All the major types of digital marketing methods such as search engine optimization (SEO) pay per click (PPC), social media marketing (SMM) and email marketing largely depend upon quality content. In fact, you simply can’t run any of these digital marketing campaigns without content. Therefore, high-quality content is absolutely fundamental in digital marketing.
This gives rise to one important question – what is high-quality content? In simple words, quality content is an original content that adds value to the visitors, improves SEO, and converts visitors into customers. Defining quality content is an easier task than developing the same. However, if you focus more on visitors than on your search engine ranking, your job becomes easy. In this blog post, you will learn the top seven ways to create high-quality content.
1. Develop original content
You cannot rank your web page with the help of copied content. Google detects duplicate content within in seconds and penalizes your site. As a result, your search engine ranking may hit rock bottom. You may have to go for penalty recovery services.
Original content refers to a content that is a product of your thinking, and nothing else. Some people try to spin the article and cheat the search engine. Yes, there are many free article spinning tools available on the Internet. All you need to do is copy the content from a site, and paste it into an article spinner tool, and click on spin. Within a couple of seconds, you will get fresh content. However, the quality of such content is always very low. Since article spinners just rephrase a paragraph, most of the time the sentences do not even make sense.
So, if you want to develop quality content, then you have to forget these two things and focus on the uniqueness of the content. Google likes the content which is liked by the people. So, focus more on providing answers to the questions of the visitors.
2. Create compelling headlines
How do you decide to read a news article? By reading the headline, right? The same thing works here also. Your headlines act like a door for your content. They will decide whether the visitors are going to read your content or not. Here are the two statistics to back our claim:
80% of the people read headlines.
Only 20% of those people read the full content.
Make sure your headlines create curiosity in the minds of readers. Let us take an example. If you are creating content on types of business owners, then your headline should raise a question in the minds of them. ” Seven Types of Business Owners – Which Group Is You In?” creates more curiosity than “Seven Types of Business owners.”
Take time to write headlines. Prefer to write the content first and headline last. While writing you may get some good headline ideas, which you can note down. In the end, you can select the best one. This will save your time.
3. Create actionable content
What was the last article you wrote? Did it give advice on how your readers can apply the given information straight away? If no, you must focus on this aspect.
Content created by you should give the readers a sense of how to utilize the information. Users tend to like the content that guides them to apply the knowledge. For instance, “10 ways to create quality content” looks better than “10 aspects of good-quality content.” The former helps the users to create quality content, whereas the latter just describes the ingredients. So, write all your future blog posts keeping this thing in mind.
4. Try to add images and videos
Visual content enhances your overall content. There is a reason why kids like books which have more pictures. That is because they are engaging, and they also help them to understand quicker and better. The same things apply to blog and website content.
Paragraphs of texts are boring. Hardly anyone likes to read them. So, make sure you add high-quality pictures and videos. Also, make sure they are original. Do not add any images just for the sake of adding. If you put any image or video, make sure it has a role to play in your content. Adding unnecessary visual content can distract the readers and dilute the value of your content.
5. Keep to the point
Yes, Google likes lengthy content. That does not mean you should simply increase the length of the content. Doing so can reduce the quality of the content and spoil the readability.
Users usually want to know more in less time. So it makes sense to say things using fewer sentences. Who does not like to the point articles or blog posts? Increase the length of the content only if there is a scope. In most of the cases, lengthy text increases the bounce rate, as they are time-consuming and less interesting. As a result, your search engine optimization efforts will get spoiled. So, say no to fluff that dilutes your content.
6. Do proper research
This is one of the most important steps you need to take before writing the blog? Select a topic. Once you select the topic, do research and find out what is already written about it. Try to figure out what is missing in those blogs and make a note. Think what new you can add to the topic.
The other thing you should do is find what are the most shared contents in the topic selected by you. This will help you to opt the topics. There are several tools available on the Internet to do this job. You can try BuzzSumo. It helps you to find the most shared content for a particular topic under all social media platforms.
7. Aim to engage the audience
Audience engagement is one of the main goals you should try to achieve. That is because engaged audience hangs on to your every single word and grabs all of it. The only way to obtain engaged audience is to create engaging content. Here are the best practices to improve audience engagement:
End with the questions: Now this does not mean you have to write an incomplete post. We mean you should end the blog with a question that encourages them to utilize the information given by you.
Have a solid beginning: People will not read your full content and make a judgment. Rather they read a headline and first paragraph and decide whether to read or not. So it makes sense to tell why they should care to read and what will they learn from it, at the beginning, itself.
Tell a story: You might already know that people love stories. A story can help you to tell a point clearly. Furthermore, you can easily gain uninterrupted audience attention for a long period of time.
Try to gain user interaction: If you write a content that attracts a lot of user comments, the search engine will believe that you have good content and rank it higher. So, try to obtain people’s interaction.
