By Brooke Hill

Think of the best party you’ve ever been invited to. The cocktails are flowing and the canapés are circling. The sound of laughter, the hum of great conversation and a backdrop of banging tunes. It’s the kind of night where the sun starts coming up before you’ve even thought about leaving.

Now think of the worst party you’ve ever been to. Stale crackers. Unnaturally orange cheese cubes. Boxed wine. Awkward small talk. You keep glancing at your watch, mentally calculating how soon you can leave without appearing rude. Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? 

Which one would you rather spend your evening at?

It’s not a trick question. Of course you’d choose the first. Not just because of the cocktails or the canapés, but because of how it makes you feel: the energy, the excitement, the sense that the best part of the night may still be ahead.

The invitation may have brought you to both parties. It doesn’t mean you’ll want to stay.

Search content (for the purposes of this article, let’s assume search covers SEO, GEO and all other initialisms) works the same way.

Search is the invitation. It helps people discover you and gives them a reason to turn up. 

Your content is the party. It’s what determines whether they want to hang around all night and tell their friends about the experience afterwards.

Somewhere along the way, though, we’ve become so focused on sending out as many invitations as possible that we’ve forgotten about the party itself.

We’re told to create more, more, more. More blogs. More landing pages. More FAQs. More answers to more search queries. Success is increasingly measured by output rather than impact, impressions over engagement, and the question has shifted from ‘what can we create that would be genuinely worth someone’s time?’ to ‘how much can we publish this quarter?’

But producing massive amounts of content isn’t an advantage. Anyone, and now any robot, can do it: AI can generate competent explainers in seconds. Information has become abundant, which means simply producing more of it is no longer enough to make a brand memorable.

That’s not to say beginner guides, FAQs and ‘Top 10’ lists don’t have a role to play. They absolutely do. Every party needs somewhere to hang your coat.

But the thing is, no one remembers the coat rack.

Here are three ways to make your search content more memorable than a coat rack:

Find the story within a story

Think about the last article you bookmarked, forwarded to a colleague or found yourself talking about over coffee. Chances are it did more than answer a question. It challenged an assumption. It articulated something you’d been thinking, but couldn’t quite put into words. It made an unexpected connection. Perhaps it told a story so strange, insightful or wonderfully unexpected that you couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The trick is to find that story. Find the moment where someone did something unexpected, or connected with an emotion they didn’t think possible. And the best way to do that? Talk to your people. Shift from copywriter to journalist, and put your curiosity goggles on. Ask ‘why’, and keep asking why until you hit the real story. 

Find the micro-details that connect

In every great experience is a tapestry of finer details that go almost unnoticed. When it comes to content, we call these micro-details. Maybe it’s descriptions of the person being interviewed, the lilt of a smile, the breathy, effortless laugh. Maybe it’s the precise way a skincare product feels on your skin – it slides on and sinks in and reflects light just the way you want it. The satisfying click of a lid or the sound of a twist-top on an FMCG product. Or the way someone felt when your SaaS (Software as a Service) genuinely made a difference to the way they experienced their world. 

These are micro-details, and they can only be uncovered by human interaction. Sitting with a subject matter expert and really deeply listening to what they are saying. Tasting the product. Wearing the product. Joining an experience. Uncover those micro-details and put them front and centre in your content – you’ll create a richer experience for it.

Unearth the everyday

“Everyday is becoming the new arena of meaning,” observes Future Laboratory’s ‘Future Forecast 2026 Report’. In a world where AI smooths and preens, imperfect everyday moments become something to treasure. Smart brands are seeing this and jumping on it – IKEA has made an iconic, over-a-decade-long platform out of it, and Deakin University is leaning in with its ‘See the Wonderful Possible’ campaign.

So, when it comes to your web content (and clench your stomach for this one), consider throwing out the script. Become unpredictable. Find rhythm in your language and shake up your structure. Keep people guessing. Share your thinking, and let it feel unfinished. Make the experience about the journey, not the destination. That’s what Substack does, and that’s why paid subscriptions are up 20 percent year-on-year.

Search still matters, and never more so than today. The invitations for attention are coming thick and fast and you need to know how to make yours noticed. But don’t spend all your time polishing the coat rack. Make sure your party is one worth staying at. 

Brooke Hill is the founder and director of Wonderthink. 

Read more: Stop chasing the feed: subcultures and seconds are the real currency of brand equity