3 Reasons Why Creating Good Content Is Important

We’ve all heard that creating good SEO content is the key to content marketing success, but just how important is good content?

Spoiler Alert: High-quality content is extremely important to the success of your brand. There are numerous statistics and case studies to support just how much it can make or break a brand’s success – which we’ll be going through in this article.

So What Defines Good Quality Content?

Sure, it’s easy to say that you need good content, but what does good quality content actually look like?

The true definition of good quality content is writing that not only allows you to be found organically online on the SERPs but appeals on an emotional, intellectual and value level to your readers. In order to really see results from writing high-quality content, you need to utilize keyword and SEO data while also drawing the reader in and convincing them that you’re the real deal.

Good content is a marriage of both reader-friendly content as well as search-engine-friendly content.

What’s the Difference Between Reader-Friendly Content and Search-Engine Friendly Content?

If you’re doing it right, hopefully there isn’t a difference. That being said, content can be created the wrong way – with only one or the other in mind.

If you lean too heavily towards writing search-engine friendly content stuffed with keywords, it becomes nearly unreadable to the regular consumer and they’ll be turned off by how it sounds. When your content is only considered “good” to search engines, you’ll find you have high bounce rates, low conversion rates, and a poor company image. Nobody wants to be well-known for being mediocre or worse.

If you lean too far towards reader-friendly content without considering SEO content writing best practices, you’re missing out on some big opportunities to further your business. You may hit all the right chords in your content writing but no one will ever read it because it will be lost in the vast ocean that is the internet. Your masterpieces will never be appreciated and you’ll be hard-pressed to want to write anything else, seeing no real results.

Characteristics of Good Content

When it comes to creating good content, there are actually many factors at play that appeal to both search engines and potential customers. Here are just a few of the requirements that must be met in order to consider your content high-quality:

• Does the content flow well?
• Does the content engage the reader?
• Does the content answer questions the readers are searching for?
• Does the content integrate keywords naturally?
• Does the content deliver on its own promises?
• Does the content provide value from either an informational, emotional or entertainment point of view?
• Does the content look visually pleasing? Does it have pictures, formatting and spacing that lead a reader through the post?
• Is the content free from spelling/grammatical errors?
• Does the content have proper formatting, leading you through the page with headers optimized for both SEO and readers?
• Does the content reflect the personality of the brand?

While this is not a comprehensive list, you can see what we’re getting at. Ultimately, if the reader sees value in the writing, it’s written with SEO in mind and the content helps to expand your brand in a positive way, it could be considered good quality content.

Source: https://ibruk.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/characteristics-of-effective-technical-content/

Why Creating Good Content is Important

There are many reasons why creating content is important to your business as a whole. For one, well-written content (mixed with a great keyword strategy) can generate backlinks to your site, which in turn can help to raise your rankings for certain keywords on the SERPs.  Instead of paying for ads every month, content writing for SEO can help you to be found organically through searches – potentially saving you thousands of dollars on your marketing budget.

Second, and most importantly, good quality content can heavily influence a potential buyer’s view of your business, and whether or not they want to do business with you.

In light of that, I’ve compiled some data to share with you in what I consider to be the top 3 reasons why creating good content is important from the primary perspective that matters – the reader’s.

#1 – Great Content Improves Brand Image

Research shows that customers make purchases based on the brand that they can identify with or feel great about. In most cases, the opportunity for brands to project a positive vibe with their potential customers is through the first impression their content writing makes on them.

“You will never get a second chance to make a first impression.” – Will Rogers

The harsh truth is that a first impression only happens once, and in the digital age in which we live in, content is a major medium that ends up making the first impression on potential readers/ buyers.

Good Content Increases Trust

So, just how much do readers care about companies that create good content?

This statistic shows just how integral of a role that the internet plays in brand messaging and overall image to consumers. The fact that more than half of consumers feel better about a brand that delivers custom, high-quality content on a consistent basis should be enough motivation for any company to make sure they are creating good content that readers can identify with. This improves trust, which ultimately can lead to business loyalty in the long run.

