Effective blogging strategies capitalize on search engine optimization (SEO) and other marketing tools to bring websites organic traffic. But it isn’t enough to write and post content to your blog. The most highly effective blog content is that which is well-written.
Writing high-quality content takes time and effort, something that we have studied and trained for. Here’s our guide on high-quality content and what it takes to make it.
What does it take to create quality content for a blog? We lay it out for you below.
What is High-Quality Content?
High-quality content online is content that achieves its marketing goals. In most cases, this means that the content must be:
- Comprehensive
- Useful
- Helpful to the audience
- Educational
- Engaging
- Accurate
- The answer to the searcher’s query
- Readable
What this means in each industry can differ drastically. Therefore, generating high-quality content appropriate to your industry requires high-level and experiential knowledge in that industry.
What Does High-Quality Content Look Like?
So what does high-quality content look like? High-quality content is unique to your brand, topic, and goals; it’s most definitely not mass-produced, copied text, or poorly written.
High-quality content is not mass-produced content. It is unique to your brand, topic, and goals.
Sometimes you can see a page that is written with high-quality content and it’s obvious. The page is easy to read, enjoyable, and engaging. In fact, you won’t really notice high-quality content because your questions have been answered and you’re on your way.
Poor content is content that leaves the visitor with more questions than answers or leaves the page with frustration due to poor user experience. When focusing on producing high-quality content, ensure that the information is accurate, the writing is clear, and the formatting also makes sense for the user and design.
We follow the flesch-kinkaid readability guidelines to ensure the content reaches a broader audience. And in most cases, you’ll want to include videos, infographics, and tables so the information stands out.
How Do You Know if You Made High-Quality Content?
Even if you think your content is great, you can’t know for certain if it’s “high-quality” until you’ve measured its performance. These KPIs (key performance indicators) can usually inform on content success:
- The content’s page ranking on search engines like Google
- High rankability (within the top 3 search items) on search engines based on targeted keywords.
- Click through rates
- Low on-page bounce rates
- High web traffic
- Customers or lead generation through that page
- Good site conversion metrics
- Social shares (if applicable)
- And improved ROI (if trackable)
To track these metrics, you’ll need to implement the following tools:
Google Analytics
Good Search Console
SEO Tools (i..e, Ahrefs, SEMrush)
Web conversion code (i.e., Sign up forms)
Social media analytics
Defining High-Quality Content
We talk about high-quality like it is measurable; and in some ways, it is. High-quality writing is a more-or-less objective measure, but sometimes, depending on the goals of the content and the brand, the content quality can appear subjective. One brand might like a certain tone or style usage over another (i.e., professional vs. playful). We work with brands daily to try to define this subjective measure of high-quality to the brand, while also generating content that is also high-quality according to Google and relevant search engines.
Unfortunately, this means that most aspects of determining high-quality is are a bit vague. Content writers agree that well-written content should be error-free, and written in the most up-to-date grammatical rules while also being readable. This means that you need to take into account the reading level and content topic when producing blogs or web copy.
For rankability, Google defines high-quality content based on ranking factors, which include the on-page content quality itself but also strongly relate to the high-quality factors of your overall website:
“When it comes to the quality of the content, we don’t mean like just the text of your articles.
It’s really 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 they come into play there.”
With this in mind, we can see how even the best-written articles can fail at content marketing. Successful content creation is more than just the words on your it also takes into account your page creation and quality.
High-quality content effectively addresses E-E-A-T, or experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, among other page quality factors.
Content marketing agencies like okwrite can provide high-quality content and optimization to improve the blog and web copy content for expertise, authoritativeness, experience, and trustworthiness. The blog or web copy content effectively hits the target content goals. Target content goals vary by brand, marketing campaign, and topic, but when done right, you should be able to hit your content marketing goals every time.
SEO Reason for High-Quality Content
High-quality content directly impacts your SEO readability and rankability. Content quality can affect a site’s rankings both positively and negatively. It can even cause Google not to trust a site and not display rich results from the website.
To determine search engine ranking, Google employs over 10,000 people globally to rate based on a set of guidelines the content that is good, bad, or worse. After identifying the main content, supplementary content, and other page factors, the overall page quality rating will judge the content’s quality and the website’s reputation to determine a trust-based rating. Marketers aren’t explicitly told all that goes into rating content, but we can learn insights when search engines deliver search query results.
In general, we do know that the following items are important factors for site quality:
- Overall site quality
- the amount of first-hand knowledge and necessary skill the content creator has with the topic
- Whether the website or creator is a go-to source for the topic
- The site’s reputation, the accuracy of the main page with the main content, and more
- Whether the title properly summarizes the page
- Ads don’t interfere with main content
- Information is accurate
Readability and High-Quality Content
Readability is a huge factor that we navigate when providing high-quality content. In general, we find that as long as properly understand our clients, then we can generally produce content they are pleased with. Where we run into barriers is when the client is confused about their marketing goals or they have not yet solidified their brand voice and messaging guidelines.
