“Content rules” and will always rule as long as high quality content is in short supply. Savvy online entrepreneurs already know that consistently creating high quality content will increase traffic and audience engagement on their sites, lead to a higher ranking, more subscribers, greater brand awareness and ultimately more business. Copyblogger is a perfect example. Copyblogger gets tons of traffic, engagement, subscribers and business simply by adhering to this rule of creating high quality content. The site has an Alexa ranking of 2,100 and over 1,00,000 subscribers.
So what is high quality content? Four web editors share their views to this all important question. All of them have spent their careers creating high quality content. They are regular contributors to the Web Editors blog, a blog that has some great tips on creating and editing quality content, seo and current trends in the web editing field.
Keep reading for inspiration and advice from these top content creators.
#1: High quality content isn’t available anywhere else on the web
High quality content is highly readable material that isn’t available anywhere else on the Web. The facts may be the same, but it is written with the style, voice, and tone that is unique to you as the author and with the interest of the audience in mind for the vehicle in which it will appear.
The best way to ensure top quality content is to begin every piece from scratch and write with the perspective that best drives the point home for that audience. The only thing I might copy and paste are quotes.
Alan Eggleston, Web Writer and Editor at E-Messenger Internet Consulting, Inc.
#2: High quality content answers questions, educates, is well researched and easy to read.
High-quality content gives readers what they’re looking for. It answers questions, it educates, it is well researched and easy to read. It establishes you as a trusted source of good information and gets readers to come back for more.
I work for a peer-reviewed publication, so we have a pool of advisers who review some of our articles and recommend them for publication (or not). For columns, blog posts and other content that doesn’t go through peer review, we vet the authors based on their expertise and seek authors out at professional conferences. We keep a close eye on what readers want to know by looking at our Google Analytics stats.
Jennifer Ford, Writer, Copyeditor, and Website Editor.
#3: Top 3 characteristics of high quality content: (1) usefulness (2) clarity and (3) brevity.
This is a great question, and when I sat down to answer it, I quickly came up with a LONG list of attributes for quality content. Great content, of course, depends on your audience and your objective, so a deep understanding of those two items should drive your content choices.
Upon reflection, my top 3 characteristics are: (1) usefulness (2) clarity and (3) brevity. Since I write and edit for green businesses, it has to be of value to those businesses – helping them better sell their services, broaden their audience, enhance their brand image, etc. The more useful tidbits they take away from my site, the more likely they are to return. Clarity means writing simply enough to get my message through all the noise that’s out there, and in terms that resonate with my customers. Brevity recognizes the reality that people are time-starved and often just scanning for key points. Minimizing words – or identifying just 3 attributes of quality content instead of my long list – respects my customers’ time.
I know this is just the tip of the “quality content” iceberg, and I am interested to read what others think.
Alison Lueders, Website Writer and Editor for Green Businesses, Principal at Great Green Editing.
#4: Answering the audience’s questions is paramount for great content.
Answering the audience’s questions: this is paramount for great content. It sounds simple, but it’s very hard to do well. And I think the difficulty is 1 part logistical—finding out what the audience needs—and 9 parts emotional—getting beyond what you want to say to reach the zone where you write or produce what the audience needs to know, and only that. It takes real practice and discipline to get out of the way.
Anne Moreau, Editor and Proofreader for Publishers and Creative Professionals.
What in your view, is high quality content? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below. If you like this post, please share it generously on all your social networks.
Great tips, and I would personally reiterate the perspective of Alan Eggleston. To me, high quality content requires originality above all. Being original does not always mean creating from scratch or breaking news, but it means more than simply rehashing what’s already out there. Adapting content to your audience, adding tid bits of information, quotes and making it unique is what gets people’s attention. This post is, in that sense, original: having four experts explain, briefly and singularly, what they define as high quality content. Thanks for the post, Gazalla!
Thanks for your feedback Frederic. I agree with Alan’s viewpoint too. And with all 4 web editors – they have done an excellent job in helping us determine what makes for high quality content. Yes, I thought so too – that the post would be original and of a high quality thanks to our contributors.
Great, Gazalla! One thing I’d like to confess, since you mention Copyblogger, is that I’ve always found their posts to be far too long for a blog post. I subscribe to them and rarely have time to read an entire post!
Thanks for your contribution, Jennifer. BTW, I love your sentence “It establishes you as a trusted source of good information and gets readers to come back for more.” That’s also one of the reasons I like Copyblogger. The posts are long but they also contain a ton of good info. They are also extremely discriminating when it comes to accepting guest posts. They receive more than 100 pitches daily and only approve the top ones that are original and of a high quality.
Great points Gazalla!!! I particularly liked #2 & #4. Answering the audience queries has always been paramount.
~Malhar
Malhar recently posted..Top 4 reasons to participate in Twitter Chat
Thanks Malhar. I agree. We write for the sake of our audience so that is certainly a very essential element, along with originality, clarity, brevity, being easy to read – everything that the experts recommend!
High quality content has to do something for me. It might be answering a particular problem I’m having, or it might be as simple as making me smile. I dare say the most lasting value comes however when they change how I think, although that may take a bit more than one piece of content.
Adi Gaskell recently posted..Remind me why you’re doing social media again?
Thanks Adi for enhancing this post with your thoughts. Hmm, you are right – if the content is so skillfully written that it persuades one to change how they think – That would truly be the best mark of original and high quality content.
Hi Gazalla,
thanks for sharing, nice information!
High quality content is so important, more and more today with all the updates that Google is doing against the webspam.
For me, writing quality content means (besides my time, my hard work and commitment), for istance resolve a problem to a reader or start a discussion on a particular niche topic.
Erik Emanuelli recently posted..18 Reasons Why Your Blog is Losing Rank in Google
I agree especially now with Penguin out to take out spammy sites, high quality content is more important now than ever. Thanks for your feedback. As you said, it takes hard work, time and commitment but is well worth the effort.
Brilliant Blog Content and really just such a coincidence as just writing about the importance of content for one of our training webinars. You have got it spot on. Thanks for sharing
You are welcome. Glad it was useful. I would love to hear your webinar. Do send me a link.
The best part of quality content is the usefulness. People must give value when they share with others and the users must put it to use when they get results. If that does not happen the value is missing.
Lawrence Bergfeld