Be honest: How often do you think about your website content and how effective it is?
Don’t sweat it, you’re not alone in this. For most businesses, high-quality content, placement, effectiveness, and depth is just an afterthought.
Even stranger, many marketers believe that it doesn’t matter what kind of content you post on your website, blog, and social media, so long as it gets people talking about your business.
To no surprise, the opposite is true. If your goal is to scale your reach and in general your brand successfully online, you need to pay close attention to the quality of the content you produce and share with the world, to better resonate with potential and current customers.
There is a simple rule to follow to gain new clients and maximize conversions: Create an environment where clients can trust your brand and understand who you are and what you represent.
Posting mediocre content instead of high-quality content won’t do the trick. It will create an adverse effect. It will only serve to confuse them and make it harder for them to relate to you in a real way.
One of the most influential people of the 21st century, Bill Gates, wrote an article back in 1996 on the world of digital marketing and just how important SEO is, where we explained that “Content is King”. Even back then, while the internet was still the “new kid on the block” the article “Content is King” still rings true to this day.
Although this term applies to every industry, specifically for businesses that try to establish a strong internet presence, content is still king.
However, just like we spoke in our previous blog post about the fact that not all landing page elements are created equal, also not all content is created equal, no matter if you’re publishing it on your website, blog, or social media.
And, in this blog post we are going to cover in detail the following topics:
- What is High-Quality Content?
- How Google Defines “Quality Content”?
- Content Types
- Quality Content & SEO
- Reasons Why High-Quality Content Is Important For Your Business Growth
- Benefits Of Having High-Quality Content Marketing
- How to Produce High-Quality Content
- How Can I Make Sure Google Knows My Content is Original?
- How Can I Protect My Content From Theft?
- What Is Content Depth?
- What Is Content Scoring?
- How To Score Your Content
Let’s jump into it.
What is High-Quality Content?
Often, high-quality content can be described as a clear and straightforward representation of an idea or concept, to engage the audience fully.
The “high-quality” part means that a lot of factors are taken into consideration before, during, and after publishing the content to draw in the readers and help them understand the information that you share about the business. Additionally, high-quality content positions your brand as an authority and industry leader by giving the business a clear & straightforward brand voice.
Content IS the key piece to a perfectly designed digital marketing strategy.
That is why we have decided to dedicate a whole blog post to help you understand and learn what high-quality content is, what are the benefits & reasons, as well as how to produce it, to fundamentally improve your business conversions, presence, and overall effectiveness.
In most cases, one of the factors to your success is how well you can create and distribute high-quality content regularly and effectively. Because knowing how to produce high-quality content helps you get more visitors, lower bounce rates, and of course higher conversions.
Another simpler way we can describe exactly what high-quality content is, it’s a well-written, interesting, straightforward, and organized piece of written material that accomplishes a specific goal. And, since many aspects determine whether the content is high-quality or not, combining all of them is how you can set your content apart from the rest.
How Google Defines “Quality Content”?
When asked how Google defines whether the website has quality content or not, John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, responded with:
“When it comes to the quality of the content, we don’t mean like just the text of your articles. It’s the quality of your overall website. And that includes everything from the layout to the design. Like, how you have things presented on your pages, how you integrate images, how you work with speed, all of those factors kind of come into play there.”
To further illustrate the point, he also noted: “So it’s not the case that we would look at just purely the text of the article and ignore everything else around it and say, oh this is high-quality text. We want to look at the website overall.”
So, although producing written content is really important and one of the biggest reasons for conversions, it’s also important to take a look at the website as a whole and optimize it.
Content Types
One of the things that John Mueller pointed out was that when talking about content, it’s not just the text that matters. In reality, content comes in all different shapes and sizes. Additionally, to a written format, it can be a piece of audio, video, or even an image. The most common types of content that you will come across are:
Written content
Not just blog posts (like this one), written content also includes SEO articles, eBooks, emails, white papers, social media posts, etc. Of course, the advantage of this type of content is that you can inform the client in detail about your brand & product, and in turn build a relationship with them.
Images
The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” still rings true to this day. A study done by Seyens shows that humans are visual creators, making imagery effective for businesses. Some of the most commonly used types of imagery are infographics & GIFs.
Audio
Just like visual cues, audio cues tend to get stuck in our brains as well. That is why using audio is a great way to promote your brand. The most common types of audio content are podcasts & audiobooks.
Video
Combining both audio and video in a harmonious balance will ensure that you get the best out of both worlds. The most common types of video content are animations & webinars.
Quality Content & SEO
It’s needless to say that search engine optimization starts with high-quality content. This is furthermore highlighted by the fact that most commercial sites that rank high are not well perceived by their visitors.
