Why must content marketing be “good quality”?
Introduction
If you’ve been busy reading various blog posts, on how to improve a business organic seo, well, you may read that “content marketing” is essential component in helping businesses rise up Google’s ranks.
However, as with all things SEO related, there’s a way to do it so it improves where you rank, and there’s also a way to get it wrong, so much so, the business drops down the ranks, or a business might get it so wrong, well, they receive a big fat penalty. For example, a lot of businesses have received “algorithmic penalties”- which basically mean, that a business could be potentially deindexed, meaning, it doesn’t appear on Google.
So, you’re always going to get businesses that think, well, SEO is a piece of cake, a walk in the park, something they can do with their eyes closed! However, sometimes then, they get it completely wrong, they don’t follow Google’s WebMaster Rules, and make SEO mistakes, so this is why its so important that the work is high-quality, that’s in all regards to implementing SEO, not just writing the content marketing.
So, why’s it particularly important that the content marketing is “high-quality”?
Well, Google uses GoogleBot, and it’s the Bot’s job to crawl and index new work, so by that we mean following backlinks, noticing new posts, pages and websites, and indexing them.
Now, once it’s been indexed, it’s a way of Google saying, we’ve spotted your companies website, or we’ve noticed you’ve added a new piece of work you’ve written, its then over to Google’s algorithm to see, well how good is the work?
It will use the algorithm to see how good the SEO is, for example, has the work out many “do-follow” backlinks, does it have a long word count? Is it well-written? Does it cite its sources? Is there good use of on-site seo, such as internal links, meta titles, descriptions, alt text, page titles, titles, and so on.
So, why just writing a quick blog post, well it’s a useless strategy
You do have businesses that sometimes think, well, SEO can be improved quickly, thinking, I’ll grab a coffee, write say few hundred words, that’s it, however, its work that has no use to your customers, well, that’s going to most likely damage your businesses seo, as it may well be deemed “content thin”.
So, what do we mean by that?
Well, lets say you need to purchase a new piece of exercise equipment, you want to buy a treadmill, so you start reading blog posts, reviewing different brands.
Now, there’s one article, it’s short, it just mentions the benefits of owning your own treadmill, and you think, well that’s useless, I know the benefits, that’s why I want one, so you stop reading after a few seconds, which means the work has a high “bounce rate”.
Then there’s another business, well, they’ve written a much more interesting article for someone that wants to buy a treadmill, they’ve titled it “We review our top 10 best selling treadmills”- then they’ve done an in-depth review on each one, plus, as part of the review, there’s a YouTube video showing you the different features that each treadmill has, such as how much they incline, top speed, and how accurate the heart rate monitors are.
Now, for someone that wants to buy a treadmill, they find the article interesting, so it’s got a lot of likes on social media, many quality backlinks, it has a low bounce rate, Google Analytics shows the average reader spends over 7 minutes reading it, quite simply put, its brilliant work, its this works which can help improve your SEO.
Quality is everything
So, this is why “quality” is everything, Google’s algorithm is just really good at knowing whether the works good, or whether its rubbish quality.
So, rubbish quality, we do realise is a rather vague description, so let us elaborate, the work can be poor quality in many ways, one of the most common mistakes, is writing the work so its “content thin”- and what do we mean by that, well, lets return to our previous example.
Writing a really long article, reviewing treadmills, and making YouTube videos for each one, which has a personal trainer talk about each of the products, well, that’s going to take a lot of time. To write and produce each piece of content marketing, well, that might take days’ worth of work.
So, you’re always going to get businesses, that don’t want to put in that level of effort, and if the works not that good, let’s say it’s “content thin”- well, what’s likely to happen is Google’s algorithm will just acknowledge the SEO work isn’t that good, in that its not useful to your customers, so, instead of helping to improve organic SEO, its going to possibly damage it.
Think of your customers, make sure its useful to them
This leads us on to our last point, but arguably one of the most important, that is, so many businesses make the mistake of writing blog posts, as a matter of routine, with no effort.
They think, writing content marketing in quantity will help improve seo, but it wont if the whole marketing strategy is not focused on quality.
Let us tell you what we mean, it’s like trying to get in shape at the gym, by just turning up 3 times a week, and putting in no effort, well, that’s not going to lead to great results.
Yet, if you turn up 3 times a week, and give it your all, well, your likely to see improvements, and this is the same with content marketing, now you might be sitting there, thinking this SEO agency states the obvious!
But in reality we are not, so many seo agencies, and companies, say that they need to write content marketing to a set number each month, lets, say for simplicity once a week.
Yet, if the work is rubbish, well each week your not helping to improve your SEO, you could actually be pushing it backwards, so its worse than wasting time, it could, if done wrong, be actually making your SEO go into reverse!
So, this is why important to stop, forget the idea of writing rubbish, say once a week, and say, right this is not generating results, lets change marketing strategy, lets write one piece a month, lets make it such good quality, that its bound to help improve a businesses organic SEO.
So, now your definitely on the right path, that is, focus on writing quality.
So, in order to write quality, here’s some of the characteristics that the work should have:
– Well written
– Be useful to your customers
– Must follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
– Be written so it follows white hat best practices, in terms of how to implement SEO
– Must have quite a high word count, but not so it bores the reader
– Use internal links (white hat)
– Promote the written work, on say Facebook, to your followers
– Use titles, don’t write one massive block of text
– Cite your sources, so let’s say that you read an article in a well-known newspaper, which mentioned a statistic which you mentioned in your article, mention that, and link to the newspaper
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