7 Points on Creating Quality Content

Content is king! Developing quality content goes hand-in-hand with good SEO practices. In fact, quality content is one of the most essential things when it comes to SEO.

Whether you’re a blogger, a webmaster for a large multinational, a SEO or an internet marketer, quality content is very important. Blogs and websites with quality content tend to rank higher in the SERPs, which allows them to be able to get organic traffic from search engines.  

However creating quality content is something that, perhaps surprisingly, often gets overlooked when it comes to developing an optimization strategy. Here are a few tips, pointers and best practices that should be an integral part of your content-creation strategy:

1. Quality – The first step is to create high-quality and valuable content, content that is well-researched, well-written and exudes professionalism and authority. The importance of quality content has increased tenfold after the introduction of Google’s updates to its search engine algorithm (Panda and Penguin), after which Google started de-indexing low-quality and spammy websites from the results, putting website that produced highly-valuable content on a regular basis on top of the results. Quality content, therefore, ensures that your website or blog ranks well on the SERPs and gets traffic from search engines on a regular basis.

2. Authority – An essential part of quality content is writing content allows you to be seen as an expert, or an ‘authority’ on certain matters. For this purpose, it is important that (a) you have a deep-lying interest on the said matter, you have tons of knowledge and are fully updated with everything that happens in said field, and (c) you produce well-researched and well-written content on the matter. Doing so will allow you to be seen as an authority – someone who is knowledgeable and well-versed in the industry/field.

3. Unique – The importance of unique content simply cannot be overstated, especially after the advent of Google Panda and Google Penguin – both of which have seen Google take concrete steps to ensure that copied and spun content doesn’t end up anywhere near the top of the SERPs, and in worst case situations, is banned from the search engines. Be more original and unique. Producing unique content requires time and patience – you can choose to do it yourself, or you can pay someone to develop it for you.

4. Keywords – An important aspect of creating quality content that does well in terms of SEO is the usage of relevant keywords. These are essentially terms (or phrases) that you want your content, as well as your website/blog, to rank for. It is important that these keywords are relevant to the subject matter of your write-up, and that they are used in the write-up a certain number of times, although now, it is preferable to write with a theme instead of maintaining a certain keyword density. In addition, do not focus only on big-money keywords, such as the ones which are looked up the most; it is a well-known fact that niche keywords and long-tailed keywords can drive in a lot of traffic.

5. Humans – After having said everything, it is important to know that content should always be human-oriented, rather than being search-engine oriented. This means that it should be written for human beings, in the sense that it should be easy-to-read, precise, should use simple language, should deliver value to the reader, should be grammatically correct, and should be able to bring across a certain point with clarity. Writing for humans will ensure that you drive in traffic, as well as have visitors make a purchase, respond to your CTA or maybe even share your content on social mediums. 

6. Interesting – Another important aspect of writing for humans is developing content that is interesting – essentially providing your readers with that they want. This could be anything, from writing opinion-based articles, providing readers with the latest news, giving advice or help on certain matters, writing how-to posts on your blog, reviewing the latest gadgets, or even a blog which provides it readers with funny images and viral videos from all over the internet. It is important to do your research before doing this; keyword research is a good place to start. Also look in your blog’s comments section about what your readers would like to see, or simply ask your readers about it. An interesting blog, which provides its readers with precisely what they want, will allow you build a returning base of visitors. 

7. Not Just Text – While website text (aka. copy) is an important part of quality content, there is a lot more to quality content than putting up a big wall of text. Apart from text, you can incorporate images (photos, memes, infographics, etc.), audio (mp3s, podcasts, music, etc.), videos (Youtube videos, commercials, animated videos, funny vidoes, etc.), eBooks, and internal and external links in your write-up in order to make it more interesting, less monotonous and more valuable to the reader. Like with text, anything that you put up should be relevant and related to the subject matter of your write-up.

Following these steps will allow you to create highly-valuable, high-quality and search-engine-friendly content for your blog – something that will almost certainly have your blog or website rank well on the SERP, and be able to drive in organic traffic from search engines in a post-Panda/Penguin era.