What Does Great Content Consist of
Great content on a website is something that is easy to read and understand. However, this is just the beginning. There is more to having great content than just being easy to read.
Content that is easy for a computer to read is also great content.
Since web crawlers are not very flexible intellectually, we need to give them content that they can technically consume. This is more important than anything else. The content needs to be in the form of text.
When I say text, I mean the words that make up the text as well. When I say “text,” I’m referring to more than just the way the letters and numbers look on the screen. I’m also referring to the words that make up the text.
I’m talking about good, old-fashioned ASCII text on the page.
While rich Internet application technologies like JavaScript, Flash or Silverlight may make for impressive presentations, they often impede search engines from crawling a website, which can negatively impact a website’s ranking.
Since search engines can’t read content that is hidden in rich technology, it is important to make sure that any text that is important is not buried in binary files.
Despite what some people may believe, Google does not constantly use OCR technologies to find hidden messages. They have made some progress in being able to read some JavaScript, but it is not the most efficient way to do things.
If you want your website to be easily found by search engines, use CSS technologies to make your text look fancy instead of using RIA or graphics.
If you’re a big fan of flashy, blinky, loud, colorful, and otherwise cool RIA content, do a favor for your site and your end users by making your RIA content accessible to users who don’t have the latest technology.
This includes people who don’t install browser plugins, people who use old or incompatible browsers, and also includes search crawlers.
The process of improvising a substandard experience for users is called graceful degradation. Although it requires more effort than creating a flashy and attention-grabbing experience, it is essential for ensuring that the content of the page can be reliably found through a search engine.
The way you communicate what your business represents can greatly influence potential customers. It may even be the deciding factor between them choosing to work with you or your competitors.
Even if you offer the same product or service as another business in your industry, your content will differentiate you from the rest.
Content Is the Secret Sauce
When you are writing the text for your pages, don’t forget to also include metadata, which is information about the content on the page. Metadata can help improve your page’s search ranking.
You’re missing an opportunity to improve your website’s ranking and draw in more viewers if you don’t spend time writing great text for the title and meta description tags. These tags give you a chance to control how the page is presented to both human users and web crawlers.
The same advice applies to the
tags and alt text. The
description are usually used in the search engine results pages list (
description text being the descriptive snippet beneath the blue link text).
The
element is used to create a headline for the page, and the element’s alt text attribute can be used to provide a text-based description of the image. Ideally, the alt text should be relevant to the page content, rather than a generic image description.
The text in the tags
and alt text are important for search engines when they are trying to determine the keywords for the page.
Your brand is the combination of ingredients that make up your company. It’s the seasoning that gives your content flavor.
Your brand represents your business’s whole identity. Your brand is what makes you unique and differentiates you from your competitors. It’s more than just your products and services; it’s the totality of your business’s identity.
Your brand is a set of values and beliefs that you communicate through your content. This content should make people feel something, and it should be unique and powerful.
When thinking about the differences between you and your competitors, your answers are likely more along the lines of…
- Your values and vision
- Your mission and what you believe in
- How your products/services encompass your beliefs
Differentiating your business from others in your industry can be boiled down to a few key factors. Your brand is defined by how you position these factors, which is the first step in developing your content strategy.
The main point is that you should write content that is enjoyable for people to read, but you should also keep in mind that many of your readers will be using screen reading software. If you write content that is easy for these software programs to read, everyone will benefit.
How is Great Content Used
Great content serves a very important purpose: it informs the reader about the topic of the page. When great content is smartly developed and used strategically, it easily accomplishes the following tasks:
- Helps people understand the topic
- Demonstrates your unique expertise or angle on the subject
- Makes people want to come back and read it again
- Makes people want to link to it so other people can access it from their website, blog, social network feed, etc.
- Compels people to do the following:
- Buy something on the site
- Download a document, a file, or an app
- Write a review or endorsement
- Subscribe to a site’s RSS feed
- Follow the author’s Twitter account
- Generate a Like on the author’s Facebook page
- Submit the page to StumbleUpon or Reddit
- Submit their email address to subscribe a periodic newsletter from the same author
The internet was designed to share information easily, and great content is what makes that possible. Write on topics you’re knowledgeable about, and make your content interesting and compelling, and you’ll draw attention from both readers and search engines.
Even something that goes viral has to start with a single post. It might take some time for it to gain traction, but it all starts with that first post.
How Content Communicates Your Brand
Figure out what area you’d like to focus on: maybe it’s design, customer service, or your unique product. The most important way to communicate what sets you apart from your competitors is through your content. Think about what area you want to focus on, such as design, customer service, or your unique product.
