The Most Important SEO Questions That Clients NEVER Ask…
The Most Important SEO Questions that clients NEVER ask are…
What is good content? And, how do I create good content?
This is a follow-up to what Vikram posted last week.
Last Tuesday, Vikram gave a great restaurant analogy of how website and business owners need to view their website content and content creation strategy. I would like to dive a bit deeper into this topic and give some examples of what I think is good quality content.
There are a lot of people throwing around the phrase “Content is King” – but, most business and website owners don’t know what that phrase ACTUALLY means and therefore cannot create an actionable plan for developing good content and thus their sites will remain subpar.
In my opinion, good content must do 1 of 2 things: Completely Answer a Question (be informational) or Entertain the Audience (be remarkable).
So, I would like to offer a few examples of pages that I think illustrate my points. Notice that some of the sites I give have a dated design…the point here is that good/popular content comes in a variety of styles.
Informational Content – Cover a Niche Topic in its Entirety
Don’t simply write your opinion, give facts & examples to back up your thoughts and gain credibility.
TheSurfingSite.com is a great example of covering niche topics in their entirety. Notice how these 2 articles cover the topics from start to finish, and offer both opinion and facts:
http://www.thesurfingsite.com/Body-Surf.html – ranks #2 for “how to body surf”
http://www.thesurfingsite.com/Surf-Conditions.html – ranks #1 for “how to read a surf report”
Another great example of covering a Niche Topic is from SFDJ.com, the South Florida Dive Journal. They have very informative pages that cover all aspects of diving and free diving.
http://www.sfdj.com/sand/freedive.html – ranks #3 for “free diving” and #1 for “free diving in south florida”
Notice how the page gives instruction with photos, as well as tips on buying equipment and camera gear, free diving spots in South Florida, and how to improve your technique. This page illustrates the point that good content will always outrank a cool website design with poor content.
Again, this page ranks #3 for “free diving” – just below Wikipedia and freediving.net
Entertainment + Informational Value from an Authority figure
Recently, I can across SandersUnfiltered.com – this is one of the best sites I’ve come across in a long time. I love the content that is provided on this site, it is both information and entertaining. New content is only posted once per week, but it’s of high quality video and print from a trusted source – Senator Sanders of Vermont.
Here are 2 good examples from SandersUnfiltered.com:
http://sandersunfiltered.com/blog/?p=43
and
http://sandersunfiltered.com/blog/?p=41
Entertainment – Remarkable or Outrageous Content
2 years ago a video surfaced of a guy surfing a wave that was generated by throwing a stick of dynamite into a lake in Copenhagen, Denmark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xfBNxNds0Q&feature=fvst
This video generated over 880,000 views and received over 500 comments on YouTube alone.
It was a stunt that was completely staged and edited by Quiksilver, the surf wear company. The ‘kids’ were actors dressed in Quiksilver clothes, and the bridge was the Dronning Louise Bridge over Copenhagen’s Lake Sortedams. This is a good example of a viral video that was passed and shared by millions, and gave Quiksilver a lot of press.
In Summary
I hope these examples help illustrate how good content will improve the quality of your website, online marketing ability and eventually improve search engine rankings. Truth is developing good quality content takes time and money, which is why it’s important to have a solid content development strategy in-place. Most websites and businesses do not, which is why it is so difficult for them to gain any visibility on search or social media sites.
So, please concentrate on these 2 principals when developing website content:
• Work on surpassing the reader’s expectations in terms of providing helpful information on a particular topic. Ask yourself, is this all of the information that someone will want when they visit my page/site?
• Give readers something new and fresh. Give them something funny, outrageous and unexpected, and they will reward you by sharing with others, either through social media sites, leaving comments or emailing to their friends.
Good content IS hard to write, but bad content is EVEN HARDER to get ranked in search or spread through social media communities. Awesome ideas do take time to develop, but they are often worth the wait. So, please take the time to analyze your market and develop a content strategy that fits the needs of your business and surpasses audience expectations.