That is due to the simple fact that these websites have one goal in mind, and that is just to sell a product or service. While they might hire a designer to churn out excellent graphics, the rest of the content is usually subpar. And because of that, while the website might look great, the user time on the page is very low.
The key to solving this issue is to provide useful information on the website that is relevant to what the users search for.
Reasons Why High-Quality Content is Important for Your Business Growth
Additionally to what we mentioned in our previous blogs post, how well you have set up your website content and deploying an effective digital marketing strategy can “make or break” your businesses.
The latter has also been emphasized by digital marketing experts, who point out that successful businesses rely greatly on the digital marketing strategy that’s put into motion. Needless to say from SEO to social media, the way that you promote your businesses effectively, while at the same time maintaining your presence online, is by providing high-quality content.
Having said that, creating high-quality content is one of the most important pieces of your digital marketing strategy, if not the most important. It’s not only a way to build a relationship with your IBP (ideal buying persona) but also build trust as well.
In other words, high-quality content fuels your marketing and affects how well you promote your business online. That’s why giving attention to the quality of content is extremely important. It’s also, for SEO purposes, really important to ensure that you strategically use relevant keywords across all content.
So, the value you get from your content is equal to the effort that you put into it. And, high-quality content will help you achieve several goals, including:
- Stand out as a thought leader.
- Grow your subscribers and email list.
- Increase your website traffic.
- Keep your customers engaged.
- Generate revenue.
The logic is really simple: If a user finds the content valuable, whether, on the website or social media, the probability increases that they will share it, spreading your message to more people organically, rather than via paid advertising.
And going back one step, not only benefits the user, valuable content will improve your search ranking, driving even more users to the website, and creating a domino effect. Google uses the quality of content and the links within the content as metrics to establish page rankings in SERPs (search engine result pages).
Benefits of Having High-Quality Content Marketing
1. Scaling your business & traffic organically
Just like creating quality content will help you increase your social media engagement, conversions, and followers, the principle is the same for your website as well. Every good SEO strategy always starts with quality content. Inserting targeted keywords, making the website mobile compatible and UX friendly will boost your SEO performance.
2. The most effective way to build customer relationships and trust
Answering customer questions and interacting with them online is one of the ways content helps your business build a relationship with the users. In practice, by creating value through content without asking the users for anything in return, they are more likely to trust your brand, advice, recommendations, etc.
At the end of the day, well-placed content is a perfect way to build your reputation as a quality and trustable brand. The more quality content you provide, the more likely your users will have a positive association with your company.
3. The users’ time-on-page will significantly increase
As we pointed out previously, great content is an important tool for the business since it creates positive experiences for the users, which in turn compels them to keep coming back or stick around a bit longer. Simply put, by providing high-quality content you effectively reinforce your brand voice and generate a better UX (user experience).
4. A better, more established social media presence
Creating “trendy” content and establishing a social media strategy to grow followers are two different things. We can see that trend in many businesses that don’t take social media seriously because they might have a big following but a very low conversion rate. That’s one of the reasons why quality content is so important since it can help you gain traction on social media.
Creating content for social media with current trending topics in my will help promote your brand, increase the number of followers of your brand and raise social media conversions.
5. You’ll generate more and better leads.
Lead generation is really important for most of the industries in the world, and quality content achieves that. The more time your users spend time with you, the more likely it is that they will purchase something from you in the future. The most common way of generating new leads is through placing CTA’s (call-to-action or buttons) throughout the website.
6. Overall improves conversions
The purpose of any business is to increase profits, by increasing their sales, or in other words conversions. And, by providing high-quality content you can help users get more informed and make educated purchases.
As a pro tip: You help with your conversion goals by using original graphics on your blog posts, instead of using stock photos. And just like with generating leads, strategically placing CTA’s across your website will ensure that your users know what they should do next.
7. Your marketing strategy will cost less
Ever since the content marketing costs have been tracked, time and time again providing quality content remained the most cost-effective marketing strategy available. While you might think that the upfront costs might be big (since a writer should be hired to maintain and produce new content), in reality in the long term, when compared to paid ads, video marketing, and traditional marketing, content wins the battle every time.
8. It’s data-driven
Just like most things in life, big decisions like what is high-quality content need to be data-driven as well. Any other method of making a definition will be based on your biased views of your work. By using data as a metric, you have an objective and honest way of determining what kind of content you have on the website and social media.
Content defined as “Unicorn” content: The “creme de la creme” of content that is your absolute best and content that drives the best performances. Performing among the top 3 percent of all your content, it ranks well in Google and drives the most traffic, engagement, and leads.
Content defined as “Donkey” content: Average and subpar content, makes up the remaining 97 percent of your content.
