Finding Untapped Potential with Analytics

Are hidden content opportunities lurking within your analytics? Sometimes the best SEO strategy starts with what you already have.

Let’s say you’re reading a monthly report about your website’s traffic and notice something a little strange. A handful of old pages are quietly pulling in decent traffic. You’re not sure why these pages are getting traffic. To be honest, you’re really interested in how more recent efforts are performing. That’s the data you want to see.

You’d probably ignore this detail and move on, right?

Rare Bird noticed a similar patter emerge on the Harvard Health Publishing website and brought it to the attention of Greg King, CMO at Belvoir Media Group, Harvard’s publishing partner. Together, we decided to dig deeper into the analytics and present our findings to Harvard.

Ultimately, what we discovered—and how we used that information—led to increased traffic for HHP, with some pages seeing up to a 72% increase after we suggested a new content strategy.

The Mystery Pages

“Rare Bird came to me,” Greg recalls now, “and said, ‘Do you realize you have these pages on the site?’”

The pages in question were “topic pages” that offered minimal content on subjects such as exercise and fitness, prostate health, and nutrition. Created years earlier, most only had a few paragraphs—less content than even a short blog post, really.

These weren’t carefully crafted landing pages. They were merely functional—afterthoughts, almost—that served a singular but limited purpose, but they had somehow attracted an organic audience. Topics that seemed almost too broad to rank for were quietly drawing consistent visitors.

The Lightbulb Moment

Instead of dismissing these pages as one-off oddities, Rare Bird and Greg’s team at Belvoir saw an opportunity that many organizations might have missed.

“Rare Bird said, ‘Let’s put together 10 to 20 of these things,’” Greg continues. “‘Let’s start with the pages you already have, but build them out.’”

Plenty of organizations need us to create all-new content from scratch, but this situation didn’t warrant that, exactly. We recognized that search engines and users were already telling us what these audiences wanted. We just needed to pay attention, find out why, and then act accordingly on those signals.

We also needed a systematic approach to expanding the content to help turn those pages into richly authoritative resources:

Keyword research first: 25-50 keyword opportunities for each topic, then carefully selecting the most promising ones
Question-driven structure: Headings mirrored on what people actually search for
Substantial content: 2,000-ish words versus a few scattered paragraphs
Medical authority: Everything reviewed and approved by Harvard medical experts
User-focused format: Anchor links, clear sections, and scannable content

The format we landed on was almost a proto-pillar page, with a brief introduction, anchor links, and sections answering specific questions like “Why is exercise so important for seniors?” or “What are the benefits of exercise?”

But the real genius was the happy accident of its timing. This was a few years before answer engine optimization and AI search were something to consider. By structuring content around genuine user questions, these pages became perfect for the search landscape to come.

Getting Harvard Medical School’s approval isn’t like getting sign-off from a typical content team. Every claim needs medical backing, and every article shows the photo and bio of the piece’s reviewer. The editorial standards are extraordinarily high, which means multiple rounds of revisions and refinements. Such a process always improves the final product. The back-and-forth with Harvard’s editorial team helped make sure that these pages were SEO-friendly, medically sound, and genuinely helpful to readers dealing with real health concerns.

It’s a simple concept, but it required careful execution to meet Harvard’s standards while still serving the search intentions of their site’s visitors.

The Game-Changer

What really made this scalable were the custom CMS options Rare Bird developed for Belvoir to help manage content on the HHP site.

“There’s a pretty slick tool that Rare Bird’s developers built in the admin that allows each of these sections to be a widget,” Greg explains. “One page might have six of them. Another one might have four, another one might have seven, but each one is a module in the admin.”

Instead of rebuilding pages from scratch every time, editors could mix and match content sections like building blocks. Need a new topic page? Just pick your modules and fill in the content. Want to test different section orders? Drag and drop.

The widget system also solved a common problem in healthcare content: maintaining consistency while allowing for topic-specific customization. Each module could be refined and reused, ensuring quality control while speeding up production. This clever approach made content creation simultaneously more systematic and more flexible. Editors weren’t starting with a blank page each time, but they weren’t locked into rigid templates, either.