People need to be told and shown clearly how you’re different and what that means for them.
Your content should give potential customers an idea of what they can expect from your brand. It should be intriguing and compelling, making people want to come back for more.
There are additional benefits to being the only business with a particular mission, vision, and values. Because you are the only one who can communicate these things in your own way, your business is more unique and difficult to replicate.
How to Create your Secret Sauce Content
If you want to make your own secret sauce, follow these three steps.
This is a good exercise to do to make sure your content is aligned with your brand and is communicating the message that is unique to you.
1. Define And Align
Read over the list of differences you created in part two of the first exercise in this post. These are the areas where you can truly set your brand apart from your competitors. Use this information to create content that will highlight these areas and make them clear to your audience.
Your content should always be in line with your brand, your business, and your goals.
The goal of every piece of content you create should be to get closer to your business’s ultimate vision. Defining the parameters early on will help ensure that your content always aligns with your desired direction, instead of veering off course.
This is the meatiest part of the process so here are some tips to help you work through it:
- Define your high-level mission, purpose, passion and values first, then use these to inspire content topics, making sure you know the motivations behind each one
- Involve your team – see how they perceive the brand and what ideas they have for your content
- Take your time – this is your secret sauce, it’s not going to be perfected overnight!
2. Decide on Your Delivery Method
If you’re new to creating content, there are many things you need to consider here, such as:
- What format do my audience like to consume content in, e.g., podcast, video, blog?
- What content do I want to create?
- Which content type am I best at creating?
- Which platforms should I repurpose content to?
Before taking a look at what your competitors are up to, it’s a good idea to think about your own business goals and objectives.
If your closest competition is creating content for YouTube, that shows that there is an audience for your products/services on YouTube. This means that it might be worthwhile for you to create content for YouTube as well.
This indicates that there is potential for growth in other areas, such as podcasts.
It’s better to have great content that competes with other great content, than to have poor content in an area with less competition.
It is better to have a brilliant podcast than a bad video or blog post, no matter what the competition is. So, my advice is to let your personal preference guide you, but always be aware of what your competitors are doing.
3. Create and Share Your Secret Sauce Content
The next step after deciding what format to create content in is to give people a sample of your brand by creating and distributing the content.
This is where you make your content fit your values and vision. You put it all together, make it look good, and release it to the public, hoping people will want to consume it.
It is authentic content that will make you stand out from your competitors. Staying true to your brand will make your content more irresistible.
There are two considerations to keep in mind when creating and distributing content. The first is to commit to the platform you’ve chosen, whether it be video, podcast, blog, or something else.
If you want your content to have a big impact, focus on creating great content for that platform.
The second step is to take that content and modify it to fit different platforms. Your first priority should be making an impact on your chosen platform, but you also want to make sure you’re reaching your target audience in other places.
For example, if your target audience doesn’t all listen to podcasts, you can turn your podcast into social media posts. Or turn your blog post into a video. Make sure to factor repurposing into your content strategy from the start.
If you spend time thinking about it now, it will be easier to implement in the future, and you will be able to reach a larger audience when your brand is ready to expand.
There are lots of ways you can use old things in new ways on our website. Check out our blogs and podcasts for some ideas and inspiration.
Measuring the Value of Content
Even though it is always a good thing to offer the best possible content, it can be hard to find the resources to make that happen.
If your site is in a small market, take a look at your competition online. If they are uninteresting, you may be able to be better than them for a while.
If the bear is very hungry, a slow trot may not be enough to satisfy it. Also, a half-hearted attempt to write a “slightly better than average” paragraph on a few pages is not likely to be successful.
This may be a good beginning, but it is not enough. Using shortcuts to optimize results is difficult to achieve success with, especially over time.
Quality content ranks, and quality content shared on social media ranks even better. Create useful, interesting, amazing stuff, and the rest will take care of itself. If your online competition is tough, and you’re up against well-ranked pages, don’t worry.
Search engines, like people, prefer high-quality content. Content that is good quality and shared on social media ranks even higher. So create content that is useful, interesting, and amazing, and the rest will fall into place.
Many websites are designed primarily to promote a business, sell a product or service, or display some technical skill, with writing page content being an afterthought.
This is considered to be a mindless task, something that is just there to take up space on the page. These are horrible mistakes that completely miss the point of the Web, especially if the owner of the website wants it to be found easily through search engines.
Great content should be created as part of the design process from the beginning. Your website should tell your tale and show what makes you and your business special. This is the key to great content.
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