All websites need quality content as that is what ultimately attracts visitors. Content also helps you rank well in the search engines and (hopefully) will be shared on social media by your readers once they find it. That is why it’s important that your content is up to scratch, because if it’s not, you can’t expect to create a popular site. Content is king after all!
What Makes Quality Content?
So what makes good content I hear you say? Well there is no secret formula; a lot of it will just come down to practice. There are, however, certain things that you can do to improve your posts. Let’s take a look at some. Online marketers’ main concern is that Google views their content as original. Consider what your needs are and see what is available, check it out on https://seotoolscentre.com/paraphrase-tool best option for rewriting text with plagiarism generator. Unless you do a great deal of paraphrasing from a website on your own, you might seek some outside help. Most of the automated paraphrasing sites provide a manual rewording or generator to produce content that needs some editing and revision work to be considered of readable quality before being uploaded.
Check Your Spelling & Grammar!
One thing that readers really hate is poorly written articles! Nobody will begrudge the odd genuine mistake (we all make them), but if your posts are littered with them, then it doesn’t look very good. It doesn’t take long to double or even triple check your posts before you publish them, as it will certainly make a difference.
This may seem obvious, but I’m constantly finding blogs that don’t seem to do this. It gives the impression that they have rushed writing the article or just don’t care. These types of mistakes will just end up costing you traffic. I’ve seen lots of great quality posts written by people whose first language isn’t English, so it’s even more frustrating to find poorly written posts by people who actually speak English as their first language.
For me it is a matter of pride. You are creating something to be published online, which is a reflection on you. You don’t know who will end up reading that, so you may as well make sure that it is of the highest standard that you can.
Use Paragraphs, Subtitles & Bullet Points
Let’s face it, large chunks of text can be quite boring. If we wanted to read a novel, we would have bought a book.
Readers can be quite intimidated by a mass of text, especially when it is a rather long post. That is why it’s important to try and break up your posts as much as you can.
Structuring your posts with short paragraphs, subtitles and bullet points are all great ways to break up your posts. Not only does it make it easier for people to read, but it makes it easier for them to scan through. Like it or not, the vast majority of people scan through posts to find the bits they are after, so you may as well make it easy for them.
Add Images
Similarly, adding images can help break up your posts. Text on its own is rather dull, so adding images can help brighten them up and make them a lot more visually appealing.
Don’t just use them for the sake of it though. Images are great to help make a point or explain something in a more visual way. Tutorial posts are a good example as you would want to include as many screenshots as you could to help guide the reader through what you are talking about. Infographics or slideshows are another way that you can add quality information to your posts in the form of images.
The added benefit of images (that most people forget about) is that they can help bring in traffic to a site. Your post images can appear in the Google Image search results, so people can find your site that way.
Add Videos
People are lazy! If given the choice between reading something or watching something, more often than not they will choose to watch something. Adding videos to your posts can help to engage your readers and keep them on your site for longer.
The added benefit to videos is that you can convey a lot more information in them. Instead of simply writing a tutorial, why not record a tutorial showing people how to do something (or better yet do both). That way, your readers can see exactly what you are trying to show them.
They don’t even need to be your own videos! You can embed any videos from YouTube into your posts. People won’t mind, as they will get more views and you get a nice video for your site. It’s a win-win.
Just make sure that your videos are responsive so that they can be viewed on mobile devices.
Write For Your Readers, Not For Yourself!
At the heart of any quality content should be your readers. They are the people that you should be writing for, they are your audience, your customers, the lifeblood of your site – so make sure you are writing for them!
It’s easy to get distracted and end up writing on what you want to focus on (believe me, I’ve done it enough times), but you should always try to take a step back and assess whether this is what your audience wants.
Why not just ask them yourself! Get on social media and ask your followers what they want to read about next or whether they have any questions they want you to answer. This is one of the best ways to produce quality content as you are giving your readers what they want. Plus, you can get some very loyal readers if you made a post for them specifically.
Be Patient, It Takes Time
At the end of the day, you can’t expect to write quality content from day 1. It will take time for you to find your voice and get into the swing of things. All these tips will help you along the way, but the more content you write, the better you will get – it just takes practice and perseverance.
What do you think makes good quality content? What do you think makes bad content? Please let us know by leaving a comment below!
26 thoughts on “Quality Content – The Lifeblood Of Your Website”
Excellent Matt – this post is something that a lot of our Bizzebee readers will be able to use and learn from.
Learning to write, especially for a blog is almost like an art form – so any pointers we can give from the benefit of our experience will make the whole process a lot easier for those newbie bloggers out there.
