[Hot] What is Good Content?
In the past few years, "content" has become an overused and misunderstood term that refers to everything from the latest Star Wars review, to your Twitter feed, to your friend's Facebook photos.
In the not-too-distant past, "content" was the domain of marketers, yet by 2014, the astute marketing consultant and teacher, Mark Schaefer, was already warning about content shock: "the intersection of finite content consumption and rising content availability."
We all consume content, of course, yet we seemingly all produce content, too--not only businesses, in our estimation, but family and friends--a situation that, Schaefer believed, spelled doom for content marketing.
It's hard enough to compete against other businesses, Schaefer's logic implied, let alone the innumerable other forms of "content" that compete for a person's "mindshare":
"I know that you are under a barrage of distractions from increasingly amazing content," Schaefer wrote. "For me to simply maintain the 'mindshare'...I am going to have to create significantly better content, which of course will take significantly more time. I will probably have to pay Facebook and others to give you a chance to even see it because of this content competition for attention."
Read: "Content Shock: Why content marketing is not a sustainable strategy."
Since 2014, Schaefer's prediction, that we will need to spend more time and money developing content to compete, has proven true, yet we haven't yet seen "the contentpocalypse."
Read: "Will You Survive the Contentpocalypse."
In fact, plenty of businesses, small, medium, and large continue to reap the benefits of good content. Despite its ubiquity, good content is still the key to achieving a high search engine ranking as well as conversions--when a visitor performs a desired action on your site, like purchasing your product or service.
But what is "good content"? The term, however ubiquitous, is often needlessly complicated. Just read this definition of "conversion content" from the website campaign:
"It’s the evergreen content that matches mind-sets at different stages of a consumer journey to help drive discovery of information about products and services, with the ultimate aim of guiding them to a sale."
OK. Or, as we noted above, "conversion content" is simply "content that drives visitors to convert." To each his own. We prefer to simplify. Our suggestion: In 2018, ignore talk of "content shock" and unnecessarily complex marketing definitions. If you want to succeed on Google (and elsewhere), go to the source: Google.
What is Good Content?
In its Webmaster Tools, Google offers a working definition of "good content."
"Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site. In creating a helpful, information-rich site, write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic. Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your site."
When writing content, then, heed these guidelines from Google:
1. Offer useful/helpful information targeted to your specific audience
2. Offer intriguing content that will inspire people to "link to your site"
3. Answer your specific audience's questions
4. Provide detailed information that "clearly describes your topic"
5. Include precisely-targeted keywords to attract your specific audience.
In essence, when writing, ask yourself, "What can my audience do with this information?"
Your content must be useful, intriguing, and precise.
How to Compete with Content
Easy enough? Hopefully--because useful, intriguing, and precise content is not enough...
Many websites fulfill these requirements on a weekly or daily basis. To truly compete, you must match the content-production of your competitors, article for article, word-by-word.
For some websites, especially local websites, this task is not so hard. Many local competitors, you might notice, fail to update or refresh their content frequently (or even infrequently). To compete in this context, you need only to create enough content to stay atop the first page results.
How much content? To assess your needs, monitor your rankings and search metrics daily as well as the rankings and search metrics of your competitors.
For websites that hope to compete on a national basis, however, the task is more daunting. How often do you add new content to your site? When answering, remember, content can be defined as images, videos, or even emoji, but the cornerstone of content is--and will likely always be--text. The most successful websites add new content on a weekly or daily basis.
Remember to Refresh Old Content, Too
More than simply adding new content, however, the best websites refresh old content. Remember, good content must be useful--or, as the SEO community often says, "relevant." To assess the value of your old content, ask yourself the following questions:
1. How old, exactly, is your content? Months? Years? Decades?
2. Does your content accurately reflect your business and the marketplace?
3. Is your content still /useful to your specific audience?
4. Is your specific audience interacting with your old content?
If your old pages don't attract much attention, you might dramatically improve their performance simply by "refreshing" the content to conform to the guidelines above.
When doing so, pay special attention to the evolving marketplace. Ask yourself more questions:
1. Are your keywords still relevant?
2. Is each piece of content answering a specific question?
3. Are your links bad?
Content Marketing with Stepman's PC
If you're looking for an SEO company that understands how to effectively promote websites with good content, we suggest contacting our sponsor, Stepman's PC: 215-900-9398 Stepmans PC combines traditional marketing methods and organic SEO--with an emphasis on natural website optimization--to design thoughtful, inspiring, and effective content marketing campaigns.
