Category: Content marketing

There’s nothing worse as an editor or content manager than having to review a piece of content that misses the mark, especially when you have a hard deadline coming up quickly.

But what if I told you there was a sure-fire way to avoid bummers like this by just putting in a little bit of extra thought and time at the beginning of your project?

“Taking the time to create a thorough but concise brief is probably the single greatest investment you can make in both your work efficiency and your sanity,” writes Dan Hatch of the Content Marketing Institute.

I couldn’t agree more. Back when I used to manage a corporate content team, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as our briefs became more and more detailed, our content workflow became more streamlined and we saw a lift in web traffic. Writers didn’t have as many questions, editors didn’t have to spend as much time editing, and our content became some of the best content out there in our industry. 

After all, this is what a well-prepared brief can get you:

• It sets the expectations clearly for everyone.
• It signals to the writer that you care about quality.
• It results in better content.
• It can save you HOURS of editing.
• Depending on the scope of your project, it can save you hundreds to thousands on a project.

So today I’m going to share with you the content brief that got us such great results. As a note, the content brief I’m going to be talking about integrates SEO best practices, which makes it perfect for organic content like blog articles and product and service landing pages. While you don’t have to follow it line by line, it serves as a helpful starting point for the development of your own briefs.

What should be included in a content brief?

A good content brief should include the following. While this may look like a lot at first glance, I promise it’s not that much work. Once you get the hang of it, you can have one completed in 20 to 30 minutes. And it’s a thousand percent worth your time to provide clear direction upfront, especially if you’re looking to dominate search rankings and you only have so much budget and time to spend on content development.

Read on to learn more about each item in detail. 

1. Title
2. Client
3. Audience 
4. Deadline
5. Fee
6. Purpose
7. Topic summary
8. Word count range
9. Outline
10. Featured Snippets
11. Primary, secondary, and LSI keywords
12. Competitor examples
13. People Also Ask questions
14. Related searches
15. Links to include
16. Resources
17. Contact and submission info 

1. Title

Start with a working title that summarizes the gist of the article or project. (You can ask your content writer to suggest a few titles or headlines.)

2. Client

Who is it for and what do they do? Include links to information about the brand, their products and services, and the audience they serve.

3. Audience 

Describe the readers of your content, and be sure to include as many audience insights as you can, which will be especially helpful for agency partners or freelancers who are unfamiliar with your industry.

4. Deadline

When is the content due?

5. Fee

This is optional, but you may choose to include the flat fee of the article content directly in the brief.

6. Purpose

If you have a special purpose for the article such as to generate interest in a particular product, exhibit your expertise in a particular area, or drive traffic to a specific landing page, this is the place to say that.

7. Topic summary

A topic summary, which could be as short as just a sentence or two, should tell your content writer the angle you want to take on the topic as well as any messages you want to incorporate.

8. Word count range

According to HubSpot, the ideal word count for SEO ranges anywhere from 2,100 to 2,400. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? I think so too. Personally, I’ve found the best way to determine the word count of your SEO content is to review the top-ranking content for the keyword you’re targeting. Aim for just a bit more than your top rankers — to add just a bit more value. Don’t be surprised if that’s a lot of words. Depending on the industry, you might have to get into the 1500-2000 word range to rank competitively. But usually, I find the sweet spot to be around 900-1100 words.

9. Outline

While your average content writer should be able to sketch out their own outline based on the rest of the details of your content brief, sometimes you want to make sure to touch on specific points or messaging. In a case like that, a simple outline can be helpful for writers.

10. Featured Snippets

According to Semrush, “A featured snippet is a small excerpt of content that appears at the top of an organic Google SERP. It provides a quick resource for users and shows up before the first result for a user’s query — often referred to as ‘Position #0.’”

There are four types of Featured Snippets:

1. Paragraphs
2. Tables
3. Lists
4. Videos

Depending on your search query, there may or may not be Featured Snippets available for you to win. If there are, take a screenshot to show what has grabbed position #0 and try to go after the same spot by providing the same information in the same format, but make sure you take it to the next level in terms of quality — perhaps by including some additional details, for example, or by wording the answer more concisely.

11. Primary, secondary, and LSI keywords

Your keywords will likely come from your SEO agency or in-house team. Be careful not to overwhelm writers with too many keywords or your content will lose its focus in the eyes of Google’s algorithm. 

I like to choose 1 or 2 primary keywords and 3 or 4 secondary keywords.