As my own work moves forward, Videos will be more a part of what I do, purely because it will take me less time to actually create a video tutorial rather than write out a long tutorial, and people really do resonate with videos, especially if they can see what you are doing!
Great post!
Clair
Hi Clair,
When I look back at some of my earliest posts, I can see how much I’ve improved. Some were REALLY bad when I re-read them. Only by writing regularly have I become better, and even then, I think I can improve a lot more.
Videos are great to do, as people prefer to watch something than read a long post on it. Even better though is to do both, create a video and add it to a written tutorial. This is great for SEO (especially when both have the same name) and people can follow either.
Need to do more videos myself.
Hi Amais,
The only reason I didn’t include the information about Alt Tags is that that is more to do with SEO, whereas this post is more to do with making engaging content for readers.
You are right though, Alt tags are very important and should always be included. Lists and tables are also useful (as long as they are properly formatted).
Hey this is a great post. I plan on doing this when I launch my next blog.
I was thinking maybe post with just text, then promote it and rinse and repeat this technique every week or every few days to give each blog post on my blog new life.
I’ll be posting a new post every 2 weeks and doing heavy promotion on it through many different sites and if I listed them all we’d be here until next week.
The main form of promotion will be through the following:
1) Stumbleupon
2) Reddit
3) Digg
4) Delicious
5) Facebook
6) Google+
7) Twitter
However there are many more places I plan on promoting my content to.
This way I’ll be creating high quality, linkable, likable, interesting content that will suit all of my audiences needs and grow my blog from there. 🙂
Hi Alan,
I wouldn’t just post text based blog posts, you really need to include some sort of other media (images, videos, infographics, etc.) into it to make it more appealing to visitors.
Think of it this way – you can promote your site all you want, but if when people get to your site they don’t find your content interesting and engaging, then they won’t stick around for long. At the heart of any post is great information (text), but you need to sell that by making it more visually appealing.
The sites you are using for promotion are great. I’d add both Pinterest & LinkedIn to that list, but otherwise that’s where you should be aiming to gain new readers/traffic. Social bookmarking sites don’t tend to work as well as they used to, but they can still be a great source for people to find you from.
Yeah. I’ve done a lot of research on these places. I haven’t done so much research on bookmarking sites, but I plan on doing that.
Pinterest and Linkedin were actually on my list I just didn’t mention them above, but here’s a short list of the places I’ll be promoting my blog to get it full exposure:
1) Facebook profile
2) Facebook page
3) Other Facebook pages
4) Facebook groups
5) Twitter
6) Google+
7) Google+ communities
8) I might do a Google+ page
9) Youtube
10) Dailymotion
11) Linkedin
12) Pinterest
13) Quora
14) Online forums
15) Digg
16) Reddit (I’ll continue to promote every few days)
17) Delicious
18) Stumbleupon
19) Bloglovin’
20) Networked blogs
21) Blog comments (Only when applicable and when I feel others may benefit from it)
22) Guest posting
23) Slideshare
24) Yahoo answers (I know not the most effective way, but it might help someone)
25) Questions on other places such as quora, Facebook, G+, Twitter ect.
26) Article marketing (Not as effective as it used to be either)
27) Blog carnivals
28) Submitting blog to Google, Yahoo, Fire fox and Bing search engines. (I’m sure that the Yahoo search engine is now integrated with bing is that correct?)
29) Submit blog to top blog directories
30) Submit RSS to sites such as Yahoo and others.
I’m planing on using a few other sites once I do research on them, but this is my overall promotional strategy.
I’ll be implementing SEO too so that should help bring new visitors to my blog and I’ll ask a few friends to share it to their friends so I get maximum promotion.
I know all of these sites won’t be the best traffic generators, but it’s a lot and I believe that if I used all of these as promotional strategies then I could have thousands of people on my blog within the first 2 or 3 days.
Maybe they won’t be all targeted traffic, but I’ll still get a lot of that too using these promotional techniques.
I was thinking about going on the 20/80 rule, you know 20% creation and 80% promotion.
Apparently Derek Halpern updated his blog once every 2 weeks and actively promoted his content and that’s how he got to where he is in a few short years. BTW if you haven’t seen his blog, but you probably have since you’ve been blogging longer than I have his blog is awesome and I totally recommend it. 🙂
What do you think?
Sounds pretty good to me. This is a similar strategy to what I do to promote my content, though maybe not quite as many.
The only thing I’d say is not to appear too spammy. It’s fine to promote your own stuff, but a big part of marketing your site is done simply by being active on those sites. Take Facebook groups as an example. I post my new posts there when they go live, but I also try to answer people’s questions, be helpful, share other people’s posts, etc. It all helps fo make you more recognisable.
