How to Adapt Content Strategy During COVID-19 & Beyond

Global SEO Analyst Lisa Deignan on adopting MarketMuse AI

Last updated: June 17, 2020 2:50AM

Lionbridge’s Lisa Deignan joins Jeff Coyle, Chief Product Officer at MarketMuse to discuss implementing the MarketMuse Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool for an innovative SEO content strategy. Watch the webinar.

Q: What drew Lionbridge to MarketMuse?

We are constantly looking for ways we can improve strategy and workflow. When we first heard of MarketMuse, we saw an opportunity to partner with a forward-thinking company that employs AI technology to create high-quality, high-ranking content.

Our goals for the partnership were twofold:

#1 Can MarketMuse AI help us optimize existing content more efficiently and effectively?

In the world of business writing, depth of content is more important than ever. But creating extensively researched and well-written content takes time. Adding SEO research and making the subsequent alterations further delays the process. With MarketMuse, we wanted to streamline the process by creating and optimizing simultaneously.

#2 Can MarketMuse improve the topic cluster creation process?

We wanted to know where the gaps in the existing cluster process were, and whether MarketMuse could help fill them. AI technology such as MarketMuse presented the possibility of finishing a process that could normally take us months, in a matter of minutes.

Q: How has your content strategy changed in the wake of COVID-19?

As a business, Lionbridge reacted with a methodical and empathetic approach. We listened, pivoted, and adjusted strategy to do our part in keeping the world on its feet. Teams packaged what services we could provide that clients might need during this challenging time and centralized it on a newly built COVID-19 Resources Page: Crisis communications, real-time telephone interpretation, eLearning program development, etc.

The content team had to react in the same way. We wanted to reassure clients that they can rely on us to adapt to changing needs. Then, we prioritized providing content that would be relevant to current needs.

For example, a lot of our clients are in Life Sciences. We are helping with emergency medical translations, real-time translations, etc. For pharmaceutical clients, we are helping with clinical translations and clinical labeling.

To address this with content, we called on Life Sciences experts to work in tandem with the content team to write an ongoing series of blog posts: The medical “Disruption Series.” As the news evolves, the blogs detail the emerging challenges the medical industry is facing in the wake of COVID-19. Most critically, the series aims to provide helpful information and actionable insight.

Q: How did you incorporate MarketMuse into your content strategy?

Along with being a global leader in technology and localization, Lionbridge is a company focused on producing quality content. Our SEO team works collaboratively with the content team to constantly create and optimize quality content.

Even before we start writing, we make sure to research the topic. Does the topic have a significant search demand? Then we perform a live search check to determine whether there is a target keyword opportunity. The writing and live optimization processes then work in tandem to create the content and perform SEO research using tools like SEMrush, google trends, etc.

With Google continuously rolling out new search algorithms, 2020 is proving to be the year to launch your multilingual SEO strategy.

We created a new process pairing MarketMuse AI with real-human, Lionbridge brainpower:

The SEO Team identifies the best posts to optimize
The SEO Team prepares instructions for the content editor
The content editor uses MarketMuse
The SEO team performs QA and final on-page additions
The SEO Content Strategist performs analysis and iteration
A weekly meeting with MarketMuse support team

Q: How did you track the results of MarketMuse?

In our trial run with MarketMuse, we wanted to test whether the tool could increase topic comprehensiveness for existing blog posts. We also checked if it could accommodate our “hub and spoke” content strategy in which we build a series of sub-topics around a larger, main topic.

To assess the outcome of the pilot, we needed a way to determine the impact of MarketMuse from a topic coverage perspective. We set a success metric: Can we increase organic traffic of 20 existing blog posts by 70%?

Then we ran a comparison of viewer traffic on the 20 blogs using our former, manual process against the results after optimizing with MarketMuse.

Q: What were the results of combining MarketMuse and Lionbridge experts?

Our goal was to increase organic traffic to 20 blog posts by 70%. With MarketMuse, we blew past that number.

For the 20 blog posts we saw:
- Increased traffic by 132%
- 31 new featured snippets
- 70 new keywords in the top three results
For our overall site we saw:
- Double our daily conversions over the course of two months
Compared to manually optimized blogs:
- MarketMuse tripled our keyword coverage and traffic

For example, for one blog, “5 tips for choosing an over-the-phone interpreter,” the link to our OPI services page embedded in the post resulted in an increase in organic traffic by 400%. Not only did this show the power of internal linking, and the importance of choosing the right internal links—but it was clear that we had way better topic coverage.

The Bottom Line

Before our content optimization process was entirely manual. In the absence of non-English support with MarketMuse, we still sustain some manual optimization to ensure content is accessible for a multilingual audience.

The difference is, now we can call upon MarketMuse to work in tandem with our highly-skilled Lionbridge resources and create winning content on any channel.