Quality content is essential for SEO. It helps search engines understand the relevance and authority of a website, enables the site to attract backlinks, improves user experience and helps target specific keywords.
Websites that invest in quality content are more likely to rank higher in search engine rankings, attract more traffic, and provide a more rewarding user experience for their visitors.
Let us explore in some detail:
Why Websites Need Quality SEO Content
Search Engine Algorithms Prioritise Quality Content
Search engines like Google and Bing use complex algorithms to determine the relevance and authority of a website. The content on your site is one of the primary factors that algorithms consider when ranking it for different search terms. For instance, Google’s search algorithm, which uses over 200 factors to determine search rankings, considers content as one of the most important factors to decide where to rank a site. Google has explicitly stated that “creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any other factors”.
Fresher Content is Preferred Always
Like other SEO professionals, we have seen that websites that have newer, more relevant, informative and engaging content are more likely to rank higher in search results. Algorithms prioritise fresh content to such an extent that websites that frequently update their content tend to perform better in search results than others that have not.
Here is a small test you can do to find this for yourself.
Search for the word, ‘USA travel’.
You likely won’t find the website of the US Visa office for your country on the first page of search results. This is despite the fact that a visa is the first thing you need to visit the country.
This happens because the sites of travel aggregators or ticket booking companies that come up at the top of results are updated more regularly than the website of the US Visa office. Moreover, the algorithms show results that have higher number of visitors. We are simplifying things a ‘bit’ but we hope you get the point.
There are other numbers that show why fresh content is better for your business. A study by HubSpot shows that websites that publish 16 or more blog posts per month generate 4.5 times more leads than those that publish fewer than 4 posts per month.
Quality Content Attracts Backlinks
Backlinks or links from other websites to your website are an important ranking factor for search engines. The better the quality of your content, the more backlinks you attract. There is another important aspect to consider. Webpages with content that provides value to users are more likely to be shared by visitors and thereby get more links from other websites.
The quality and relevance of backlinks are key factors in determining the authority of a website. The more authoritative a website is, the higher it will rank in search engine results pages. Google’s algorithms consider backlinks to be one of the top three ranking factors, along with content and Google’s machine learning algorithm RankBrain.
Here are two things to remember:
First, focus on contextual backlinks.
Contextual backlinks are links that are placed within the context of a piece of content. They are seen as more natural and relevant links to the content of a webpage and as such considered more valuable than other types of backlinks.
Secondly, focus on building a natural linking profile without thinking of do-follow and no-follow backlinks.
Do-follow backlinks allow search engines to follow the link and pass link equity or ‘link juice’ to the linked website while no-follow links have an attribute that tells search engines not to follow the link and as such, not pass link equity to the linked website. Do-follow links contribute to the linked website’s search engine rankings while no-follow links do not.
Having a mix of both these links makes it natural and helps improve a website’s overall backlink profile. Too many do-follow links compared to no-follow links can be interpreted as an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings (and can result in a penalty) while too many no-follow links compared to do-follow ones make it difficult for a website to rank higher.
Quality Content Improves User Experience
Users visit websites to find information. Sites that have relevant content offer a more positive user experience than others that do not. Content that is well-written, informative and engaging is more likely to keep users on the site for a longer time. This can reduce bounce rates, increase average session durations, boost page views, and improve overall user experience. These are key signals that indicate to Google, Bing and others that the site offers a better user experience.
We would go far as to say that you should write content that helps your audience without thinking of the search algorithms. There is now substantial amount of content online on any topic and media outlets churn out more every day. However, if you read what’s written, you will notice that most are of low quality. As you must have seen for yourself, you or anyone else you know don’t spend time on web pages with bad content, and you cherish those that offer what you need. This approach makes sites a magnet for readers or visitors, who go on to become customers.
Helps You Target Specific Keywords
Keywords are the search terms that users enter into search engines when looking for information. Content that is optimised for specific keywords helps websites rank higher in search results for those keywords. This can increase traffic to the website and improve its overall visibility.
This a self-feeding loop of sorts. When a site starts to rank for certain keywords, and users who undertook those searches spend more time on its pages, then search engines take these as signals that the site is better than others that have the same keywords. They also automatically start to rank it for other related search terms.
A good way to go about it is to write more blogs. Data going back years has shown this to be true. For instance, a 2016 Forbes article that referenced a Tech Client infographic showed that websites with blogs generate 434% more indexed pages than those without blogs. With the focus on content by search engines, this number will have likely increased in recent years.
Here is how you can:
Churn Out Better Content at a Faster Pace Than Your Competitors
Create an Editorial Calendar
An editorial calendar can help you plan and organise your content in advance, which will save you time from day 1. Knowing what topics you’ll be writing about and when helps you prepare ahead of time and avoid last-minute scrambling. Ensure that each content piece has keywords that are already researched and thought-through. This will save you considerable time. For instance, if you have a business that services a local area, creating SEO content with keywords that helps you target local searches is a good idea.
Batch Your Content Creation
Instead of creating one piece of content at a time, try batching your content creation. This means setting aside a dedicated block of time to write multiple pieces of content in one sitting. This can help you get into a flow state and be more productive. In the book ‘Deep Work’, author Cal Newport (also a computer science professor at Georgetown University) talks of how flow is important to succeed in anything in life.
Use Templates and Outlines
Templates and outlines can help you structure your content more efficiently. By having a pre-defined structure to follow, you can save time on formatting and focus more on the actual content creation. There is a lot of noise right now about ChatGPT and other AI tools that help you write faster. If you are in the business of writing, you should use these tools to make your work faster. Churning out content faster is important as the time needed to write a proper blog post has been steadily increasing over the years. This post, for instance, took us 5 hours to complete including content outline, research, writing, editing and posting. This does not include any social media shares, in case you are wondering.
Repurpose Existing Content
If you have existing content that can be repurposed, consider doing so to save time. For example, you can turn a blog post into a video or a podcast episode. You can use AI tools that allow you to quickly turn text into audio and vice-versa and repurpose the same. It is better if you have SEO optimised content already, but if not then you can still start repurposing your content.
Outsource Some Tasks
If you have the budget, consider outsourcing some tasks such as research or editing to save time. This can free up your time to focus on the actual content creation. You can also free up your time to focus on your core work by outsourcing all the content creation. For example, as a web marketing company, we take care of our client’s entire content requirements through our SEO plans. For example, in our Hero SEO Plan, you get 80-100 content pieces a month while in the Leader and Legend SEO plans, you get 180-200 and 280-300 pieces respectively.
Use Tools and Software
In addition to ChatGPT and writing tools, there are other tools and software available that can help you write faster and even free up time in sharing the content. You can choose what part of content creation or posting takes you the most time and choose accordingly from dictation software, grammar checkers, content idea generators or automation tools. Experiment with different tools to find what works best for you.
Implementing these tips will help you increase your content output and create high-quality content more efficiently. And that’s it. If you need more information on how content can help you, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected].
