Content has Changed

We may one day look back at this era and think, “It was strange how every SaaS company had a library filled with rehashed Wikipedia content on their website.”

We have grown so accustomed to educational blog content and resource centers that we often assume they are an inherent part of the user journey and digital marketing. However, this is not the case; these resources are products of specific incentives created by one company, Google. And those incentives are disappearing.

We created these pseudo-blogs because it was incredibly lucrative to do so. A few pages of basic Wiki content paired with some Unsplash stock images were historically sufficient to generate thousands of visits. Ignoring large-scale content creation would have been unwise; it was the most predictable, reliable, and profitable marketing channel.

However, the incentives are changing. The rewards are shifting; if this trend continues, it would be just as unwise to persist in the same type of content creation.

Google does not favour the “necessary evil” of sending traffic to publishers. In its ideal world, searchers would cycle endlessly through Google properties and Google ads. Sending traffic to a third-party website is seen as a failure because it takes users out of Google’s ecosystem.

Traffic was a necessary incentive to encourage content creation that fueled the Google machine. We created content, Google ranked it, and rewarded us with a share of their search demand. However, with the advent of large language models (LLMs), Google is now rich in information. It has reached a point where it no longer needs to incentivize content creation. As evidenced by its indexing slowdown and measures against programmatic content, Google wants to REDUCE content creation. Now, content creation threatens the search experience rather than benefiting it.

Due to Google’s search features and advertising, traffic has suffered from gradual cuts for years. But this time is different. Like you and me, Google’s social contract with publishers has been broken, with LLMs delivering the final blow.

Content will remain inherently valuable for helping potential customers. Some topics are worth writing about, even if they generate zero search traffic. It is crucial to explain your company's existence, cover the essential information needed to understand your product features, and help customers use it effectively.

However, this will only lead to a relatively small content library if done well. Most content marketing today has expanded beyond these boundaries, venturing into topics irrelevant to the company’s products and beliefs. It has devolved into mere information arbitrage, and LLMs excel at that far better than we do.

Whatever the future of content marketing holds, it does NOT look like corporate wikis covering every imaginable “how-to” and “what is” topic. Content will remain central to marketing, but anyone who believes they can navigate the next few years without significant changes to their strategy is in for a shock.

We need to think bigger.