why make it hard for people to find the information? And we would put a link in the footer or even potentially somewhere on the homepage. You know, there are many places you can put it, but creating a page where all of that content lives together. It's so logical, but I think so few people take that extra step to do it. So I love that idea.
Stacy (28:16):
It's it's super easy. And the other thing, the other reason why I do it is it comes back to that nurturing sequence. If you know, somebody has read or downloaded content on the topic area, the first step you say is, Hey, great. I have this entire resource center full of content to this topic. Go figure out what you'd like to learn more about. It is like the perfect follow up nurturing item. So it's a, it's a key part of that strategy as well.
Kathleen (28:40):
And I also think it's a great tool for the sales team, right? Cause you can, it's one link for them to provide to somebody, to direct them, to all the content on that topic that you're supposedly an expert in. So
Stacy (28:51):
Well. And um, the other one that I have found it, uh, to be incredibly useful for is if you involve yourself in communities where your audience lives. So for instance, for Playwire, Reddit has an add ops forum. That is like where every ops professional spends a good chunk of time. If you see people asking questions about a topic area, you can just be like, Hey, we have a resource center with information on that topic. And anybody familiar with Reddit, you know, if you're a brand, you get torn a lot for like any kind of content you post. So providing helpful content tends to work really well. And those resource centers are great. You just say, Hey, here's a resource center full of content on this topic. Hope you can find something that's helpful in your journey. It's the best question answer there is.
Kathleen (29:32):
Yeah, that's great. I love that. Um, I wanna ask kind of a nerdy question about linking, um, which is that, you know, I've heard different viewpoints on linking structures for topic clusters. Uh, I've heard some people say that each article in the cluster should only link back to the pillar because there's only a certain amount of SEO juice that flows through and you should direct it all to the pillar. And then I've heard other people say, nah, really doesn't work that way. Google can still figure it out. You know, as long as you're you have at least one link, it's all good. What's your take on that topic?
Stacy (30:04):
Um, my take is to put yourself in the position of the reader and link to what's useful for them. If there's something where you're saying something that would, they would benefit if they wanna go dig deeper and there's a blog that digs deeper, just link to it. It's not gonna hurt you. I, I always say when in doubt, focus on the humans
Kathleen (30:20):
Take like a person, not a machine
Stacy (30:22):
<laugh> the search engines will follow. Um, particularly with link juice. I have found that it doesn't really make that much of a difference. The biggest thing you can do for link juice is take your most visited page and or your page with the most back links on your entire website and link that to the pillar to help pass some of that link juice to the pillar. So for instance, our homepage is almost always that, um, is if you have a pillar you're trying to push up in the ranks, figure out how in the text of the homepage to link over to the pillar, that's really how you're gonna pass link juice to your cluster. More so than worrying about the inner linking between the cluster. So long as every blog links to pillar and the pillar links to every blog, everything else is just, you know, benefit to the user.
Kathleen (31:06):
Okay. So the, so you finish your whole cluster and you've talked about you go in and you put that CTA in every blog that links back to the pillar, you build that resource page. What, are there any other things that happen at that point?
Stacy (31:17):
Yeah. So the other thing I do at the end of a cluster is I add a related content section to the pillar, like I mentioned, which just lists all the blogs that way. I don't have to go figure out where to link to every blog. And if I produce some blogs after the pillar was produced, great, boom, I have all the links in there. Um, the resource center takes care of itself because it in and of itself is just links to all the blogs for the most part. Um, and then I, I personally use HubSpot and they have a great SEO tool where it tracks all of, a lot of that interlinking for you. You can't necessarily track the interlinking to two central pieces, but you can at least to the pillar. Um, and so it'll actually notify you of if your pillar is not being linked from one of the blogs in the, the cluster, if you use that tool.
