What is high-quality content, anyway? Learn how content quality supports SEO, what quality looks like, how it's measured, and more.
What is high-quality content, anyway? Learn how content quality supports SEO, what quality looks like, how it's measured, and more.
HOW DOES YOUR CONTENT HELP SUPPORT SEO?
If you want organic search visibility, rankings, and traffic, you have to commit yourself to the grind of consistently creating optimized content.
CONTENT AND SEO
At their best, they form a bond that can catapult any website to the top of search engine rankings. But that’s only when they’re at their best. Because, when they’re at their worst, they can cause Google penalties that are near impossible to recover from.
The purpose of this is simple; to provide you with an understanding of why content is important for your website, social media and SEO.
Let’s get started!
So... What exactly is Quality Content?
Content is not only important, but it is the most important thing. Ultimately, your content is what will make your cash register ring. Good, relatable, and well-researched content is what sets your website and your brand apart from the masses of competitors all fighting for the spotlight in your industry. High-quality content is both what customers and search engines want to see. Every additional page of quality content is a new landing page, or avenue, for consumers to find you through.
By maintaining high-quality content on your website, you will also position yourself as an expert in the industry. The bottom line is that people trust and flock toward people and companies that they think sound reliable, trustworthy, and in the know.
Think of the last website that you visited. How long did you stay on that website? People are generally busy. They have something else to do and/or they just have a short attention span. If you don’t offer them what they are looking for and something they enjoy reading, they will likely just bounce – which hurts your bounce rate and your bottom line.
Now, think about their future choices as well. Are they going to come back to your website? Well, that mainly depends on the person and their interest in your product. But if they do, it is likely they are hoping not to see the same, boring content. This is where the importance of updating your content comes in. People always need a reason to keep coming back, so give it to them by updating your content. If every few times they visit your website it is updated, this shows them that you are actively focusing on their needs and desires. Updates are a good sign for consumers.
Content Marketing Is Too Valuable for Both Consumers and Brands to Ever Go Away
The number one reason that content marketing is important is that your customers appreciate it. Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as outbound marketing, drives six times higher conversion rates, and has the potential for a 7.8-fold boost in web traffic.
The reality is, content marketing has fostered the customer-centric reality we’re now operating in. From well-researched white papers to podcast series listeners can’t live without, content is changing the relationship between the brand and consumer.
In the B2C sector, content marketing is just as important. Look at brands like Nike, which has become way more than a company. Nike has become a way of life that has inspired generations.
Or Sephora, who have mastered brand community with their content, inviting their audience into an engaging, educational, empowering environment.
Through offering value and meaning, and through giving people an entire ecosystem to tap into for information, guidance, and human connection, content marketing has formed a bridge that consumers want to walk across in order to connect with the brands they like.
There’s no going back.
Content marketing started as the alternative to the ad age. Something of a much-needed respite from the over saturation of magazine ads, promo posters, television commercials, and digital advertising – by 2021, the average person saw between 6,000 and 10,000 ads in one day!
But today, almost all marketers use content marketing – 91 percent of B2B marketers and 86 percent of B2C.
And (no surprises here), consumers like it.
Brands who neglect the importance of content marketing today will have to play catch up tomorrow. On the other hand, those who have a content marketing strategy in place are already on the next level – honing their content with better customer data, better technology, and a better developed network, either in-house or outsourced, of content producers.
How is Content Used to Help SEO
Over the years Google’s search algorithms continue to evolve. Pay close attention to these changes, since they tell you how to get on Google’s good side and help your pages be in top spots on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
SEO content is not just any content, it needs to be high-quality and useful to the visitor. User experience is an important factor in how Google decides which content should rank in the search engines for top positions. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bad content on the internet.
For example, if you have a blog, the best way to rank your blog posts is to write content that approaches the topic from a different perspective or provides more value than other websites that have written about the same topic.
In order to write SEO content, you will need to know a few fundamentals.
Length – Longer content pieces (1000+ words) have been shown to rank better on search engines. However, it’s important to keep paragraphs short in blog posts and other website content. Break up paragraphs in 1-2 sentences or at most 3-4 sentences.
Readability – Google prefers content that has a certain reading level, so that readers have an easier time understanding it. As opposed to dumbing down your content, it’s more about opening it up to a wider audience who can find value in it too.
