Why Content Quality Matters
Placing quality content on your website is essential to your business, but what defines quality content? Quality content is more than grammatically correct paragraphs sprinkled with keywords at appropriate intervals. It has distinct qualities that will engage your audience and tacitly make them want to do business with you.
Definition, Characteristics and Benefits of Quality Content
In short, quality content is any content that adds value to your website and your audience. However, it’s much more than that. When creating quality content, you should address the following:
- Your audience
- Your business objectives
- Your organization
- Your community
The first and fourth points may appear similar, as do the second and third, but they are essentially separate. Quality content connects with your entire audience by informing, entertaining or changing readers’ ways of thinking. It appeals to the heart as well as the brain with the ability to solve problems. Community, on the other hand, involves the part of your audience that includes influencers and thought leaders who resonate with your audience. Think of the fashionista with the Instagram account who absolutely loves your newest trendy top and posts a link. That’s community.
When considering your business, your content should create awareness of your brand, develop quality leads that convert to sales, and nurture customers during the post-sale period. That’s how quality content benefits your organization. Telling great stories will enhance your brand, which can help recruit excellent employees who will further promote your business. Great content has positive ramifications that go way beyond simply more leads and visibility.
Focus on the Audience
Although you need to address your industry, you must focus more on your audience. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes. What do they want to know? What should they be made aware of? What kind of information can you impart to them that will improve their lives? Your audience will see through trite and trivial content immediately, which is why your content should serve their agenda. Never write content with a hidden agenda in mind.
Don’t Forget to Entertain
Are you passionate about what you do? Of course you are, so your content should be passionate too. Quality content should entertain and inspire your audience. Passionate writing begs to be shared, whether it’s useful, emotional or surprising, or even all three. Varying sentence structure and achieving a certain tone, such as happy, hopeful, welcoming, and other positive qualities will make your content engaging.
Show Your Authority
Give your readers a reason to return to your website. Achieve this by showing your authority on your chosen subjects. Give them information that they can’t get anywhere else. For example, if you own a website on game fishing, quote noted fishing enthusiasts and obtain your facts on seasons, licensing, and other pertinent factors from government sources. Show readers a different perspective on various aspects of the game fishing industry that will make their experience more enjoyable the next time they head out with a rod and reel.
Original research, citations, testimonials and links will increase your credibility and boost your trustworthiness and reputation.
Create a Content Schedule and Stick to It
One of Google’s metrics for content quality analysis is how often your website posts new content. One way to assure that you have a constant flow of quality content for search engine optimization (SEO) is to establish a content schedule and stick to it. A content schedule will prompt readers to keep returning to your website for information, which in turn will translate to more leads and eventual sales. Content calendars are particularly useful for businesses that rely on seasonal sales to target audiences through high engagement.
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The Importance of High-Quality Content for SEO
Many marketers base quality content on the following characteristics:
- Appropriate length
- Spelling and grammar
- Formatting and readability
- Expertise and authority
Creating high-quality content for SEO goes beyond those elements. You want your content to be a unicorn, not a donkey. Unicorn content ranks in the top 10 percent of all content for your given topic and industry. At the other end of the spectrum is donkey content, paid attention to by far fewer readers, or maybe even no one. Unicorn content has a click-through rate that is up to six times higher than the rest of content found on a Google search. Only a fraction of your website will have true top-quality writing, yet you need to find it and make it part of your business. That’s not to say that content that doesn’t make the top 10 percent isn’t worthwhile. It is, but you should strive to create outstanding pieces every single time.
You should also realize that no magic number exists regarding the perfect length for content quality.
How to Determine if You Have Quality Content
Beyond looking at click-through rate (CTR) metrics, you’ll know you have quality content if your company achieves its marketing objectives. Address things that matter in your content, such as the products and services you want to sell. Simultaneously, content needs to be all about the audience. It needs to answer questions, provide solutions to problems or otherwise give readers information that they previously did not have before visiting your website.
Does That Mean Metrics Don’t Matter?
Metrics still matter. After all, if you don’t rank high in a Google search, your content will be for naught. Mere numbers, though, don’t tell the entire story. You’ll know that your content is high quality if it demonstrates actual business value as represented by brand lift, sales, more leads, shorter time to conversion, etc.
Quality Content Has Relevance
To make your content great, its relevance should go beyond your target audience and address contemporary culture, reflecting the ideas, beliefs, and theories of the world in which we live. Culture drives our decision-making process. When you address contemporary culture, your content will resonate with more people. Cultural relevance means you can’t produce the same content you did five years ago. Update and change content frequently to reflect the times.
Google Frowns Upon Pages With a Lack of Quality Content
As the king of search engines, Google processes more than 3.5 billion searches each day. In addition to making sure that your content has relevant keywords, Google also looks at how much quality your content has. Google constantly adjusts its algorithms to deliver “useful and relevant information” in the fastest possible time. When you have all the elements in place, your pages will rank higher on a search. When you don’t, your position will drop. That alone should convince you of the importance of content quality.
Examples of Websites With Great Content
You know the elements that make up high-quality content, but how does it play out on a web page? Your intended audience has a lot to do with how your pages look and the way you engage with them. Let’s take a look at two websites, both of which are quite different, to learn why each has quality web content.
The Oatmeal
Who doesn’t need a laugh these days? The Oatmeal does just that with its witty, fast-moving comics, games, blog posts and more. All content here is quick to read, so if you only have a few moments of leisure time, you can read it and move on. You’ll find loads of incredibly funny content on different topics, and it’s all original. No other website is like The Oatmeal, which is why it’s great.
