The definition of “quality content” is always changing due to the continuous improvements in the digital marketing world. The aspects associated with it may change, but its objective still remains entrenched to satiating readers. Creating high quality is extremely crucial when you're trying to increase visibility and rank high on search engines.
High-quality content allows you to display yourself as an expert in your field, boost site rankings in search engines, attract inbound links, and win the trust and confidence of your audience. We're all familiar with the importance of quality, but how do we determine what "quality" is? Here is a list of important things that can help you create content that is valuable and worthy of sharing.
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1. Length is Important
The ideal word count for a great piece of content can be a confusion for all. What causes this confusion is determining whether to cater towards desktop readers or mobile users. Google shows a preference for long content that comprehensibly covers all relevant aspects of the subject. However, this can be difficult for mobile users because of the limited space they can view on their screen. In this case, mobile content are often precise, short, and spaced widely to provide a better reading experience for the users.
When you're determining how long your content should be, focus on your objectives and the intentions of your audience. If you wish to set your content at a higher rank in search engines, then go for 1000+ word content that would attract more links. If you target mobile users, scrap out unnecessary aspects from your content and make it easily accessible to mobile users. There is no set amount or standard to how long your content should be, so consider having a variety. Therefore, not all of your content needs to be lengthy. Try to write shorter and to the point blogs as well. The idea is to be able to get the point across. If you have long articles that you want to publish, consider splitting them into two parts.
Make sure you format your content by incorporating proper subheadings, bullet points and appropriate links to other content.
2. Infographics for Excellence
Visual content undoubtedly outperforms text-only content in copious ways, such as increased inbound links, social sharing, and time invested in the page and of course engagement. Research has shown that nearly 40% of people show better response to visual content. This makes infographics a great way for readers to share ideas and thoughts because it's packed with information and visually enticing. In fact, content that is supplemented by multimedia are shared 12 times more than text-only content.
So, what should you consider while adding infographics to your content? Firstly, make sure you do your research. You want to have facts that support your ideas. You wouldn't want to create an infographic that is widely shared on the Internet containing grammatical errors and wrong facts. Secondly, make sure your graphics and fonts have the same concept and theme. You want your infographic to look harmonized, so make sure you use the same typography throughout. Avoid using images online to create your infograhic because they're all very different and won't look unified. Lastly, remember to cite your sources! It's important for you to give credit to factual information that isn't yours.
3. Coherence is Unavoidable
Poor grammar can be catastrophic for you as a content writer. Google has placed tremendous importance on the trustworthiness of content. Therefore, grammatical and factual errors need to be avoided. Professional writing that involves coherent and apt description of a subject is what you should focus on. Make sure your content is factually accurate, logically organized, and grammatically impeccable. If you're worried about making errors, make sure you double check your facts with other sources online. As for grammatical errors, get a peer or colleague to read through your content. Keep in mind that your content is being shown to the public, so you wouldn't want them to spot any mistakes!
4. Is my Content Attractive?
You need to understand that presentation is vital for success. After developing your content, ask yourself about the content’s accessibility, attractiveness, and legibility. Poor content formatting can prove disastrous, making it infringing to Google’s algorithm and human expectations at large.
What constitutes perfect content formatting? Appropriate use of italics, bolds, paragraphs, precise sentences and sub-headings can make your content visually appealing to readers and ultimately, help you meet your goals.
5. What about Readability?
Your readability score would show how far your content has been successful in matching with your audience’s preferences. An easy-to-read and comprehensible content gives you a good readability score. There are many tools on the market that can test your content's readability. Some allow you to test a website, a specific paragraph, or copy and paste and specific section of writing you wish to test. Make sure your content can be understood by everyone. Just because you understand the technical terms in your industry, doesn't mean some of your searchers or customers know what they are.
In addition, the spacing of your content needs to be precise and adequate for easy reading. Font size, typography, headings, and styles are all important for you to consider. People are reading your content in different platforms, so make sure the readability on your desktop is just as great as mobile.
6. Writer’s Expertise
Author’s expertise has found significant mention in Google’s leaked Quality Rater guidelines. It is an essential determinant of quality and would establish the veracity and accuracy of the content. Also, author’s degree or credentials hold great significance in developing academic and technical topics that aim to serve a huge audience collection. When your'e creating content for your website, try to include sources from resources that have a strong reputation. This way, you can have more proof and information to back up your points.
7. Build a Reputation
For those of you who don’t know, authors who publish more content are likely to get a higher rank in search engines. Elimination of anonymity is a major focal point for Google when it comes to online content. Guest blogging is a great way for authors to establish their reputation online. You can think of guest blogging in a few ways - to raise awareness for yourself, build links, or even use it as an opportunity to improve your writing. Sure, companies want to have high quality content for their site, but they also want great ideas. Sometimes, your ideas may be amazing, but the writing just isn't great enough. So take the opportunity to learn from the editors hosting your blog and see how they edit your blog and vamp it up to be perfect!
8. Social Media Research
Social media isn't just a place for you to share your content, but also a place to generate great ideas to write about. When you want to write great content, you want to speak to your audience. What better way to connect with them than through social media? Look into where they hang out, which groups they're associated with, who they talk to, and what chats they participate. Chances are, there are tonnes of questions that people are asking about the industry you're trying to write about. Use social media as a way to tap into their world and answer your questions.
9. Presence of External and Internal Links
Getting links are just as important as writing your content. However, links to spam sites can prove fatal for your content’s credibility before Google. Excessive internal linking can also keep you away from Google’s recognition and ultimately, bringing you futile results. When you're creating content, don't over link in your content and only do what's necessary!
10. Publishing Domain Indicates Quality
Any content can fulfill the criteria to be dubbed as “high-quality”, but a lot depends on the quality surrounding the content. High-quality content when accompanied by poor quality content in a website can prove unlucky for the high-quality content because they tend to lose out on effective ranking. This makes the content behaviour of the website questionable and kills its reputation online.
If a website has good quality content back-linked to poor quality content, then unfortunately your good-quality content is likely to suffer. Therefore, the homepage, root domain and other posts related to the content are an important determinant of quality.
11. Give Value
Don't focus on the monetary values of producing good quality content. You want to create content to provide valuable resource and information for your readers. Sure, your content is used to help you rank in SEO, but you can't get this result if you don't generate high-quality content. To get viewed by searchers, you need to show them value.
Conclusion
If you're creating content that aims to write for search engines with no consideration of value to readers, then apologetically speaking, your approach needs reinvestment of thoughts. Strategize your content by keeping in mind the above aspects for making your content hit new highs of online success.
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You have made some great points on developing content for websites. I have dabbled in content writing with several businesses, but I get dismayed when they want me to place so many keywords in their content that it reads terribly. The infographics, grammar, and attractiveness of content are all areas that I feel every website owner should take into consideration. I am a novice with grammar, but a website with text message abbreviations is a turnoff.
I also agree with the elimination of anonymity, but find this hard to do in some cases. I personally feel my writing and grammar need a few more months of practice before I launch my services to larger companies. Other people may have similar fears when commenting on topics or posting blogs to an online community that family members may find offending.
The last point with adding value with your content is spot on. I assist small businesses with topic generation for their websites, and often have a question and answer session to help them decide topics which add value to their current and potential customers via their website. Rather than tell the customers about you, focus on what you can do for your customers.