What is quality content when writing for the web? Why it’s living content, written for living things. You can satisfy both people and the SEO bots. Win-win!
Last week Nick wrote about why businesses write blogs and the strategy behind it What he neglected to mention was the importance of the content itself.
Content is king: it is everything from images and infographics to audio and video, but this article is about textual content. In short; words.
There are a few kings in our book, and quality content wears a big crown. What is quality content? And what isn’t?
Let’s start with what isn’t.
Much online content is written for SEO returns. When this happens, the human got forgot for the bot. We call this mechanised content blog content.
What is blog content?
Blog content is content that is written purely for SEO. That is content specifically written to return a first page result on your search term. Blog content is written to appeal to search engines and not people. Blog content is voluminous, employs tomes of keywords and few meaningful gems. So, blog content floats to the top of the page rank but the repercussions are damaging: you’ll lose customers and damage your brand.
Instead, create living content; write for living things. Us!
What is living content?
- When writing for the web; write for people and write well. You must speak the language of your audiences.
- Create content that offers real value by being informative, useful, relevant and offers substance and depth and insights and support.
- Create content that is uniquely your own and different from much of the lazy cut-n-paste content which is rife online.
- Offer engaging content and you’ll inspire visitors to keep coming back for more.
Now, let’s add ‘fresh’ to living content
Fresh living content implies the content you write is for now; this week now, today now. right now. The splendid thing about fresh content is the shareability; it is immensely popular and an almost passive way for your content to find a life of its own. It addresses people’s desire to find out what’s happening and what’s new.
There is a benefit for your unique frequent and relevant content that appeals to the bots. Good ole Google understands people’s desire for fresh content. They’ve an algorithm that lifts fresh and trending pages in the search results. Its called Query Deserves Freshness (QDF for short).
So you can write for humans and SEO.
You are writing for people and snagging the bot surreptitiously. Win-win.
Like all fresh stuff, content starts to rot over time and these days, fresh content breaks down quickly. Being fresh is a commitment to creating and publishing content regularly.
So in a sweet nut: when writing for the web, write fresh living content that is unique, relevant and targeted to your people. Update your content on a user friendly website. Then all will stretch favourably for ranking for relevant terms on major search engines and converting the traffic into visitors, leads, customers and extend the fine reputation of your business and brand.
On a final departing tip. Don’t let your living content become stale.
Living content, where it’s still correct and upstanding and written for people and not for bots, can always be revisited and be evolved. Offer tips, quotes, testimonials for a textual update and link to relevant connected content within your own site or external links to your admired affiliates. Or massage your living content with images, infographics, webcasts, video, audio. Vici’s blog will tell you more about the power of images.
Then your static (albeit living) content is fresh again. Share it. Blog it. Link to it.
When writing for the web, consistently, breathe life into your living content. Tend it, care for it, sprinkle it with attention and love; just like a Tamagotchi to make sure it doesn’t die.
Quality content = content people.
We’ve just launched an eBook that details 28 important features of a highly effective business website. Content is one of those. Please download the eBook for free to learn more.
Topics: Marketing