Siege Media

Our latest research, in collaboration with Wynter, sheds light on the pivotal trends shaping content marketing in 2025: Increased Investment: A notable 11.3% of content marketers are allocating over $45,000 monthly to content efforts, a significant rise from 4.1% in 2024. Resource Allocation Challenges: Approximately 66.5% of marketers express uncertainty about optimal resource distribution. AI Integration: Marketers leveraging AI report higher success rates, with only 21.5% feeling their strategies underperform, compared to 36.2% among non-AI users. Top Frustrations: Ranking content (77.6%) and aligning with user intent (70.6%) remain primary challenges. Traffic Trends: A positive shift, with 62.8% of marketers experiencing traffic growth year-over-year. Decline in Manual Link Building: Only 21.4% now prioritize manual link-building, a drop from 38.2% in 2024. Embracing these insights can empower your brand to navigate the complexities of modern SEO and content marketing effectively. For a comprehensive analysis and actionable strategies, delve into our full report: https://lnkd.in/g5rGyeMz

Fill out our short content trends survey and win a free $500 gift card! We’ve done this the last two years and we look forward to comparing the data YOY given all that’s changing in our industry. The report should go live in late January. View the survey here: https://lnkd.in/gprwq2Gw

Do you actually need to update that content? We recently had a prospect reach out saying they’d lost a lot of traffic. They gave Siege Media a sheet of URLs for us to update. The guidance we gave them was: You don’t need to update (most) of those URLs right now. Here’s why: Their articles still ranked high in search. They’re not alone in seeing traffic dips despite maintaining their rankings. We’re seeing this with many clients. AI overviews and new features taking up valuable real estate on search engines means those old traffic numbers shouldn’t (always) be your measure for success anymore. If you’re still ranking highly, that’s a win. That is something you can control with a solid SEO program. But if your traffic's down, you’re not alone. The Googles of the world control how far you need to scroll past paid ads and AI summaries to get to organic, ranked links. Focus on what’s (reasonably) within your control – keyword rankings – and make sure your measurement for success is accurate to how the game is played today. Here’s what a winning SEO program may now look like over time. As long as the channel is still strongly profitable and significant, which it probably is, there’s nothing to be concerned about.

The SEO industry is changing. In a recent episode of Siege Media’s Content and Conversation podcast, Clearscope Founder Bernard Huang joined our CEO Ross Hudgens for a great discussion on the future of SEO. They explored their thoughts on information gain, how forums can inform content strategy, and how Clearscope and Siege are adapting to meet AI head-on. Big thanks to Bernard for having the conversation. Listen here: https://lnkd.in/gF8hYSEa

SaaS marketers, if you’re chasing page one rankings for “best [KW] software,” check this out. We looked at GA4 data across 70+ “best [KW] software” pages and found the highest performers all had 3 key features: 1. They all have a "What is [blank]?” section, but keep it brief. 2. They all include "Best for [blank]" TOCs. Helps users find products faster. 3. They all have simple, encompassing UX: Large fonts and less white space (including the sidebar) make the content easy to read. The benchmark data for the highest performers? An average engagement time of 1:05, and an average pages/visit of 1.29.

To improve your SEO content performance, focus on this: Make sure that more than 2% of your homepage links lead to your content hub.? Ideally, aim for 5%+. In our analysis of client performance across 50+ brands, the highest performers were almost always at 2%+. The homepage isn’t the only place this should happen, but as the most authoritative page on most websites, it’s a great reference point. Here are three ways to make that happen: 1. Make the content section easily discoverable in the header and footer. 2. Include links to blog categories in the footer or a resources dropdown. 3. Add links to high-converting posts in the footer or resources dropdown. You might need to declutter to make room for these changes. Look at the data and identify all unnecessary, unused, or underperforming links. Then get rid of ‘em. The reason this performs better? It drives more internal link equity to these pages, but more importantly, it makes them visible to users. That will drive more engagement, links, and return traffic. That’s going to result in significant growth over time. In one case study, we recently helped implement 15 links to a content-heavy strategy and saw immediate and lasting results. Check out the graph below:

Siege Media is hiring for several key SEO + social roles! Help us grow world-class brands via organic growth. The website notes "Associate" as the experience level but we will strongly consider more experienced managers as well. Learn more and apply here: https://lnkd.in/gX7-XsB

We're hiring a Social Media Director, SEO Team Leads and Senior Content Marketing Specialists! The SEO consulting department is on the growth path + we're looking for a senior leader to grow our social practice. Learn more and apply here: https://lnkd.in/g6ithdv

We analyzed AI Overviews’ impact using a 130,000,000 impression sample covering 43 sites. Here’s what we found: - Average CTR is up 3% - Impressions are up almost 2% - Total traffic is up over 4% SEO might not be dead after all ?? Dive into our report to discover the initial impact of AI Overviews on Fintech, SaaS, and B2C/e-commerce sites: https://lnkd.in/eP28NZgr

We're thrilled to welcome Jesse McDonald to the Siege family as our new Senior Director, SEO! ?? With a robust background in leading teams to SEO success, Jesse brings a wealth of experience and expertise to our team. He began his journey in SEO by mastering the intricacies of local SEO before transitioning into e-commerce and catering to the needs of large-scale enterprises. But Jesse's talents extend far beyond his professional achievements. You may recognize him as a conference speaker, gracing stages at events like Pubcon, State of Search, SearchHOU, and Rocks Digital –?or as a contributor for Search Engine Journal. He was also recognized as one of Search Engine Journal’s top 140 SEOs to follow. Together, we're eager to achieve new heights in SEO innovation and optimization.?