Um, the other thing that I always do is figure out if there's associated content, I could pull into the cluster. So that's case studies or a template or a tool, something that's gonna increase the chance of, um, downloading or converting. And I add that into the CTA structure for each of the blogs, right? So if there's a particular case study, say that the topic of the cluster was video ads. And I have a case study about a client who got great results from video ads, that's going as part of the, the CTAs I put in every single blog. So it's kind of figuring out if there's associated content, you can pull
Kathleen (32:31):
It. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, okay. So we've talked about the process after each individual article, we've talked about the process after the, the, the writing is done. Now we go into the future and you talked about, you have like a certain reporting that you like to do.
Stacy (32:49):
Yep. So, um, uh, along the tools that I just talked about in HubSpot, if you build out your strategy in the HubSpot AEO tool, you automatically have most of the reporting that you need. Um, so in the analytics area, there is reporting by topic cluster, which basically looks at the results of all the pieces in the cluster, by the, like as a group to figure out which ones are driving, um, traffic, which ones are driving conversion, all of that, but you can actually kind of look at them as a cohort. The other thing that I always do is tie every piece in the cluster into a single campaign, um, so that I can report on things like, um, revenue generation or influence revenue as a result of the campaign. Um, those are the two big ones I do in Somera do position tracking. So the other thing that you wanna do is make sure that you're continually pushing your results over time.
And so I make sure that in the position tracking tool in SIM rush, I have all of the keywords that I'm going for in the cluster, in the position tracking tool. So I can monitor where I am on each of the keywords. Um, from there, like all of the, the clusters you've built, kind of enter into a single, like reporting cadence where you look at them all together, but you can dig deeper into the individual results of each one to figure out which one is performing really well and, and all of that. Um, and then there's quite a few like consistent follow up tasks I do on all my topic clusters and just pull out the ones that I, that need the attention.
Kathleen (34:17):
So how often are you looking at performance
Stacy (34:21):
Every day?
Kathleen (34:22):
Ugh, really? <laugh>
Stacy (34:25):
I at least glance at, um, overarching metrics every day. So like, what's the organic search trends. Like how are things going at least once a week, I'll go dig into the organic search trends on each of the clusters and just make sure they're all moving in the right direction. And I do tend to look at position tracking at least once a day, like quickly to make sure I haven't lost any major ground on keywords or see if there's any, um, that deserves some attention.
Kathleen (34:50):
Okay. Um, and so, okay. So you're looking at, you're looking at keyword rankings. Um, if something does start to drop, what do you do?
Stacy (35:03):
So, um, usually if something has just launched within the first month, I expect volatility, right? It's gonna hit and it's gonna start to climb. It might drop and climb a little bit more here and there. Instead of looking necessarily for like, if, if something has been ranking number one forever and has a major drop immediately go reoptimize it, like no questions asked, just jump in and do it, but consistently on a monthly basis, what I do is look for things that are ranking on page two, regardless of if they just got there, if they dropped there. And I, I tend to reoptimize them if as long as they've been launched for at least a month, um, you rerun them through the tool like market use or whatever you use, um, because things fluctuate over time and you'll find that you have opportunities to continue to improve that content. When you do it, you usually update the published date as well. It's a signal to Google that this content is remaining fresh. That is actually a piece of ranking is the freshness of the content, regardless of how much better you made it from a keyword perspective. So just the act of doing it helps you rank better. Um, and so I usually identify things that are on page two that I'm trying to get to page one, and I do that on, on a monthly basis.
Kathleen (36:12):
So this might be a really dumb question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. Um, don't be afraid. Dumb question. When you say you identify things that are on page two, are you talking about keywords or are you talking about actual, like URL of article that is on page ranking on page two?
Stacy (36:27):
So it's kind of both <laugh>. Um, so in Sam, the way position tracking works is it tracks on a keyword basis and it'll tell you which keyword you rank on page two, four. And then if you slide over to the right, it'll tell you which, um, piece of content is currently ranking for that keyword on page two. So then I take that piece of content, reoptimize it for the keyword and have it move up in the rankings.
