WORKWEEK

1. AI overviews. I’ve seen a lot of takes on LinkedIn that AIO, Google’s AI overviews, are causing large decreases in top of funnel organic search volume for many brands. Perhaps I’m an outlier, but we’ve identified that we’ve recently begun appearing in AIO results for roughly 9% of our target keywords –– and that for many of those blogs, we’re seeing a 90% increase in traffic. Now, that traffic is being bucketed in direct rather than organic, and we’re working to figure that piece out. Otherwise, we’re now tracking AIO inclusion, and any traffic increases as a result. Full steam ahead on our end. 
2. Categorical resource allocation. Yoru content categories should ladder up to your strategic narrative. However, a company’s desired strategic narrative and the search demand for that narrative are often wildly different. You need to map out the use cases and common vernacular your audience uses to talk about the implementation of your features and products that ultimately help support your strategic narrative. You can then use monthly search volume to map out where demand is the highest. Then, allocate resources to support the strategic narrative while also capturing demand. 
3. Share of voice. There is a lot of change in the SEO space, and I’m now leaning harder than ever on share of voice to understand how we are performing, and where we want to go. Using Ahrefs’ rank tracker, I have uploaded all of our non-brand keywords, categorized them based on our taxonomy, and then averaged our top 10 competitors’ share of voice. Anywhere we aren’t hitting the average or higher, we need more resources allocated to update content, expand content, etc. SEO is changing, but it is still working. Our goal is to stay visible and relevant side-by-side (ideally above and beyond) our competitors. Share of voice is a decent metric to help educate internal audiences on where we are today, and where we want to be over the next months and quarters. This also helps to identify any wild search engine swings. If it affects the average, then your goal posts move, too. 
4. Thematics & marketing moments. You don’t just want to capture demand, you need content to support the creation of demand, too. And that’s where campaign content comes in. What is your PR team thinking thematically for 2025? What are the marketing moments the team is aligning around? How can content add to what is already being planned? Can you content add a narrative? Can it humanize? Can it add a viral element? Can it add interest? Can it leverage influencers or partners? Great campaign content often takes 8 weeks or more to build out –– especially if you need research, writing, editing, creative, and then unique channel plays built for that channel (not just repurposed). That puts us mid-January 2025 right now. Are you ready? Are you planning that far ahead?  

Resourcing & budgeting: You can’t execute on any of the above if you don’t have the resources. Writers, agencies, tools & tech. Whatever it is you need, document it, get proposals, and begin working on budget approvals. Your Q1 content needs to be created now. You don’t have time to waste.