Tone of voice – Keeping a consistent tone of voice in your writing helps the reader to understand the perspective at which you’re writing from. These factors into readability as well.
Formatting- The way you format your writing plays an important role in SEO. Using headlines throughout the article helps the reader navigate the content better. Using bullet point allows for easier listing of items that the reader should pay attention to. Ensure you had visuals to break up the content even further.
Keywords- To discover what words are being searched by users the most, we rely on keyword research. Keywords help search engines comprehend that your content is about a certain topic. They can also tell you what specifically to write about, if there’s a higher search volume that means you’ll have a better chance of people reading your content.
Linking- Google has said that internal linking to other pages on your website and backlinks from other websites can also improve SEO. This also provides credibility to your content, since you’re providing more resources.
Alt text- Text that provides a description of an image for accessibility purposes.
What are some common mistakes in digital content production?
Targeting the Wrong Keywords
The most effective keywords to target are long tail keywords (between 3-5 words) that have high search volume but low competition. If you’re searching for keywords with high competition your efforts will likely to fruitless.
Using Too Many Keywords
One focus keyword is ideal per page of your website. However, ensure you don’t stuff the page with this keyword, Google will penalize you if you do this. Instead maintain a reasonable keyword density, there are a number of free tools to check keyword density online.
Duplicate Content
Google values original content and doesn’t care much for copied or duplicate content. Ensure the content on your website was crafted with this in mind.
Missing SEO Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
These tags help Google understand what a page is about when it is crawling your website. Ensure that you have title tags and meta descriptions enriched with strategic keywords.
Missing Image ALT Tags
Alt tags help with accessibility, for those who are blind or have problems with their sight, alt tags help them navigate web pages by reading the alt text to them over the speaker. All graphic images are able to have alt text, and Google prefers that your pages keep this in mind.
Poor Linking
Google likes when you provide sources for your content or additional resources that will help the user understand the topic better. Make sure you are interlinking between the pages on your website, to use SEO juice from other pages.
Another linking strategy that is important is building backlinks. However, don’t turn to black hat techniques to get backlinks such as buying them. Instead build relationships with other websites and send a polite email asking if they will link to your content.
Now that you know content is an important part of SEO, speak to an expert about how you can create the right content to help increase online visibility for your business.
Tips for Improving Your Content Quality
At this point, you are likely thinking: will anything ever be good enough? First, you had to abandon a solely keyword focus and actually develop good content that included your keywords naturally. Now, I’m telling you that you need to update that content, too? The world of SEO, marketing, and the Internet, in general, is always changing – therefore, you should be, too.
Google is regularly crawling through sites to see which ones should be boosted and which ones should be demoted.
If you have never focused on your website content before, or maybe you know you slacked a bit – especially after reading about how important it really is, don’t fret. It is never too late to get in the game. Here are a few tips for improving your content:
Research, research, research.
Writing any content should always start with research. You need to research the keywords that you will use so that you can have the foundation on which you will build your content. The only way to present keywords in your content naturally is to build your content around them. Simply trying to stuff those keywords in at the end will not work.
However, keyword research is not the only thing that falls under research. The best way to get ahead of your competitors is to first see what they are doing. If they are at the top, they must be doing something right. Research your biggest competitors and see what type of content they are using. Of course, don’t copy them exactly, but you can use this as a guide for how you will mold yours. It might also show you a few things that could be done better before you ever even make the error.
It is not about you.
You have probably seen it time and time again – you visit a website and it is full of technical jargon. The way the content reads sounds as if the creator of the project wrote it himself. As the business owner, it can be hard to avoid this. However, writing for your audience is the key to quality content.
Keep the content fun, in short and easily readable sentences, relevant to your website and product, but avoid technical jargon at all costs.
Ask for help.
This is the one thing that nobody ever wants to do – it makes us feel like we have to admit that we can’t do it. However, there are people who specialize in developing engaging website content. If you find yourself struggling, it might be time to contact the professionals.
And the final tip: don’t stop there.
Your content is vital, let it be the center of your website and then build around it. Think of your content like that expensive little black dress you just bought for a party. Would you wear it without the perfect pair of shoes, carefully done make-up, and a few accessories? Probably not. You should be treating your website content the same way. Add high-quality content to your website and then dress it up with design and other visuals, like video!
Don’t go chasing algorithms… or waterfalls. Or anything else. The secret to high-quality content is writing to your audience.