It’s also a good idea to include in this section how you prefer writers to use these keywords. Here are a couple of best practices:

• Include the primary keyword in the H1, the first sentence or opening paragraph, and at least one of the H2s
• Secondary keywords should make their way into the H2s and H3s and be sprinkled throughout the body copy
• Tertiary aka LSI keywords should be appear in the body copy

What are LSI keywords?  LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, which are terms related to the main keyword that search engines use to understand the content on a page more deeply. (Fun fact: the suggested searches that populate the drop-down menu when you search for a phrase are actually LSI keywords.)  I often call these “tertiary” keywords in content briefs so as not to confuse the writers. Personally, I’ve always been skeptical about overemphasizing LSI keywords. I’m fully confident that if your writer does a thorough job tackling the subject, it’s likely they’ll cover all the major LSI keywords for your primary keyword.  Personally, I like to include them to spark ideas for content. The main thing to keep in mind is the purpose behind them — to give Google’s algorithm more context around your topic so they understand that you’re covering it thoroughly.

12. Competitor examples

Under competitor examples you should include about 5-10 links to competing articles that deal with the same or similar topic. 

This is a particularly juicy section for SEO strategists and writers because it tells you:

• What’s ranking the highest
• The approximate word count you should shoot for

Not only that, it will spark ideas for how to outrank what’s already performing well. 

For example, if one of the competitor examples is titled “8 Tips for Writing a Content Brief,” you know that “5 Tips for Writing a Content Brief” isn’t going to sound as enticing — so you should shoot for at least 7 tips if you can. Or, if all the competitor articles offer “Tips for” or “Best Practices” in their titles, you can pivot slightly and produce a “Complete Guide to Writing an SEO Content Brief.”

As you review the competitor articles, make a quick note of what makes them successful as well as opportunities for higher quality. Or, if you’re pressed for time or you’re working with experienced writers, you could just leave it up to your writers to do that for you. This might include:

• Adding more illustrations
• Including an expert interview or too
• Telling the stories of real people who have slayed your topic
• Adding more words

If you’re pressed for time or working with experienced writers, you could leave it to your writers to analyze these.

13. People Also Ask questions

At the top of the SERP results you’ll often find questions users ask related to your search query. Not only is this information great for inspiring content ideas for your article or web page, but you should actively go after as many of them as you can. Note: You don’t need to use a question-and-answer format to capture these spots — just answer the question in a complete sentence.

14. Related searches

At the bottom of the SERP results you’ll find searches related to the query you entered in Google. This information is great for inspiring ideas on how to add value to your article by addressing search-adjacent topics. 

By including a screenshot of this section, you can inspire the writer to talk about the things that should be on the minds of your readers, resulting in a higher-quality article that answers as many questions as it can on the topic.

This is one of those elements that I leave to the writer’s discretion, although every now and then I might want to make a note under the topic summary to discuss something mentioned under this section.

As you can see under Related Searches, people are looking for a content brief template. So that tells me, if I really want to add some value, I could add a content brief template to my article. 

Oh, hey, what’s this? Looks like somebody did their homework …

Download C-POP’s Killer Content Template Brief

15. Links to include

For SEO purposes and to boost engagement with your site, include a list of internal links to blog content, downloadable goodies, and products and services pages. Ideally, an article 2,000 words in length should have about 3 to 5 internal links.

16. Resources

Include links to your style guide, examples of successful similar content, and any other resources you can think of that will be helpful to writers.

17. Contact and submission info 

To ensure your content workflow stays smooth and streamlined, it’s helpful to include instructions on how to submit the draft and the appropriate contact for writers to reach out to should they have any questions.

Who should write content briefs?

In many organizations content marketing managers and specialists are responsible for writing content briefs. Ideally, they should be an experienced writer or editor, which will help them provide the right kind of details that a writer is looking for in a brief.

Content Brief Tips

Here are a few tips for writing faster, better content briefs:

• Create your own content brief template for each type of article (how-to guide, listicle, thought leadership piece, etc.) you produce 
• Delegate SEO tasks including keyword research, word count recommendations, competitor article research, and collecting screenshots of Featured Snippets and Related Searches to junior associates or interns
• (For you overachievers out there) Include a link to an already created article template in Google Docs for your writers to submit their article, which will help them stick to your format requirements.

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A good content brief serves as the bridge between strategy and content. The more thoughtful your brief is with regard to your brand’s goals and SEO strategies, the easier it is to execute your strategy.

A good content writer, regardless of whether or not you provide a content brief, will take the time to do thoughtful research as they tackle your article or landing page, but even the best writers aren’t mind readers. If you want to make things easier for everyone and ensure your content hits out of the park, it’s all about that brief.

Looking for a partner to help you create hit-it-out-of-the-ballpark content? Contact us today and we’ll be glad to lend a helping hand.