Kathleen (36:49):
Okay. That makes sense. Um, this is awesome. I, I love all the detail you've gotten into. So how long on average does it take you and your teams to produce a single pillar and the cluster involved with it? Like
Stacy (37:06):
The whole thing? Um, usually in just under a month. So we're on a production volume of three articles a week and we usually produce one to two pillars a month. So it usually takes us a little under a month to complete one. Um, everybody's gonna have a little bit different outlook on how they do this. Um, a, a big concern, a lot of companies have is like producing too much content on one topic all in a row. So they might wanna produce three clusters in tandem so that they can be like jumping between topics. It just takes you longer to get the results that way. It just depends on what is more important to you. I, um, I use a learning center instead of the standard blog listing. So I actually produce content way ahead of when I produce it and show it in the learning center way ahead of when I, um, like publicly promote it on social, all of those things. So I just get stuff live when it's live, but then have a cadence in how I post and share it as opposed to how I publish it, if that makes sense. So I,
Kathleen (38:03):
Yeah, just to clarify, cuz I know what you're talking about, but I'm not sure everybody who's listening is when you say learning center, you mean really like a database driven kind of listing of resources. And so if you're listening a picture, not a blog and not a separate resource center, but like one place on the website where everything from blogs to white papers, to videos, to webinars, et cetera, all lives in one place and it's driven by a database and therefore you can filter it and you can say, show me every blog. Or you can say, show me every piece of content, regardless of format on this topic. Or, you know, what have you, there are a variety of ways to slice and dice it, but that, whereas blogs are always chronological. Yeah. The learning center is a little different cuz it gives you the flexibility to, to display content in a way that's, that's more kind of relevant to the user fair.
Stacy (38:52):
Yeah. It it's spot on. It's basically the answer to like how, how do I find content that's useful. It makes your con it gives your content a heck of a lot more, um, air time, if you wanna think of it that way as well. Right. Um, if you think about how you learn, do you go to a blog and say what's the most recent thing written? And I only care about things in chronological order. I would love to continue to scroll this thing only if
Kathleen (39:13):
It's new. Right? Like only if it's news, that's the only time I hear about recency.
Stacy (39:18):
Yep. Um, and so the learning center's great because it gives, you still gives you recency. You could still see the new things that are published cuz you publish them in order. Um, but it also gives you the ability to like narrow down by topic area. And it gets rid of the old like, Hey, we have our webinars on this page and our blogs on this page because as the user I'm like, I'm just trying to learn about a topic. Right. I,
Kathleen (39:41):
I don't care if it's a webinar or an ebook,
Stacy (39:44):
Just give me all the things you have and then let me dig in. So it just, it solves for the user in a way that, you know, chronological blog listing never really did.
Kathleen (39:51):
So you, a couple times in this conversation, you've mentioned the, the phrase like website architecture. And I just wanna make sure I understand what you mean by that. Cuz you've talked about things like having the resource center, having the learning center, which is the database driven place, but then also having a resource center on a topic, which is a PA a website page that links to all those articles. Um, you've mentioned having like related articles within the pillar, are there other aspects of website architecture that you think are important to support this strategy?
Stacy (40:20):
Um, it's it depends on how far you are in your content journey. I would say I'm actually getting to the point now where I'm feeling a little bit of this pain. Um, I would, like you had mentioned when we did a resource centers in the past, you put a link in your footer so that people can go learn more on the topic area. I got like 30 of 'em in my footer. <laugh> like, I dunno what to do with all of them. It's too much. It's confusing. So my resource centers are actually migrating into my high level learning center. So when people narrow down by a topic, actually one of the listings that shows up in the learning center is for the complete video ads resource center. They could go dig in and go, go farther down that, that rabbit hole. Um, I would say some other important aspects of website architecture to keep in mind is, um, making things filterable for your sales team.