In the not-too-distant past, "content" was the domain of marketers, yet by 2014, the astute marketing consultant and teacher, Mark Schaefer, was already warning about content shock: "the intersection of finite content consumption and rising content availability."
We all consume content, of course, yet we seemingly all produce content, too--not only businesses, in our estimation, but family and friends--a situation that, Schaefer believed, spelled doom for content marketing.
It's hard enough to compete against other businesses, Schaefer's logic implied, let alone the innumerable other forms of "content" that compete for a person's "mindshare":
"I know that you are under a barrage of distractions from increasingly amazing content," Schaefer wrote. "For me to simply maintain the 'mindshare'...I am going to have to create significantly better content, which of course will take significantly more time. I will probably have to pay Facebook and others to give you a chance to even see it because of this content competition for attention."
Read: "Content Shock: Why content marketing is not a sustainable strategy."
Since 2014, Schaefer's prediction, that we will need to spend more time and money developing content to compete, has proven true, yet we haven't yet seen "the contentpocalypse."
Read: "Will You Survive the Contentpocalypse."
In fact, plenty of businesses, small, medium, and large continue to reap the benefits of good content. Despite its ubiquity, good content is still the key to achieving a high search engine ranking as well as conversions--when a visitor performs a desired action on your site, like purchasing your product or service.
But what is "good content"? The term, however ubiquitous, is often needlessly complicated. Just read this definition of "conversion content" from the website campaign:
"It’s the evergreen content that matches mind-sets at different stages of a consumer journey to help drive discovery of information about products and services, with the ultimate aim of guiding them to a sale."
OK. Or, as we noted above, "conversion content" is simply "content that drives visitors to convert." To each his own. We prefer to simplify. Our suggestion: In 2018, ignore talk of "content shock" and unnecessarily complex marketing definitions. If you want to succeed on Google (and elsewhere), go to the source: Google.
 |
| For Google, content is king [Source] |
In its Webmaster Tools, Google offers a working definition of "good content."
"Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site. In creating a helpful, information-rich site, write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic. Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your site."
When writing content, then, heed these guidelines from Google:
1. Offer useful/helpful information targeted to your specific audience
2. Offer intriguing content that will inspire people to "link to your site"
3. Answer your specific audience's questions
4. Provide detailed information that "clearly describes your topic"
5. Include precisely-targeted keywords to attract your specific audience.
In essence, when writing, ask yourself, "What can my audience do with this information?"
Your content must be useful, intriguing, and precise.
How to Compete with Content
Easy enough? Hopefully--because useful, intriguing, and precise content is not enough...
Many websites fulfill these requirements on a weekly or daily basis. To truly compete, you must match the content-production of your competitors, article for article, word-by-word.
For some websites, especially local websites, this task is not so hard. Many local competitors, you might notice, fail to update or refresh their content frequently (or even infrequently). To compete in this context, you need only to create enough content to stay atop the first page results.
How much content? To assess your needs, monitor your rankings and search metrics daily as well as the rankings and search metrics of your competitors.
For websites that hope to compete on a national basis, however, the task is more daunting. How often do you add new content to your site? When answering, remember, content can be defined as images, videos, or even emoji, but the cornerstone of content is--and will likely always be--text. The most successful websites add new content on a weekly or daily basis.
Remember to Refresh Old Content, Too
More than simply adding new content, however, the best websites refresh old content. Remember, good content must be useful--or, as the SEO community often says, "relevant." To assess the value of your old content, ask yourself the following questions:
1. How old, exactly, is your content? Months? Years? Decades?
2. Does your content accurately reflect your business and the marketplace?
3. Is your content still /useful to your specific audience?
4. Is your specific audience interacting with your old content?
If your old pages don't attract much attention, you might dramatically improve their performance simply by "refreshing" the content to conform to the guidelines above.
When doing so, pay special attention to the evolving marketplace. Ask yourself more questions:
1. Are your keywords still relevant?
2. Is each piece of content answering a specific question?
3. Are your links bad?
Content Marketing with Stepman's PC
If you're looking for an SEO company that understands how to effectively promote websites with good content, we suggest contacting our sponsor, Stepman's PC: 215-900-9398 Stepmans PC combines traditional marketing methods and organic SEO--with an emphasis on natural website optimization--to design thoughtful, inspiring, and effective content marketing campaigns.