Marketing

How to Create Quality Content

July 24, 2019 by Andrew Woods

One responsibility of marketing professionals is to craft content that is informative, entertaining, and high quality. It’s essential to creating an online presence that reflects the purpose of your brand while attracting your target audience. Before you start writing, establishing proven techniques for creating quality content will save you time while enhancing the effectiveness of your blog.

Researching Your Topic for Quality Content

One of the most important factors to creating quality content is to establish authority on the topic. To do this, you must conduct extensive and specific research into your topic. For example, if you’re writing a blog about hot air balloons, you should spend some time before you begin writing, researching and understanding the science, whimsy, and romanticism that surrounds that type of travel.

In addition to your topic research, you should also include keyword research. Understanding the keywords related to your topic will help you refine your post even further, making your post more likely to show up in relevant searches. There are various tools available online that are designed to help facilitate keyword research, but overall the goal is to understand what terms your target audience searches for and to find ways to incorporate those topics into your post.

Next, it’s important to establish the relevance of your topic. Determine the questions and answers people are actively seeking and construct your content around those questions. Going back to our hot air ballon topic. Searchers are more likely to research this topic in the summer. Keyword research will also reveal that searchers want to know where they can schedule rides and also ask questions including, how are they steered? Establishing authority, researching your keywords, and understanding user intent are vital to creating high quality content.

How to Format a Blog Post

Almost just as important as the content itself is the way it’s presented. The key is maintaining a high page dwell time — the amount of time visitors spend on a particular page. Therefore, setting a guideline and rules for the way you format your posts will have a large impact on retention when it comes to your quality content.

The first tool is to make sure that you’re using header tags. For one, it helps break up the content and makes the page much easier to read. It also helps visitors immediately understand that your content has the information that they’re looking for. Furthermore, header tags help structure the content in a way that translates positively for search engine optimization which could lead to higher SERP ranking.

When it comes to readability, lists and bullet points can be incredibly effective for formatting sometimes complicated and other times dense information. Like headings, not only do they also help structure the content, but they also help the reader navigate the page. Lists and bullet points can be used to:

  • Provide instruction or offer ideas
  • Help important information stand out from the rest of the page
  • Break up large sections of text, increasing user experience
  • Give the reader the ability to scan for information

And speaking of user experience, including images and video clips increases the visual appeal of the page. Searchers will also be more likely to spend more time on page that include more opportunities for engagement. Use infographics, stock or custom images, and embed YouTube clips from your brand’s channel.

How to Execute the Skyscraper Technique

Unfamiliar with the skyscraper technique? It’s a content strategy that consists of seeking out the best, most popular content on the web and making it even better. You start with your topic or keyword of choice and use the SERP to find the highest ranking posts. One of the keys to this technique is making sure that you choose a result that features a lot of backlinks.

Once you’ve set your sights on the content you want to best, figure out ways that you can improve upon the post. If they list 10 tips, try to go for 12. Make sure that any out-of-date information has been updated with current statistics. Increase the visual appeal of your post and make the content more in-depth.

Calls to Action

Give your readers something to do. After consuming your content, retain those visitors with actionable direction. When you wrap up your post, including a call to action is the detail that turns an interest into a customer or client. They should be concise and direct and lead readers to an action that will benefit them. Subscribe! — Learn More! — Let’s Connect! — the call to action is motivational and acts as the final piece that leads to the results you want your content to produce.

Ready to up your content game?Let's Chat!

Ready to up your content game?Let's Chat!