Why Quality Content Matters
Posted by Beth Hrusch on Fri, May 13, 2011
It's Friday the 13th, which means that you need to be careful about bad juju. Specifically, the kind that comes when you absorb bad content. Bad content is poorly written and has no clear call to action, among other things. Waste-of-time content. When you see it, run for the hills.
The bad juju will follow you around like a black cat until you expunge it by absorbing good content. That's your caveat for the day. Just be careful--that's all I'm saying.
Now it's time to talk about good, quality content and why it matters.
We know that Internet marketing and e-commerce are becoming increasingly content-driven. This means that businesses need to become serious about establishing a content marketing plan. Whether your site sells technology, kitchen appliances or goodie baskets—whether it’s a multi-million dollar operation or a mom-and-pop-- the content that you produce is what ultimately leads to sales. So, it should be a priority.
Google, Blekko and other search engines have officially recognized content as a major factor in page rankings. Recently, Google announced that it is committed to rewarding good content and reducing spam. Its new algorithm, in fact, is designed to ensure that high-quality sites (and their high-quality content) get priority treatment.
Other measures are being enacted by search engines to start weeding out bad content, Blekko is even banning some low-quality sites from its search portal, and Bing is working on stricter quality controls for web content.
Even if you aren’t worried about being banned by search engines, you should be aware of these developments in the world of online marketing, because they do affect how well your site performs. Do you have in place a strategy for creating and distributing high-quality content on the Web? If not, then your site could be under-performing, and much of your marketing effort and resources are possibly being wasted.
Investing in a content development strategy makes sense for business. Here’s a rough outline:
1. Determine your goals and objectives, and decide on timelines.
2. Choose what forms that your content will take i.e. blogs, articles, press releases, ebooks, etc.
3. Work with experienced SEO content marketing writers to develop the content and schedule launch date(s).
4. Distribute the content on social media, social bookmarking sites, your site, the company blog, etc.
5. Track results.
In an increasingly competitive online marketplace, content marketing is becoming a necessity. With little initial investment, any business can set up a content plan that includes useful information for consumers. Odds are very good that your competitors are already developing a content strategy to give them the edge in your niche. It’s only a matter of time before they are the sites that potential customers find when searching for your keywords.
How to ensure that you get good content and that it gets seen by the search engines is the subject for another article. Here’s a clue: using experienced writers with deep knowledge of SEO and content marketing will go a long way toward avoiding spammy, self-serving content that doesn’t help you with either the search engines or with consumers.