So is there a big difference between the two? Let’s take a look at the statics:
- Unicorn content has 6 times higher CTR (click-through rates) than donkey content and is 10x more engaging than the donkeys.
- According to WordStream, 10 percent of stories generated more than 60 percent of our traffic in 2016.
- Based on WordStream’s customer data, the top 10 percent of offers convert at least 5x better than donkey content
- And, if you are familiar with the Pareto principle, in the marketing world, only 20% of customers generate 80% of profits. In other words, 20% of our content drives 80% of the overall results.
9. It Helps in Reaching Marketing Goals
The best way to measure quality content is by the results it produces (the output), and not how much you invest it in (input). Great content comes in all shapes and sizes, meaning that it can be long or short, have zero images or 10, but still reach the excepted goals. And that is exactly how to measure your content, by the amount of traffic, conversions, and leads, and not just by how much time was spent producing it.
How to Produce High-Quality Content
1. Know your customer’s search intent
Search intent is most commonly defined as the reason behind someone seeking out information online. Some users may search for general information about a topic or brand, while some might be looking for answers to specific questions, or shopping for a product/service.
Before starting with creating your content, it’s really important to understand your target audience and IBP (ideal buying persona). What they search for, what are their pain points, how will they interact with your content, etc are a few of many questions that are useful to answer before creating the most effective content strategy.
2. Know your call-to-action
Once the search intent has been established and the target audience has been formed, it’s also important to know that is our CTA (i.e. call to action).
Here are a few questions that will help you establish your call-to-action more easily:
- Are you trying to sell a product or service?
- Is your goal to build a large email subscriber list?
- Is your goal to increase conversions online?
- Are you trying to build an inquiry funnel or an effective client pathway?
All of this needs to be factored in when establishing an effective CTA that aligns with your goals and customer intent simultaneously.
3. Keep the readability in mind
Readability, a.k.a how easily your content is read, it’s important not just for your customers but also for search engines that crawl, index and rank your website. A big part of the overall performance is how you format the content.
Most people tend to speed-scroll through articles, which is partly why headings and subheadings, lists, and small blocks of text can be easily “digested” by the reader. Nobody likes a huge chunk of text with no visual breaks, not even Google.
4. Do your research
According to the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer, consumer trust in institutions and media is at an all-time low. To build that trust and long-lasting relationship with your clients, it’s really important to do thorough research and have data to back it up.
The risk of losing your audience’s trust due to misinformation can easily be avoided by doing your due diligence. Also, don’t forget to keep your website up-to-date with case studies and data.
5. Focus on a niche topic
On this blog, we try to cover a lot of topics but every single individual blog post is laser-targeted toward a specific group of clients. One of the reasons why it’s advisable to take this route is simple: Less competition. Targeting a wide target audience means higher competition for broader keywords.
However, narrowing down your focus on specific keywords could mean ranking on page 1 on Google. Quality content with more specific keywords will target and attract users who are looking for specific information and therefore generate meaningful conversions.
There are a lot of free tools to analyze keywords. Doing research is important, and the same is true for keywords and topics as well.
6. Use every single content type
As we mentioned above, there are a few content types out there, each with its advantages. To get the best out of all of them, it’s important to utilize all of them. Nobody wants to read a page with just plain text.
It’s important to strategically place screenshots, photos, infographics, videos, charts on the website for maximum effect. Time and time again, the data shows that different types of content combined can improve engagement and it’s an effective way to illustrate a point or provide an example.
7. Double check before publishing
Since producing high-quality content is our main goal, we need to make sure that we double-check and proofread the content before publishing.
Often, it happens that you would get carried away with a train of thought or don’t use tools to catch any grammar mistakes. That is why it’s advisable to check the content a few times before giving the green light.
We recommend setting up a content writing schedule but also including a few days for proofreading, fact-checking, and grammar checking. Oftentimes it’s good to “sleep on it” before publishing.
8. Use data to measure performance & drive decisions
Running the numbers is the most objective way of seeing success with your content. The users will let you know if you are producing high-quality content or not. At the end of the day, they have the final say over what content is valuable and what is not.
By looking at the data (traffic, engagement, clicks, time-on-page, conversions) you can see which keywords, pages, and topics are performing better than others and it will provide you with an objective way to plan for the future.
How Can I Make Sure Google Knows My Content is Original?
Another important thing to producing high-quality content is originality. Offering your opinion, experience, and viewpoint on a specific topic helps build not only customer trust but also achieve a higher rank on Google.
As we mentioned above, Google ranks websites not just for their content but looks at the website as a whole. Make sure to take into account the overall UX/UI of the website, whether it’s mobile-friendly, how fast does it load, etc.