#2 – High-Quality Content Can Influence Buying Decisions

If you are under the assumption that advertisements influence buyers more than article content on the web, you would be incorrect.

Focus on Writing Good Web Content That Answers Questions

With article content being such an influential knowledge-dispensing medium, it’s also more important than ever to make sure that your article content answers specific user questions.  Generic blogs just don’t cut it these days with readers, so create real value by providing answers to their questions regarding your products and services in order to build trust and to create the impression that you are there to help. Informational, evergreen-type posts come off as helpful rather than sales-y and help build confidence and authority in your brand rather than disdain.

#3 – Useful Content is Considered a Priority

When it comes to the actual value of good content, we’ve already gone over a few statistics, but in the survey, they really put the nail in the coffin on the question of whether or not customers find custom content useful.

How Do You Go About Creating Good Content?

Now that we’ve gotten through the benefits of writing good content, the question now becomes how you approach the creation of it all. When it comes to creating good quality content, you have a few options:

• Write it yourself
• Hire individual content writers in-house
• Hire individual writers on a freelance basis
• Outsource to a content writing company

Here are a few things to consider for how to make good content using the examples above:

Creating Good Content Yourself

Depending on your skill level as a writer, your resources and bandwidth for finding, vetting, hiring and managing writers in-house, you’ll be able to determine which avenue best suits your business. Keep in mind that the typical blog post can take up to 3 hours to create, and if you’re planning on writing all the good content yourself, you may not get very far before falling behind and ultimately letting it go on the back burner.

Plus, your time is more valuable doing the things you are already good at. It’s hard to justify writing everything yourself when there are writing experts out there who can do it quicker, cheaper and better than you can.

Writing Good SEO Content In-House

It may seem prudent to just use existing employees within your company (or department) to do the writing of quality content. Or, maybe you just hire new, quasi-employees that can write as well as do other things within your company. This may make sense in some instances where you’re writing very specific/niche content that can’t be outsourced very easily. But it’s very hard to scale, and ultimately is one of the most expensive ways to go about creating high-quality content.

Think of the tax, hiring, overhead, training and benefit costs that will add up over time!

Creating Good Content Using Freelance Writers

If you’re planning on using freelance writers for your content creator endeavors while still managing the process yourself, it’s important to realize that you’ll also be responsible for vetting the writers to ensure they have the ability to research, write and format the content in a way that benefits your business. You’ll also be responsible for negotiating rates and keeping track of payments and paperwork when contracting them. Lastly, you’ll have to manage assignments given, feedback and quality assurance of the content to make sure it’s quality. If you already have a system for doing this with other contractors, then this could be a viable option, otherwise, you might quickly realize you’re in over your head.

Hiring, managing and maintaining hand-selected writing teams to create great content can be a full-time job on top of your OTHER full-time job if you’re not careful.

Using a Content Writing Service to Write Good SEO Content

With all that being said, using a content writing company can speed up the content creation process and help you scale much quicker and more affordably then doing it all or creating it all yourself. This is one of the best ways to make sure you write good SEO content. You pay a little more (in rates per word) than you would if you were managing the freelance writers yourself, but you save on all the costs of the time and money you’d spend hiring, managing and training content writers on a consistent basis.

This can add up to quite a bit of savings over the entirety of a well-executed content marketing campaign.

Start Creating Good Content!

One major key to creating good content as a company or brand is to understand the audience that will be reading what you’re writing. You should focus on crafting blogs, articles, white papers, e-books and case studies that THEY want to read, not ones that blatantly target keywords. Potential consumers want to feel like they’re buying from someone they know, trust and can depend on. If you turn them off through SEO content writing that is too advertorial or sales-y, you might not get another chance to win their business.

The importance of great content cannot be understated. By understanding who your readers are, what drives their behavior, and why they buy, you will be able to make good content that answers their questions, meets their needs, and creates a great first impression. Need help writing good content for SEO? Contact us to see how we can help!