This is less about people finding it, but we actually on our learning center, for instance, we have an about Playwire filter, which is useful for people who are coming and just trying to learn more about our brand. But it's also the place where all of the requested articles from sales that hit on the most common questions in the sales process live. Um, so it's figuring out how to simultaneously make your website very useful for your own team in a way that, that doesn't mess up the user experience for somebody who know has no idea who you are and it's coming to website for the first time.
Kathleen (41:38):
That makes sense. All right. I wanna, I wanna shift over into results because you've done this at tons and tons of companies. Can you talk a little bit about some of the results you've been able to achieve and how long it's taken to achieve them?
Stacy (41:50):
Yeah. So, um, each individual topic cluster, if you look at, it has very different expectations on how fast it's going to turn around results. Um, and there's a few things that lead into it. Um, it's how your current domain authority. So how much traffic are you currently generating? It's going to make every subsequent topic cluster you produce ranked that much faster. Um, and then the second is the, um, level of competition and volume of the keywords you're going after. So if I have one cluster over here, that's on a really general topic area that everybody on the web is talking about. It's gonna take me longer to rank than this topic. That's maybe a lot more qualified and really specific and has lower volume and lower competition. Uh, so I actually in the course have guidance on what I call, um, leading indicators and um, key results, which are the two things that you use to determine whether or not a cluster is successful.
Your leading indicators are looking in those first couple of months on where your keyword rankings are, how fast they're progressing, how they're moving up. As you start to see those keywords kind of take foothold and start moving up, you'll then start to see the corresponding traffic coming. Once you see the corresponding traffic coming, you can start to see how many people are converting on this content, like showing an interest and it is it relevant to them is your brand relevant. And then even one level deeper than that is who's raising their hand and saying they're interested in the product. Um, and those are the things where as you watch those results happen, that'll take from the order. Like we're getting to the point where we can produce something. If it's not a super competitive keyword and it ranks within the first week on page three ish. Um, but we've been producing content for a long time. We have a good domain authority, all of those things help with that. Um, but typically I say, um, on the higher competition keywords, you're looking at like between one to three months of watching those lagging or leading indicators before you start seeing huge changes in, um, your lagging results.
Kathleen (43:45):
Got it. And what about impact on pipeline?
Stacy (43:49):
So, um, there, there's no marketer in the world that hasn't been said, where are the, like, where are the leads? So that is the most important ultimate results. The problem is it takes a little time to get there. Once you get there with your first cluster, you start to get that buy-in and each subsequent cluster you're gonna see more and more and more and more results. And the longer they go, the more results they drive, they drive results continuously without you having to do more work. So you, you kinda have to get over that hump of, um, being able to tell the story with the leading indicators of what we expect to happen with the lagging results. And then once you do you get the buy-in, you get all of the things to continue moving down that like that strategy, what I have found is that different topics are gonna drive different results in the pipeline, hands down, you're gonna have topics that are really qualified and topics that are not so qualified.
And that's, that's kind of the way it is. So I always say focus on the ones that are gonna be the most qualified first so that you can get those early wins to continue to get that buy-in to move forward with your strategy. Um, the example I would use there is if we're going back to like the exercise ones that we were talking about at the beginning, if I have like online fitness classes, for instance, that I sell, and I'm just talking about strength training, that's probably not gonna be a hugely qualified keyword. It's gonna drive
Kathleen (45:12):
A lot. It's not high intent. Yeah.
Stacy (45:13):
A lot of volume, but somebody who's searching for online fitness classes <laugh> is exactly who I want. So start with those keywords and clusters first that are really qualified so that you can see those really generating the results in the pipeline. And then step back to the ones that are gonna drive more volume, like strength training.
Kathleen (45:30):
So any good stories from over the years of like, Hey, we did this one cluster and it generated X amount of pipeline or closed one deals or anything like that.
