Content hacks to make your posts a Great read.
You’ve heard it before:
Content is king!
And it’s true. If you want to run any kind of online
business, you’re going to need content.
Not only that, you’re going to need GREAT content!
But what makes great content?
Great content is content that appeals not only to Google,
but to individual users, as well.
Great content is:
* Grammatically correct
* Free from spelling and punctuation errors
* Well-researched and factually accurate
* Interesting to read
* Useful
* Ideally entertaining in some way
* Written with both Google AND visitors in mind
These days, it is much easier to get traffic from sources
OTHER than Google, so you should make it a priority to
write content that readers will enjoy and want to share.
Written articles should be at least 1,000 words, generally,
to appeal to Google, but you should make sure they are
all enjoyable to read AND useful to readers.
This is what will get you the most traffic in the end,
because that is what will get you lots of social shares.
And ultimately, social shares will get you more traffic
than Google in most cases, AND those shares will help
boost you in Google, too.
Now that we’ve discussed what makes quality content,
it’s time to start talking about some ways to make the
process of creating content a little easier.
There’s no sense spending hours and hours on a single
article every time when you can spend just a few
minutes and have content that is more likely to be
shared than traditional written content!
We’re also going to look at how to create that content
while also appealing to Google, which will get you
additional traffic in the long run.
What Google Wants From Content
Google is pretty freaking picky these days about what it
ranks well. It’s no longer possible to create a 5-page
website with 150-word articles and rank on the first page
unless you’re in such an obscure niche that you have nearly
zero competition.
These days, Google wants to see:
* Content that is relevant to the site’s overall theme
* Longer content, at least 1,000 words, and longer is better
* Content with images and videos included
* A low bounce rate
These are the top ranking factors when it comes directly to
content. There are others, of course, such as back links and
social signals, but when it comes to content, these are the
most important.
Most content should be relevant to the site’s overall theme.
If your site is about pets, you shouldn’t post articles about
gardening unless it somehow relates to pets (such as a list
of vegetables in a garden that could make your dog sick).
Content should be at least 1,000 words, on average. In fact,
according to an analysis performed by SEMRush, the average
content on page one of Google was 1,890 words.
As you can tell from these results, the days of short articles
easily ranking on page one are over. It’s all about length.
But there are exceptions to this, which we will discuss later.
Additionally, content should contain other forms of media.
It’s not enough to post long articles. Those articles should
also contain pictures and videos, when appropriate.
Studies have found that content with at least one image ranked
better than content with no images.
Bounce rate relates to the number of people who visit your
page and leave without viewing any other content on your site.
If a large number of people leave your site without viewing any
other content, it’s an indicator that your content is not up to
par, and Google does look at this as a ranking factor.
For this reason, it is critical that all of your content be
the best it can be. It must be interesting, it must be useful,
and it must encourage people to view more of the content
on your website.
