What is good content?

So what is good content? Well, good web content is easy to read, educates, informs or entertains – it has to ignite emotion and must be easily found. That is the tricky bit and why so many companies pay agencies to help them be found by their customers.

There is so much on the internet that it is difficult to find what is relevant to your search. This is why Google updates its algorithms; it wants to make sure that you find what you’re searching for without having to vet through all the rubbish. It just makes it that little bit more difficult for the writers.

Content is king and always will be. It’s just making sure you are creating the right content for your audience and for Google. Targeted keywords and building authority helps Google to see that what you are creating is relevant and trustworthy and so will place you and your site high in its SERPs.

It sounds all relatively easy doesn’t it? But when there are so many key players in the game, all trying to make the number one spot on Google, it gets a little more complicated. Not only do you have to deal with the competition, there will always be bigger budgets, larger teams and Google will always change its algorithms to make life a little tougher.

Localisation and not provided are two of the complications we are currently coming up against, so perhaps we shouldn’t be so obsessed with gaining the top rankings and actually go back to the basics - creating good content that is relevant, useful and trustworthy.

Go into Google Trends to see what stories might be extremely popular next month and start running a content strategy around it. Each part of your content strategy needs to be:

• Easy to read
• Relevant
• Uses authoritive sources
• Links to relevant external sites
• Improves readability with lists (if relevant)
• Concise and to the point
• Entertaining, intriguing and well written
• Utilizes internal links to relevant pages
• Has an author

Relevancy is one of the most important aspects of creating good content. Once you have created the content your audience wants to read next is to keep them intrigued and interested. Why would someone want to carry on reading your blog or website if you can’t entertain them? Why would they then share and link to the content you have provided for them?

Once you have these areas covered you should begin to see some good results in  Google Analytics. Print off this article or write down my short list above – these will become your main ingredients for creating content that will be seen and read.

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