All of these factors are important to take into account since will lead to a higher rank, more organic traffic, more exposure to your target audience, etc.
And, subsequently, the video above is a great segway into the next topic.
How Can I Protect My Content From Theft?
Unfortunately, there might be cases where someone might copy your content and use it as their own. Even if you might be the original author, the other website might change the timestamp before when it was published by you, claiming it’s theirs. To protect yourself from that, you can do what’s known as a “Digital Millennium Copyright” act (or DMCA). To find out more about how to submit your DMCA request, you can click here.
With that DMCA request, you’re letting Google know that you are the original author. The other website could dispute the request (although there is a penalty for doing so), and if they don’t the copied content on their website will automatically get taken down.
Additionally, you could also do a spam report, letting Google know that the other website is not a high-quality one in general.
What Is Content Depth?
The most common way we describe content depth is by measuring how thoroughly we cover a given subject. This can be found in our blog posts since we love to find a specific topic that you are interested in and do a deep dive.
This is where targeting niche-specific keywords and topics help. In general, providing in-depth coverage of a specific topic means that the content is more relevant to your audience and therefore highly valuable.
And going through a topic in-depth means a longer format. Many marketers advise a minimum of 1,500 words to improve your rank. However, quantity is not the biggest factor here, quality is.
Just like with checking your grammar, there are a lot of useful tools out there that scan your content for keywords and related topics, then cross-analyze it against other pieces on the web that rank highly for a certain topic.
Then a score is usually generated to determine how well your content is performing overall. The cool thing about these kinds of software is that it gives you the average score of other posts competing for the same keywords.
As a best practice, it’s useful to stay on a narrow path of specific topics (which helps with the search engine) and a way for your users to determine your level of expertise. Google’s crawlers, your users, and your bottom line will thank you.
What Is Content Scoring?
Another important factor to the overall quality of your content is content scoring. Simply put, content scoring is the process of measuring the true potential of your content by tracking how individual content pieces perform in lead generation and conversion.
This is a crucial marketing tool since it helps expert marketers prioritize the pieces of content that have the highest probability of increasing conversions. Additionally, it’s also an accurate method of determining the engagement potential of an individual piece of content before it’s even published.
A better score of your content means that you understand your customer’s needs better.
How To Score Your Content
When you or anyone else creates something (in this case content) you are prone to be subjective about it because of all of the hard work you have put into it. That is why most content creators have a difficult time repeatedly creating quality content for the target audience.
That is exactly why, with content scoring, you will be able to objectively see the successful patterns and therefore reproduce them.
While doing in-depth research on this topic (as well as using past experiences) we have compiled a 6-step process to ensure you effectively score your content.
Set up a scoring standard
Before even starting to measure whether your content has a high or low score, it’s important to set up a scoring standard depending on what your goals are. In your specific case, it might be the number of leads generated per month, page views, average user time-on-page, CTR (click-through-rate) percentage or shares on social media, etc. Once you have the base, then you can move on to the next step.
Gather a few focus groups
In the past, it used to be time and resource-consuming to gather a few people from your target audience. However, in this day in age, you have the power of the internet and social media to run a few surveys and focus groups with a select group of people you consider “ideal clients”. Run a few ideas, keywords, phrases by them and listen to what they have to say.
Run an ad campaign
The next step would be to practically test your content. Create an ad campaign (on the social media platform your target audience uses the most) and place the content you think would be most successful. The budget would vary depending on #1, but generally, it’s best practice to run tests for at least a few days (we would recommend a week).
In the same period, you can do A/B testing to see what will generate the best results for the least amount of resources.
Monitor the content
After a few days go by of the ad campaign, it’s important to measure the performance of the content. If the content meets the standard mentioned above, continue to add content to the campaign to build a small sample size of high-performing content.
Find out what works
Once you have the highest performing content, you can do an in-depth analysis of why it’s performing the way it is. This part might be the most difficult to accurately assess, but you can find a pattern within your content that can be replicated to produce results in the future.
Rinse & repeat
While it’s true that the patterns mentioned above do change constantly, the fact remains that this 6-step process is an effective way of scoring your content and using quantifiable metrics to continuously produce high-quality content.
Content scoring is the most objective way to continue to produce high-performing content and at the same time understand the customer fully (their needs, wants, pain points, expectations, etc.).
Being exposed to a lot of content through any given day, your target audience expects to receive the highest possible quality of content. Without it, and an effective content strategy, your business will struggle to shine online.
Needless to say that improving the quality of your content is pivotal to the success of your marketing campaigns and in general the overall long-term success of your business. It attracts users to your website and gets them talking about and engaging with your brand.
If you would like to discuss how you can improve your content marketing strategy and improve the performance of your website then please get in touch by clicking here.