Stacy (45:41):
Oh, I have, I have tons of those. I have some case study slides that I pull. Um, I will say the, the one that's like freshest in my mind right now, um, is, uh, it's really similar to actually one. We worked on together, um, in the past it's super small keyword volume, like not a ton of people, but it's the most qualified search term in the world. So, um, at Playwire, we actually recently launched a new feature. It's a rewarded video ad unit for websites. Um, it's been an ad unit that's been available on apps for years. It's just not something that had made its way into the web ecosystem. Yet in the second we started talking about it, it gets rewarded video ads, as the term gets maybe like three or 400 searches a month. It's not huge, but it's got like a 6% conversion to pipeline growth for us. And then once they get in the pipeline, they're the most perfect fit leads, and they're immediately ready to work with us. So it's sometimes it's those small ones that drive the hugest wins. And so we produced the content, optimized it for the keywords. And we noticed in the first month that, that we were getting crazy results. And so we just like dug in. We're like, all right, what's every use case for worded video ads. Let's build out a giant, like a full cluster around it.
Kathleen (46:48):
Yeah. As you alluded to, we had that experience at one cybersecurity company that made a very niche product, um, that I think it said it had like 20 searches a month or something, but those 20 people, like there was nobody else writing about the topic in the world. And oh, by the way, the average contract value was in the tens of millions of dollars. Um, so it, there was like, we get one deal from this. <laugh>, it's a huge home run and, and yep. We did. And it was awesome.
Stacy (47:17):
So I, um, I will add that I have like an overarching, um, reporting structure that I follow that pulls in all of the costs. It takes me to produce content and weighs it against the profit made off of each deal. I can break down, um, profit per visit by organic traffic, like at this point, because being able to have those conversations and understand what's driving your traffic and which, which things you should continue to invest in and which things you should stop investing in is so, so, so important. And so that's one of the reasons why, like I'm able to with very clear accuracy, articulate, which, um, topic clusters have generated us the most ROI. Cause I can tell you the exact numbers.
Kathleen (47:58):
Oh, I bet there's a lot of people listening who are like, how can I get a copy of that? <laugh>
Stacy (48:03):
Is mine,
Kathleen (48:05):
Um, awesome. Well, this has been so great. We're gonna run outta time. Uh, so I wanna shift gears and, and I've asked you this before, when you came on the podcast last time, um, which by the way, if you wanna hear the other episode of Stacy, it, it was from quite some time ago, but she talked about how she worked with, I believe it was David Meerman Scott to combine two websites into one and not risk and losing traffic and not hurt SEO. So it was again connected to SEO and it's a, it was a very niche challenge, but I think one that when marketers come across it, there are not a lot of resources for that. So that was a great story. And it's an awesome resource. I encourage people are listening to hunt it down.
Stacy (48:47):
Fun story. That was actually my second time on your podcast. This is my third.
Kathleen (48:51):
Oh, wait. I did
Stacy (48:52):
The, the first one was, um, the baby version of this content strategy that has blossomed into what it is now with. Oh my
Kathleen (48:58):
Gosh. You broke then you're the first three time guest. <laugh>
That's awesome. I'm sure there will be a fourth at some point. Um, all right. So we're gonna go back to my two questions. Number one, because, and this it's interesting, I've asked this question, you know, with digital marketing changing so quickly, how do you stay on top of things and keep yourself educated? And what's fascinated about this is that when I first started this podcast years ago, I was consistently getting one type of answer and now I'm consistently getting another. And so I'm curious to hear what you're gonna say to see if it tracks with what I have been hearing.
Stacy (49:36):
So wait, what was the question that
Kathleen (49:37):
I'm, I'm sorry, <laugh> what digital marketing changing so quickly. How do you personally stay on top of everything and keep yourself educated?