ScienceDaily
ScienceDaily, with the tag line “your source for the latest research news,” has a dramatically different look than the previously mentioned website. Readers come here for the latest news on astronomy, the environment, health and other scientific topics. This website gives readers exactly what they want, in capsule form for those whose time is limited and longer-form articles for those who want more in-depth information. Best of all, ScienceDaily uses everyday language, which makes the content easy to understand.
How to Check the Content Quality of Your Website
Determining whether you have quality content goes further than assessing how many hits your website gets or how many shares a particular article has. Working quality into your content during creation is one way to ensure that you have quality web content. Even so, chances are you’ll still wonder whether you’ve hit the mark. Check your content quality through the following steps.
Is the Content Original?
Original content adds value because you are presenting ideas that no one else has previously written. This quality is by far the most important one for your audience. Tools like Copyscape can help you avoid plagiarism, but when it comes to determining how original your content is, Google is your best friend. Simply type in a keyword in a possible article title to see what the search returns. If your search doesn’t return anything close, you have winning content.
Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar
Bad spelling and poor grammar can kill unique content as both undermine credibility. Although Google doesn’t crawl for grammar, your readers will notice and ultimately avoid your website. If you haven’t edited your content well, who’s to say that you researched it or know what you’re talking about?
The first step in getting content without spelling and grammatical errors is to find an experienced writer. Beyond that, always double-check the work you receive by using spelling and grammar checkers in Word or Google Docs as well as tools like the advanced version of Grammarly, which will flag a variety of subtle grammar errors.
Check Your Facts
Fact-checking just isn’t for political pundits. It’s important for your credibility too. Make sure you use reliable sources and provide support for the information where possible. Get to know the trusted sources in your field and link to them in your content where possible.
Formatting
Your website should follow a recognizable layout that makes content easy to read. Break it up with headings, bullet points and short paragraphs that will allow readers to scan the content and get the information they need. Accompanying images should be relevant and add to the value of your information. Develop a style guide that allows your writers to easily craft their work according to your format.
Include keywords as part of your formatting. Placing them in strategic places such as H1, H2 or H3 headings will also help SEO.
Make Sure All Links Work
Broken links can also spell doom for your content. Make sure all links work properly, even if they link to other pages on your website. Periodically check outbound links to ensure that they are still valid as sources may delete pages or change information.
Use Online Quality Tools
While online quality tools aren’t foolproof, they provide another level of assurance that your website has content quality. Consider using the following tools, many of which are completely free or have free options in addition to premium services:
- Content Analysis by SEO Review Tools
- Yoast SEO WordPress plugin
- Hemingway Editor
- Grammarly
More signs your content quality might not be good enough:
- High bounce rates (sessions without conversions only): This suggests that visitors to your website were unable to find what they were looking for.
- Low time spent on page (sessions without conversions only): This also means that users had different expectations of your website.
- High impressions but low CTR: In this case, you should review your meta titles, meta descriptions and snippets and make them more compelling for users to click through.
- High traffic but no conversions: Your content gets a lot of visitors, but people don’t convert.
Where Can You Get Quality Content and What Does It Cost?
As a marketing professional, you face many different choices regarding who will write your content. Chances are, you’re not in a good position to create content in-house. Maybe you have the talent and skill to write but don’t have the time. What choices do you have? You can obtain content in four different ways.
In-House Writers
On the surface, this route is the least expensive. After all, if you or an employee can do the job, why pay someone else to do it. In many respects, that’s a credible solution if you have a professional writer on staff, but what happens if you don’t? Sure, you learned how to write decently as part of your marketing or business courses in college, but that may be as far as it goes. Do you truly have the ability to create high-quality content? Chances are you’ll struggle and waste time that could be put to better use on other projects.
Working with Freelancers
Working with a freelance writer gives you direct contact while also keeping your costs low as independent writers don’t keep large offices, which allows them to charge less than large marketing agencies. You won’t have to deal with expensive placement costs while also having the ability to communicate directly with the person doing your work. However, you have little to no recourse if your freelancer doesn’t produce the content by your set deadline.
Securing Content With an Agency
Contacting an agency to have your content written gives you the advantage of finding the correct writer with the appropriate level of experience among a small pool of professionals. Agency contracts usually provide a guarantee of satisfaction for the work provided, so you’ll be sure to get exactly what you want. On the other hand, that contract may require you to pay for services that you may not use, driving up your overall costs.
Outsourcing With a Writing Platform
Online platforms give clients a wide variety of choices. They save time by providing a wide selection of experienced authors in one place with the ability to write about your topic. Content platforms are economical because you can find writers who will fit your budget at the quality level you desire. Content platforms are also scalable, meaning you don’t have to sign an extensive contract. Assign one article or many ongoing articles over a long period. The choice is yours.
You Can’t Afford Not to Buy Quality Content
With so much high-quality content on the web, you can’t afford not to be part of the mix. Mediocre content only serves to take up space on a web page, while high-quality content moves your business to the next level. Textbroker is set up to provide you with content quality that you will be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. You owe it to yourself and your business to buy the best content available.
Our platform offers you advantages that put us at a level above your other choices. Textbroker gives you:
- Scalability as you can get projects of all sizes done without any hassle
- No fixed costs, pay per word
- An extensive choice of writers experienced in many different industries and areas
- Ability to filter writers by knowledge, experience and more
- Unique content available in 36 languages
- Duplicate content checks that avoids plagiarism and article similarity
- No paperwork
Isn’t it time you got the quality content you deserve?
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