A Simple 3-Step Marketing Strategy To Make High-Quality Content
Before you write your blog content, you’ll want to map out your content marketing strategy. We go in-depth in other blogs on how to write content strategy, but here’s an overview:
Step 1: Identify Your Primary and Secondary Target Audiences
This is the number one key to writing any content.
Who is your audience? What do they want to read?
It’s important to know blog information buyers want, not what you think they want to read. It’s essential to define your buyer personas and understand what they care about so that you can tailor any content writing for them accordingly.
This interaction is a great way to connect and engage with potential clients or customers.
Blog readers often look beyond social media content and search for long-form content that pertains to a particular query, trouble, or niche. A good post should communicate well with the blog’s target audience while avoiding any unnecessary material that might distract people from the message.
Step 2: Establish Audience Pain Points
When creating good-quality blog content, you need to figure out why you are writing it.
It’s beneficial to understand the objective of your blog post because this will allow you to create a manageable list of tasks. As easy as it is to get writer’s block, sometimes you can have too many ideas when writing a post. It is essential to know the conclusion before designing the plan. Otherwise, you might end up with a less effective content strategy that spiraled out of control.
First, determine the purpose of the blog.
You want to become a thought leader in your industry who can answer any questions with confidence and authority.
After learning the blog’s identity and purpose, each post will have a more specific role. So, are you looking for something to engage readers? Or, you want to grow your subscriber base. Various types of articles can generate different interactions from readers.
You intend to draw traffic to your site, have clients enter your sales funnel, begin the buyer journey, and eventually become paying customers. To become the leading site, you need to provide content that is valuable to the reader and has high SEO value. The more authority you appear to have in your field, the more weight your website’s content will carry.
Step 3: Develop a Content Strategy, Not Just a Plan
We will always discuss the importance of content strategy.
A content marketing strategy is not only a plan for getting started, it is the foundation of your company’s marketing plan. A strategy aligns your brand guidelines and its goals to ensure that all your efforts are aligned.
You can’t write high-quality content with a content marketing strategy.
In your strategy, identify how each main task or topic redirects and hits your company goals. If you can’t find a purpose for it, then it is either developed poorly or it shouldn’t be there.
How Do You Create High-Quality Content
Breaking down high-quality content is very important because it’s an effective generator of conversions but hard to do. Many brands start and stop content marketing because they haven’t established their core brand identity to drive content production and strategy.
When you create high-quality content, you are writing for your readers. These are the questions that people are asking online, in your email inquiries, and on sales calls. This is not an area for you to soapbox or complain.
Providing useful information is the only way to do this. This means no vague product descriptions, clear calls to action, and insightful information.
On top of that, make sure your content is readable. What about engaging? How engaged are you right now in reading this content? I hope very! But, likely, it’s not always the case. When we think about engaging, there are ways to engage on every line, and then there is overall engagement and broad topical coverage.
If your content isn’t hitting the mark, revisit your strategy. Did you develop it with the right goals in mind? What about the search intent? Are you writing too much to the top of the funnel and missing the mark? You’re overeducating on your highly intelligent and sales-qualified leads by assuming they know nothing about your industry.
And finally, be trustworthy. No slimy sales language. Be clear and transparent as much as you can.
Top 10 Ways to Produce High-Quality Content
According to Google search ranking factors, creating high-quality content takes considerable effort, talent, and skill.
You can display this effort in accurate, deep, and well-sourced news articles, clear writing, extensive Q&As or FAQs about a topic, well-organized educational material, and supporting images and videos that clarify the purpose and directions.
1. Know Your Search Intent and Call to Action
Search intent refers to the purpose of a search. We can tell the intent of the search by the question asked or keyword entered and the websites that the user visits following that. Common search intent can be a transaction post, to make a purchase, or to learn more generally about an item.
Search intent ranks in the sales funnel. Some people call this TOFU marketing.
At the top of the funnel, we have more broad, informational marketing. This is your discovery phase.
The middle funnel is the trust builder.
And finally, at the bottom of the funnel, you’ll have more sales-qualified leads and directly impactful content like case studies.
2. Review What is Trending to Create a Backlog of Content Ideas
Your content strategy will inform topic generation. At this point, you should be consulting the trending ideas and blogs because they signify what is being talked about in your niche. Don’t copy what is popular, but take note and see how you can add to the conversation uniquely.
3. Conduct In-depth Research to Maintain Trust and Authority
The web acts as a knowledge repository, similar to academic research papers. This is based on observations from former Alphabet CEO Larry Page, who noted that the more a researcher’s work is cited by their colleagues, the more respected they are. Google’s algorithm applied this to webpages; if they’re linked to more often than other pages of similar content, you can assume that these links mean they must be more authoritative and trustworthy.
What does that mean for blog content?