**Quick Answers**
Yes – you need a Google+ page. G+ is arguably THE most important social site now due to it being linked heavily with the search engine.
Yes – Yahoo & Bing are basically the same. You only need to submit your site to Bing, Yahoo will pick it up from there: http://onlineincometeacher.com/traffic/how-to-submit-your-website-and-get-listed-on-google-bing-yahoo/
Thanks for the reply. I get your point there. I actually thought it over and just decided to go with fewer sites to promote and be active on.
I get how it can be very spammy in Googles eyes so it’s probably best that I cut it down a little. So I’ve decided to only promote on the sites bellow:
1) Stumbleupon
2) Digg
3) Delicious
4) Reddit
5) Facebook
6) Twitter
7) Google+
8) Pinterest
My job would be easier this way too. I’ll be active on blog comments too. Does this sound okay or does it still sound too spammy? Thanks. 🙂
Add in LinkedIn (as that’s a good one to use) and you are good to go.
Yes, sometimes it’s better to focus on a smaller bunch of sites so that you aren’t spreading yourself too thinly.
Oh yes and Linkedin. I already have a profile on the site. I just completely blanked that one. Thanks Matt.
Yeah. While it would be good promoting on all of these sites and it could possibly bring lots of traffic to your blog like you said it would look spammy and I also did some research on this.
Apparently if you have too many links at one time in a short amount of time Google can penilize your blog.
Yeah, though that is usually when people use link building tools that create hundreds/thousands of links in a very short period of time.
Creating links yourself would not look spammy in that way.
Yeah. There’s a lot of people that do that. They’re very spammy and they’re into all of the black hat traffic techniques and stuff like that.
Yeah, make sure to stay well clear of any black hat SEO. It can help sites rank higher in the short-term, but long-term a site is more likely to be penalized (if not black listed) so it’s just not worth it.
I completely agree with you there. I think they can delete your site if you use black hat techniques. That’s all bad stuff anyway so I wouldn’t use it.
It’s just not worth the risk. Longevity is what every site should be after.
Yeah. It should be, but some people are inpatient with the time it takes to get real traction from their blogs.
I was like that too, but now I’m more about helping people and if somewhere down the road I make money from it then I make money from it.
I would like it to be my very own online business, but it really counts on whether or not people buy the products I release later on down the road.
I wouldn’t try to sell a product too soon and I think that it would be more suitable to do that at least five or six months after launching or at least begin to monetize through adsense and small stuff like that.
People usually don’t think about what the long term results can be and always want it now and I think that’s why they turn to Black hat techniques.
Would totally agree with that! People seem far too impatient these days and are only interested in short term results. If they were to think (and act) long-term, then they could build a successful business that could last them a lifetime.
Yeah. If people just put in a little more work they can do so much with their blog. It just surprises me how many people give up and how fast they do.
The only thing that limits people from being successful is themselves. That is something that I try to remember everyday.
Yeah I absolutely agree with that. I actually believe that there are no limits.
Instead people are the ones that create their limits themselves and in order to get past those limits people have to admit that their limits are what’s keeping them back.
Society and the media do a good job in telling people what they can’t do. I won’t get into that though as that is a whole other can of worms.
Yup it is. Did what I said above make sense?
Yeah, it made sense. The only person that can hold you back is you yourself. Think many people are held back by how they perceive themselves.
I think I’ve changed my direction. I still want to launch a blog, but now I want to teach Japanese online. I keep on getting new idea’s. :/
The benefits of this is that it’ll force me to learn Japanese eventually. I’ll be able to help people like me, the teaching will be done mostly on video, but there’ll be a lot of text and pictures there too.
I think that I could have a real business model with this though. I know it’s still so soon, but I already have a product in mind. I call it Japanese in 3 months.
It’s not about learning all of the Japanese in 3 months, but more the capacity a person is able to learn it.
In other words if they use the information I provide and put it to use, do exercises ect. They’ll be able to learn a lot more than they would without the product.
It focuses on teaching the pronunciation, the Romanji alphabet, the Hiragana alphabet and the Katagana alphabet.
I’ve been “Learning” Japanese for about 3 years now and only know a few phrases.
However now that I’m pushing myself because of this specific business model I’ll be finished the Hiragana today and it’s been less than 24 hours since I started.
I can use the exact same method with the Katagana and learn them both in less than a week.
I’ll be using:
1) Youtube
2) Blog
3) Facebook page
4) G+
5) Twitter
6) Linkedin
I feel that if I went the whole way I’d really be able to help people and seeing as it’s my goal to go to Japan I think it benefits me just as much as it benefits the viewers.
Here’s a list of content that I can provide on the blog:
1) Video lessons
2) Japanese culture
3) Japanese news such as business news and stuff for people who want to go there.