Stacy (49:45):
Oh, that's, um, it kinda, it goes day by day. I have, um, I've, I've been doing the tactical for so long. I have a lot of, all of that kind of built in, um, I would've said at the beginning of my career, it was a lot of research into, to tactical and like people who, who posted a lot on tactical, uh, as my role has shifted more to a leadership role. I have been backing myself up from, um, things that feel like trends or small changes to like looking at things on a larger scale and like reading a lot of books on leadership and understanding business, uh, which is, has helped kind of turn the strategies that I do into things that hopefully can stand the test of time. Right. Um, if you understand, especially if you're in the B2B space, that's, that's one of the reasons why it's so important is, um, for the majority of the marketing, I do, the, the other, the person on the other side is actually a company, right. Um, it understanding how factors affect their business what's happening in their business, how they make business decisions. It makes such a huge difference in determining how you speak to them and also what they are gonna be interested in learning about. So I've actually shifted a lot more to stuff like that and reading, um, you know, Good to Great, and, and a lot of books like that, that is really just like not marketing, but general business and understanding how it works.
Kathleen (51:06):
I was just gonna ask you any, can you list a few books that you've really loved that you've read recently?
Stacy (51:12):
Yeah. So on the, the business growth side, there's, um, Good to Great, Great by Choice. All of the Jim Collins books are really good. Um, and then more on the leadership side, I've been doing a lot of, um, psychology stuff, which surprisingly also relates to marketing very well. So there's, um, some recent ones I read think by Adam Grant was really good.
Kathleen (51:30):
I'm obsessed with Adam Grant.
Stacy (51:32):
Oh, I love his stuff. Um, and I just read Dark Horse, which I read because he mentioned it in sync <laugh> that's, that's how I do, like, I read a book with my phone next to me, um, set on Amazon. And I just Google all the books that every book other book talks about. Um, and that one was super interesting as well in, in understanding how people, um, seek fulfillment in their jobs. And again, like there's so many ways it helps me personally and professionally.
Kathleen (51:57):
That's great. Um, alright. Second question. Of course, this podcast has always been all about inbound marketing, which, you know, the definition of that I feel like has evolved over the years and today, the way I define it is anything that naturally attracts the right customer to you. Uh, with that as the definition, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer?
Stacy (52:20):
So I actually, um, have been starting to get a lot more involved in, um, like a, a networking group at the like very small groups. I have found really valuable of people who are in similar roles. And so, um, Joy Yule at Hire a Writer, she she's put together one that I participate in that's really valuable. And, um, they're so they're the copywriting company that I, that I work with most closely and, oh
Kathleen (52:46):
Boy, everyone's gonna go out now and call Joy and sorry,
Stacy (52:49):
Joy
Kathleen (52:50):
<laugh> <laugh>.
Stacy (52:52):
Um, but she, uh, the, the type of content that they put out and the types of things that they do, um, great example is last year for Christmas, um, I got a coloring book called mega marketing. It's like about ha anti-marketing. So it's, they do really interesting stuff with trying to understand the things about marketing that annoy the crap out of people and figure out how to back out of it and make it useful. Right. So they are a great, um, source of information for almost like, how do you get outta the echo chamber? How do you, how do do you do things that, that are different than traditional marketing, but still drive the same results as traditional marketing or better? Um, that's, that's what I rely on them for.
Kathleen (53:33):
Ooh, that's a good one. Yeah. All right. So we're at the end. Um, if somebody wants to learn more about Playwire or wants to learn more about your course or wants to connect with you, what are the best ways for them to do those things?
Stacy (53:48):
So connecting with me directly, LinkedIn is a great spot I'm on there all the time. I answer messages, all of those things. It's easy to find me just by searching my name. Um, and then if you're interested in following any of the content I produce and, or checking out the course, it's just Stacywillis.com. You can get everything from there.
Kathleen (54:05):
All right, that's great. I'll put those links in the show notes, uh, which are available at kathleen-booth.com. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, please head to apple podcasts and consider leaving the podcast a review. And of course, if you know anybody else, who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, I would love to interview them. And you can tweet me at @Kathleenlbooth on Twitter so I can make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thanks again, Stacy. Third time having charm, right? Yes.
Stacy (54:33):
Best one ever.
