The Formula for Creating Great Content

Why do you need great content? To boost SEO rankings and drive traffic and/or leads. Creating content is not difficult, however, creating engaging content that provides your target audience with value takes more time, effort and skill, and when you put the work into creating great content and developing your brand, this time and effort pays off.

To feature in SEO rankings, your site must provide high-quality original content. Google actually penalizes sites with duplicate content. So if you are interested in attracting attention and expanding your online business, it is important that you really understand the value of your content.

But what content do people want? If you are a B2B organisation, there are a few things that you should focus on to engage the right people with your site, and your brand.

1. Original Content

Google uses an algorithm to prevent poor-quality content from ranking highly. In years past, content publishers would update forums daily and have businesses rank highly despite the poor quality of the content which provided little value to audiences.

That tactic no longer works. Content needs to be original and new. Search engines are more sophisticated than in the past, and former methods for topping SEOs no longer work. Things such as:

• Using a bot to scrape content and re-combine it into some form of gibberish that registers on search engines.
• Using cheap content writers to write filler content.
• Collecting articles and requesting permission to repost them.

To get attention, you need to think about creating an editorial calendar and actually having something to say. If you can only update your blog on a month, but you provide white paper reports or groundbreaking industry insights this is preferable to rehashing content and saying very little of interest on a weekly basis. Be a website of note over a tabloid of ill-repute.

2. Smart Headlines

Your headline is vital, and it is a skill in writing that can take years to hone. One of the best ways to improve your headline skills is to give yourself a world or space limit and mock-up at least three titles for each article. It sounds like a lot of work, however, according to Copyblogger statistics, it’s worth it:

• 80% of people will read your headlines.
• But only 20% of those people will read the rest of your content.

Writing a sub-headline is another way to ensure that you hook your reader. If you aren’t sure about how to create a subhead, again, limit your words (about 30) and aim to summarize the most interesting points of your story. If you need more guidance on how to do this, start reading high-quality newspapers in print form and challenge yourself to stick to facts and get attention.

3. Make Your Content Actionable

If you don’t include a CTA, what is it all for? Your content is used to promote your business, products or services and engage an audience. While your content should not focus on sales, it should promote your brand, and the best way to do this ensures that you follow up each article with a way for your audience to engage with your business.

4. Provide Answers

People enter keywords into search engines because they have questions. The search engine matches you with that request if your site provides an answer.

Make your content work for you. You should be answering questions that your potential customers have asked. If you aren’t sure, ask your customers what they want to know. In B2B transactions, this information can be very specific and even employ the use of much jargon. If you want to exclude those from your industry with little or no knowledge of the inner workings of your trade, you can use jargon to connect with the clients you do want. However, it is usually advisable to keep the business language to a minimum to attract as much traffic to your site as possible.

5. Cite Sources

If you want your B2B organisation to be considered legitimate, you need to ensure that your content is accurate and correctly attributed where necessary. The swirling rhetoric around ‘fake news’ is no small thing. As a business, you are doing your utmost to create a bond with your client. If you are not transparent about your content, what else might you be hiding from your customer? Your content is part of building a relationship. Make sure it is on a solid foundation.

Here are some tips to think about when you’re mulling over the issues of accuracy:

• Consider who you are linking to. Are they a trusted and authoritative source? Linking to other quality websites will earn more trust from your readers.
• Linking to more content can only help. The more you can back up and substantiate what you are writing about, the more trusted your content will become.
• Help the search engines out. Linking to other sources and content will help the search engines figure out what your content is about, and how it should be categorized.

6. Create Engaging Content

An engaged audience hangs on to your every word and takes in all that you write or say. But the only way to get an engaged audience is to make engaging content. It all starts with you and what you write. Here are a few tips to help you write engaging content:

• • Use your introduction. People skim over content to measure if it answers the questions they have. You don’t have time to tease people with long-winded, irrelevant build up. It’s a blog, not a novel, so get to the point and grab their attention in 30 words or less.
  • People love stories. Make your content relatable. While it might be dry business talk, that does not mean you can’t find real-life applications for your message.
  • Open the comments section. If your post is commented on, this is picked up by search engines. The more comments, the more important your post becomes and the higher it rates on searches.

 

7. Add Images and Video

Visual content is a must. Whether your content is a video, images, infographic or written blog, there needs to be visually stimulating content that accompanies all posts or blogs. Some people retain more information when they are provided visual accompaniment, but all people respond to images that capture our attention. Try researching trends around color and devices to support your content. (These elements change regularly.)

8. Keep it Short

Write and edit. Then edit again, then again. People do not have time to read your 1,000-word peace on the Magic of Puzzles. Keep your content focused, informative and short. Most people skim through articles, picking out the most relevant information. Make yours easy to read and follow.

The exception is research or white papers, in which case, your abstract or introduction should do the job of providing the skim-read section, while the remainder of the paper should be detailed and rich with information for your audience.

9. Keep Your Website or Blog Up-to-Date

If you start a blog, you need to keep it maintained. A site that has three blogs from 2016 and then a clear abandonment of the project does not bode well for customers. You need to show your commitment to content (and therefore your customer) by publishing regular updates and maintaining your site.

Final Points

Remember, content writing is writing. It is a skill and people study to learn the finer points of creating high-quality content. It takes time, research and commitment on the part of the author. It then needs to be edited, fact-checked and finally published. While the publishing process is faster than that of traditional print media, the actual research and writing still take time when done by a professional.