4) Japanese Myths
5) Game, blog, movie, television, anime reviews
So all in all not only is this blog aimed at education, but it’s aimed towards the culture, the language, entertainment, the latest news and business for people who want to visit or move there.
What do you think? Is it a good idea?
I think you may have the basis for a good site if focusing on Japanese culture, but the teaching of the language I think you will find much more difficult. I know a bit of romanji/hiragana and learned that via a great site called ‘Nihongo Master’.
If you want to do the language side of it, I would build that upon a Japanese cultural site rather than a language site with a bit of cultural info (if that makes sense). There is a lot of interest in Japanese culture, you only have to look at Kotaku to see how big it can grow (they started along the same lines and now focus purely on games).
That’s only my opinion though. At the end of the day you are the one that will drive it forward.
Yeah it’s good to start out the way you have. You’re supposed to learn Hiragana, then Katagana and then Kanji.
The Japanese language is actually the basis of 4 different alphabets which I’ve listed bellow:
1) Romanji.
Romanji is basically Japanese, but in english letters and that’s supposed to help you pronounce the words in the Japanese language. You should start here for a few weeks to get used to how to say certain words and stuff like that.
Some stuff is even written in Romanji in Japan too so it’s best if you take a look into that, because for example there’s a lot of Japanese people that know Romanji on Facebook because it’s easier to communicate with people using the Latin meaning instead of Hiragana, Katagana and Kanji. This is really the fist thing you should look at because the main benefit is that it helps you with your pronunciation.
2) Hiragana
Hiragana is one of the easiest Japanese alphabets to remember (Romanji being the first) and this is the first true Japanese alphabet that you should learn because it’s the most frequently used alphabet.
The Hiragana alphabet is actually a alphabet that was created for Japanese home words and it’s more frequently use than Kanji and Katagana.
This should most certainly be the first alphabet that you learn because it’s the most important. It doesn’t take long to learn, but some of the characters are practically the same, but have slight changes which can make it a little confusing.
3) Katagana
Katagana is the second Japanese alphabet that you should learn because this alphabet is tailored to specific foreign words. The words that the Japanese have borrowed from other countries.
Now although not so frequently used there are actually a lot of borrowed words and it can be pretty useful in the long run.
This is like the second easiest Japanese alphabet to learn because it’s similar to Hiragana in a way. They both have 46 Kana and they’re both incredibly easy to learn. Trust me on that.
There is also combo Hiragana that you MUST learn because they are also very frequently used. For example the word Tokyo can be broken up into 2 sections (To – Kyo) and the Kyo part is a combo hiragana.
4) Kanji
Kanji is by far the hardest part of learning Japanese because you have to learn over 2000 Japanese Kanji characters and there’s really no way of getting out of this one because it’s important.
A single Kanji can have many meanings and the meaning just depends on the Hiragana/Kattagana before and after and how you position the Kanji.
I’m sorry. I just saw that you learned Hiragana and Kanji and I had to tell you that. The Japanese has 4 alphabets, but only 3 main ones which are the characters. There’s also variations.
I’ve already been learning Hiragana for the past 4 days and it’s been easy I’ve learned around 30 so far and by the end of this week I should be on to Katagana.
The basis of the blog was to teach Japanese from the Japanese that I have learned so while it’s teaching people it’s also acting as a log and practice.
I find it very easy to write them down too. I would have to say though that most of the teaching would take place on video and I’ll start out by teaching the bellow:
1) The sounds of thee Japanese language
2) The Romanji alphabet in the Japanese language
3) The Hiragana alphabet in the Japanese language
4) The Katagana alphabet in the Japanese language
There’s a lot of stuff that I know about the language and I think that using Youtube alongside my blog as well as my:
1) Facebook
2) G+
3) Twitter
4) Linkedin
Could really help. I believe that I can provide people with value as well as entertainment and that’s why I chose a field like this.
I know it won’t be easy, but if I do this then it will propel me to reach my goal which is learning Japanese, becoming fluent, studying and teaching there too maybe.
Sorry I dived into teacher mode. I just feel that there’s a market out there for this. Sure there’s lots of video’s about how to learn Japanese, but has any one actually done something to really help these people learn Japanese? I’ve read that Rosetta stone doesn’t work as well as many other products so I think it would be a good opportunity for me.
I’m learning at quite a fast pace and I’ll be focusing on Romanji too so people understand the pronounciation of words. Say you wanted to learn how to say thank you in Japanese, there’s several different words for it:
1) Arigatou
2) Arigatou Gozaimasu
I’ll be teaching stuff like that too.
Does this make sense? I hope I helped you out a little too. 🙂