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Delivering Good Content On Your Site

From a user perspective, having good content on your website helps keep visitors from hitting the BACK button quickly. From a search engine point of view, good content is one of the surest ways to rank high in search results. That means having good content is good practice no matter what.

If you have a website - and the goals are to attract users and encourage them to stay - then it's a must to deliver quality content.

Choosing Quality over Quantity

Gone are the days when all you needed to get noticed by both search engine and users is to fill up space with unpublished content peppered with targeted keywords. You just can’t get away with this sort of shoddy practice anymore.

If you don't have the time or resources to produce good content on a daily basis, then opt for quality. One great blog entry in a week for instance, trumps ten “just ok” entries anytime.

Longer Isn’t Necessarily Better

Remember that you’re not writing articles for the New York Post, nor are you writing a story where you need to create ambiance. Reading from a monitor is very different from reading a book or magazine. You are competing against online games, Facebook, Youtube, and a hundred other sites for your users’ attention. Plus, reading from a monitor easily tires the eyes.

Four paragraphs of clearly written and concise sentences is the preferred length by most Internet users. Also, it’s a good idea to use sub-headlines and bullet points to make it easier for your readers to skim through your content. Anything longer or more complicated than that and you’d have lost your audience.

Plan and Research Before You Type

This is somewhat connected to the previous point. Writing content can be tricky. Either a writer is struck with the dreaded "writer’s block" and can’t write or the writer has too many ideas and the end result is a gamut of half-thoughts and off-tangents. Planning and researching before you start writing takes care of both these problems.

Also, think of your four paragraphs. If you’re an expert on a subject matter, you probably won’t be able to stop talking about it. Four paragraphs would not be enough. In contrast, if you know nothing about the subject, then filling up four paragraphs would be a daunting task. Researching and planning will enable you to get a good idea of what’s already out there for your chosen niche and what’s lacking.

Frequent Updating of Content

Frequent updating doesn’t mean delivering content every couple of hours. In fact, updating once a day might be too much as it is. You have to let the content you’ve worked hard on producing float around the Web for a while before adding a new update. At the very least you need to update once every few weeks. Once a week or more is fine but make sure you update with quality content, not just filler fluff.

In conclusion, you must always remember that your website is not intended to be viewed solely by search engine crawlers. Keep in mind that it’s being visited by actual people, some of which may always be on a rush. Your aim then when you produce content is to please your visitors by providing something that's clear, concise and won’t take up too much of their time to read through.

Yes, you should also think about your SEO strategy but that should come second. There’s no point in successfully sending millions of people to your website if none of them are satisfied with the content you have there. Always remember - if you offer good content on your website, you’ll naturally rank up because Google loves good, relevant content and will always promote it over everything else.