The Results

A few years later, the results tell a compelling story:

An increase in monthly traffic, up to 72% for certain topic pages
Multiple topic pages performing consistently
Harvard’s full editorial approval (no small feat in medical publishing)
A replicable system they’re still expanding across new topics

These pages—structured around authentic user questions with authoritative responses—reveal that user behavior follows predictable patterns. And, unlike high-maintenance assets that demand constant updates, these foundational resources compound value month after month, year after year.

Content Strategy: What We Learned

Hidden opportunities exist in your existing content. Many organizations are sitting on content goldmines without realizing it. Sometimes your best content ideas are already getting some traffic, but they need proper development. Whether you’re a tech company with old documentation that still draws attention, a nonprofit with historical program descriptions getting organic traffic, or a financial services organization with a FAQ page that people still visit, pay attention to what the numbers are telling you.

Question-based content beats keyword stuffing. Keyword research informed our strategy, but the question-based structure is what made these pages truly valuable for both users and search engines. Every audience asks fundamental questions repeatedly. Identifying and answering these questions for your industry’s audience can create lasting value. Serve that audience well and your traffic can improve.

Systems enable scaling. Without the custom CMS widgets, this would have been a one-off project, not a systematic content strategy. The technology investment made ongoing success possible without proportional increases in effort. This lesson applies to any organization looking to scale content production. The right tools and processes often matter more than individual pieces, however brilliant they might be.

Authority compounds over time. These pages work because they carry Harvard’s medical credibility. The content strategy amplified that authority, proving that you can improve search performance without compromising editorial standards. Whatever the source of your organization’s authority—technical expertise, industry experience, research capabilities—a good content strategy should strengthen your credibility.

Timing matters. By focusing on question-based content when we did, we helped optimize Harvard Health Publishing’s pages for search engines, and also for the AI search revolution we’re in now. Content strategists might be able to anticipate future trends, but that’s guess-work, mostly. We doubled-down on our decades-old philosophy of writing for readers first. And if Google happens to like it, even better.

How This Can Help Smaller Organizations, Too

The best content strategy doesn’t have to be about creating something entirely new. Sometimes it’s based on recognizing what’s already working and building on those foundations. The forgotten paragraphs on these topic pages just needed someone to ask the right questions and build the right tools to help them reach their potential.

But you don’t need Harvard’s brand recognition or massive traffic volumes to apply these principles. In fact, smaller organizations often have a few advantages that Harvard doesn’t.

You can move faster. The editorial approval process in massive organizations can take months. Your organization probably doesn’t need busy doctors to sign off on every word, which means you can test ideas, refine approaches, and scale successful content much more quickly.

Your competition is likely less sophisticated. Harvard Health competes for traffic with massive entities such as WebMD, but your industry—especially within your region—probably doesn’t have content powerhouses dominating every search term. This creates opportunities to capture search traffic with less competition, even if you have fewer resources.

Your audience’s questions are often underserved. Large organizations focus on broad, high-volume keywords. Smaller companies can succeed by answering the specific questions their niche audience actually asks. It may be easier to rank for meaningful search terms if few competitors are creating detailed content on that topic. And, no, this philosophy isn’t limited to focused B2B companies. Nike often appears first anytime someone searches for “running shoes,” but even a niche shoe-maker could succeed with detailed content about the “best running shoes for plantar fasciitis on concrete.”

Your expertise is often unique. Every organization has knowledge that insiders take for granted but that has tremendous value to outsiders. The trick is identifying which bits of your internal expertise might match up best with external search behavior. Manufacturing companies know material properties that engineers search for. Nonprofits understand program implementation details that funders research. Financial firms grasp regulatory nuances that clients want explained. Use what you know, and don’t assume “outsiders” to your industry won’t care about such information.

Content development based on actual user search behavior works, regardless of scale. A small organization answering 10 important questions thoroughly can likely build more meaningful and valuable content than a large organization creating 100 shallow pages.

Most importantly, this successful effort proves that you don’t need to choose between search performance and editorial quality. With the right approach, you can achieve both. A content strategy works best when it aligns with an organization’s strengths.

Don’t let your best content opportunities stay buried. We can identify underperforming pages with potential and turn them into traffic-generating resources.

Let’s Talk

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