Your blog should be well-researched and supported by other online content so that it is more likely to be referenced or linked to. Having a lot of statistics, data, and reliable research in your article would be a good idea. Facts are better for providing accurate information.
4. Provide Useful Information, Data, and Studies to Support Your Topic
People may read a particular blog to find inspiration, share questions and ideas, reach out to other readers, or learn something new. It’s a great way to resolve problems or find new information that can benefit the life or business of the reader.
Always share useful information relevant to the audience or address a pain point or question. Make sure you’re writing about something interesting for you and other readers.
5. Adjust the Word Count to Cover the Topic
The optimal word count for a blog post is usually between 1000 to 2000 words, but some blogs may be shorter and others larger. The length is only important to consider competing posts. If there is a lot of content available, you may need longer-form content to cover the topic adequately.
6. Make Your Topics Unique By Adding Your Perspective of Experience
A quick Google search should show you that many topics don’t have unique content, and there is minimal variation on any subject.
To create unique and high-quality articles, you need to be innovative, stay current with your field, and take an original approach to ideas. This means you can be partially original, but you will need to provide a unique take on the subject or your take on solving the pain problem for your potential customers.
Even though everything has been done before, finding your unique approach to a subject is always possible.
7. Directly Answer Topic Questions or Pain Points
Content marketing is a way to answer questions, offer solutions, and help people.
Maintaining your brand image and attracting customers by using the right keywords found through keyword research is crucial. The more exposure your content gets, the more likely people will buy what you offer in the future. The more they read your content and see articles linking to your company name, the more familiar they are with what you’re offering.
Has your blog provided valuable content lately or just straightforward facts anybody could find on Google? Is the content up to date? Consider regularly updating your blog posts so that it provides useful information.
Quality content needs to answer specific questions. For quality content creation, a writer should know the audience they’re looking to reach. It should come across as valuable or engaging content.
8. Address Niche Subtopics, Too
The core topics on your page address the main goals of your brand. This helps establish domain authority. From there, you can start to build out into niche subtopics. This is not just your long-tail keywords but also related topics, industries, and more.
Blog post content should include storytelling and helpful information for your target audience.
9. Diversify Your Content to Include Multimedia Content
Content that is only written will only speak to a certain audience.
The web has grown massively to become an incredible information resource. It’s like a library full of knowledge in your home or phone. It’s easy to search for anything and get detailed answers quickly. And it does not consist of only written content.
Adding videos, media, graphics, and tables can convey more information to different audiences. This also improves your search with features like voice search and transcribed search.
10. Review, Edit and Proofread Before Publishing
The best blogs are only as good as their editor. While you may have a high-quality blog packed with the right information, poor grammar will turn readers away. Even if you hire a writer, be sure also to hire an editor to proofread and fact-check the work. You may be surprised to learn that not all writers can edit their own content properly!
When in doubt, know that you can rely on a team like us here at okwrite, who hire skilled writers, content strategists, and content editors to ensure your content is ready to go by the time you see it.
How to Always Create High-Quality Content
Hire Content Marketing Experts, Especially if You’re Just Getting Started
You don’t worry about producing high-quality content when you hire experts. Experts in content marketing stay up to date on marketing trends and devote their entire workweek to high-quality content. It makes sense to go this route, especially if you’re getting started or scaling.
Always Ask Yourself if Your Content is Informative, Interesting, and Relevant
Would you want to read your content if it wasn’t helpful, relevant, and interesting? Don’t craft dry, unrelated content. Stick to what you know your audience needs and wants. This makes it easier to choose your content direction and develop topics.
Continually Revisit Your Content to Ensure It’s Relevant
It is a pipe dream to think that the content you write today will still hold true years later. If you use content marketing, you must account for regular content optimization year over year to ensure that content is relevant to your goals and search engine quality factors.
Follow These Four Rules for Creating High-Quality Content Every Time
Blog post writing can be tricky since you want to optimize your content for search engines and actual people.
Rule #1: Establish authority by educating broadly on a topic and showing visitors that you have expertise in the area you’re talking about.
Rule #2: Be accurate so people know that they can reference and rely on you.
Rule #3: Don’t write what’s trending, write what is relevant and important.
Rule #4: Guide your visitors to take action
Content is your most important marketing tool. A successful blog will help you build your brand, become a thought leader, and increase conversions. This is why okwrite provides the knowledge to make your blog post-publish-ready. Follow the steps and tips we reviewed above, and soon you’ll have a great blog post for your audience.
At okwrite, we have a good handle on digital marketing and pride ourselves on producing high-quality blogs. We’re here for you to help with your content quality-related questions and more.
High-Quality Content Resource Hub
Do you need content and don’t know where to start? Fret not; you’re in the right place. Our professional content marketing agency can provide you with a comprehensive package that will fit your needs and ensure you get the most out of it.
Meanwhile, if your goal is to get more organic traffic in an easy-to-implement way, we have written an in-depth guide on how to go about it. Here are more resources to guide you:
Writing Tips & Advice
