Before you publish another page, decide what it must achieve

Business content should meet a reader need and support a measurable business objective. Before commissioning a page, I want to know what it should help someone do and how the business will assess its contribution.

A publishing target leaves those questions unanswered. Producing 10 articles a month tells you how much work is planned. It says little about whether that work will bring relevant enquiries, help customers choose a suitable service or reduce problems elsewhere.

Even a well-written page needs a reason to exist. The decision to publish should include an expectation that can later be examined.

When location content failed to meet expectations

In one business I worked with, the team created location pages to capture more local search demand. The additional pages did not attract the traffic expected, and traffic to core services was declining.

I was involved in reviewing what was happening. The team used Google Search Console to examine which pages were ranking and for which queries. That review informed a decision to consolidate some location pages and update the content retained. Traffic began to recover in the following months.

This was an educated judgement. Several things changed together, and the sequence cannot establish that consolidation caused the recovery. It also cannot rule out changes in search beyond the team's control.

My assessment was that the content expansion had been poorly executed. The business had taken a gamble on additional pages, and the expected benefit had not materialised. An explanation centred on a Google update would have left that decision insufficiently examined.

Some location pages were commercially important and needed to remain. The useful work was deciding which pages served a purpose and which could be combined.

Adding can be easier to consider

Research on subtraction offers one possible explanation for why expansion gets considered so readily.

In 2021, Gabrielle Adams and colleagues published 8 experiments on how people consider additive and subtractive changes. Participants were less likely to identify useful subtractive changes when they were not prompted to consider removal. Higher cognitive load also made those solutions less likely.

The finding concerns which options people consider. Someone can miss a useful opportunity to remove something before comparing the merits of the available choices.

A 2024 study by Joshua Juvrud and colleagues partly supported the earlier findings, while finding differences across tasks and populations. Neither study establishes why a particular content team commissions more pages.

I would apply the research by changing what a content brief asks people to consider. Alongside a proposal for new content, there should be room to explain whether improving or combining existing pages would meet the same need.

Leidy Klotz makes a related argument in his 2017 article about behavioural science and the built environment. He argues that behavioural science should examine designers' decisions as well as the behaviour of people using their designs.

For content, that directs attention to decisions made before writing starts. A brief requesting another set of pages has already narrowed the possible response.

Connect the reader's task to the business objective

A keyword can reveal a subject worth investigating. The business still needs to explain how answering that search will help the reader and contribute to its objective.

For a location page, that might mean helping someone establish whether a service covers their area. The intended business outcome could be more relevant enquiries from that location. This gives the page a specific job against which its content and performance can be assessed.

The following are hypothetical examples of that connection:

Content	Reader need	Business objective
Location page	Establish whether a service is available locally	Increase relevant enquiries from the area
Application guidance	Understand eligibility and provide the required information	Reduce incomplete or unsuitable applications
Support guidance	Resolve a recurring problem	Reduce avoidable contacts about that problem
Service comparison	Understand which option suits the situation	Increase enquiries for an appropriate service

These objectives need a baseline and a review period before they become measurable commitments. The business should decide what change would be useful, what evidence it can collect and when enough evidence is likely to be available.

That discussion may expose a weak proposal. If an existing service page already answers the location question clearly, a separate page needs a further justification. A different keyword alone does not explain what additional help the reader will receive.

Measure the contribution you expect

The measure should follow the page's purpose. For a page intended to bring relevant enquiries, search visibility helps explain whether people are finding it. The business also needs some way to assess the enquiries that follow.

A rise in clicks cannot settle whether those enquiries are suitable. Equally, a page with modest traffic may be useful to a small number of people making an important decision.

Some contributions will be difficult to isolate. A customer may read service guidance, return later and enquire through another route. That limits the conclusion available from a report attributing the enquiry to a single visit.

I would record those limits with the objective. Where a direct measure is unavailable, use a proxy and explain what it represents. A click towards an application can indicate progress, for example, but it does not show that the application was completed successfully.

This is also why I would resist requiring every page to generate a directly attributable sale. Guidance may help customers avoid choosing an unsuitable service. Content explaining a requirement may prevent an incomplete application. Both can serve a business need.

The difficulty of measurement deserves an explicit decision about what can be assessed. I cover the broader limits in what data can and cannot decide in content strategy.

Include the review in the publishing decision

The review should return to the expectation behind the page. Did it reach the intended readers? Is there evidence that it helped them complete the relevant task? What remains uncertain?

Where the expected contribution is absent, examine the cause before deciding what to change. The page may be hard to find, its information may be incomplete, or the original expectation may have been wrong. Removal needs the same care as publication.

The location-page review left a smaller set of improved pages, including those with a commercial purpose. Treating every location page alike would have ignored what the review had established.

My content lifecycle article covers the practical decisions to retain, update, combine or remove a page. At commissioning, I would record enough to make that later review possible:

Record	What to specify
Purpose	The reader's task and the business need it supports
Expected contribution	The observable change the content is intended to help achieve
Evidence	The baseline, measure and any limits or proxies
Review	Who will assess the result and when

If the first review leaves too little evidence to decide, record what is missing and set a further review point. That gives continued publication a reason that can be examined.