Are you thinking about starting a blog or investing in more content for your already existing blog? Awesome. *Does happy dance.* But pause right there. As promising as blog content is for growing your business, it’s something you don’t want to dive into blind — or you could potentially be wasting your time and resources. And that’s the last thing you need to be doing when you’ve only got so much budget set aside for your content marketing.

Whenever someone tells me they’re ready to do more with their blog, I encourage them to start with developing a strategy. An effective content strategy carefully maps out an approach that will drive the most traffic and build brand awareness and trust with your audiences, strengthening conversion. This ensures every piece of content you put out is intentional and drives results.

But you don’t need to pay a consultant to do it for you — putting together a content strategy is a fairly simple process, and as long as you have some time, it’s something you can do on your own.

Allow me to walk you through the steps I take so you can evaluate your existing strategy — or create a new one from scratch.

Why should you have a content strategy for your blog?

Great question. Let’s take a look at what you get out of a good one.

A blog content strategy tells you:

• Who your target audience is (there may be multiple audiences)
• What they want to read about and what they’re searching for on Google (There’s no use writing about a topic they’re not looking for it in search queries. In content, the answer to the famous metaphysical question, “If a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” is a resounding no.)
• Which topics and keywords make the most sense for your business to go after
• What types of articles to test (interviews with experts, storytelling features, infographics, etc.)
• The requisite quality of your content

A good content strategy is never a final thing but a work in progress continually refined over time as one studies the results of one’s content. It is often filled with hypotheses and tests. I like to revisit mine every six months or so.

And once you have a strategy in place, you’ll wonder how you ever survived without one. So what are you waiting for? Let’s get started!

Step 1: Interview your subject matter experts

This step is particularly important for those of you who are new to your company — but even if you’re not, it’s still a must, as you never know what golden nuggets of info you’ve been missing out on.

Who are subject matter experts? They’re the ones at your company who have a deep understanding of the product or service you’re selling. These may include technical personnel, product development engineers, customer experience managers, and product marketing gurus — you know, the nerds and the founts of knowledge who can tell you everything about your business going back to its founding.

At this step, your goal as the content strategist is to get an understanding of your business, its products, and its audiences. Some of the information you’re after includes:

• The value proposition
• All the product and service offerings
• Business goals (for example, growing a particular segment of the business)
• Major competitors
• Audiences’ paint points
• Buyer personas
• The customer journey 
• The customer experience
• Reviews and testimonials
• Latest market research

Step 2: Interview frontline salespeople

It’s often the case that nobody knows your customers better than your sales staff. I love to chat with them to dig up pain points, barriers, and customer knowledge gaps. Ask salespeople what they find themselves having to educate customers about, or what they wish customers already knew. Make sure you have your pen handy, as you’re probably going to be getting the perfect list of mid-funnel content topics for your blog.

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Step 3: Survey your clients

Now that you have enough information under your belt, you can conduct a proper survey of your clients, which will help you understand the mindset of your potential readers.

If you can manage to send out an email survey, by all means, do so, but nothing beats live conversations with clients, who often need to have their answers coaxed out of them. The goal is to find out what they’re typing into Google and at what stage of their journey. And once you build up a good rapport with them during the conversation, you’ll be surprised at the brilliant content suggestions they’ll throw out at you. You don’t have to limit yourself to past and present clients, but they’re usually the easiest to get in touch with and the most willing to help you.

If you have multiple types of clients, make sure to interview at least a couple from each audience category.

Ask them things like:

• When you first became interested in shopping for [insert your product], what sort of things did you want to know about?
• Did you go online to get this information? Where did you go? What phrases did you search for?
• As you became more interested in our product and wanted to compare options, what questions did you have? Where did you go to answer these questions? What phrases did you search for?
• What types of content do you regularly consume in order to help you with [insert the challenge you’re trying to solve with your product]?
• What are some of the biggest challenges you run into related to [insert your industry/product here]?
• What content have you consumed recently that you thought was very helpful? This could include video, podcasts, print publications, or email newsletters.
• If there was an email newsletter you could receive daily or weekly in your inbox that you would really value, what sort of topics would it include?
• If you were in our position and wanted to put together a blog that helped people like you who [insert challenge they want to solve or goal they want to accomplish], what sort of topics would you include?
• Whose content in our industry do you really admire?

Helpful hint: Especially for you nichey BTB businesses out there, don’t assume your target audience is getting their information off Google because — while it’s rare — they may not be, and we want to make sure a blog is the best way to go for your business.

A Word About Post-Purchase Content

Please note that for the purposes of this article, the main purpose of a blog is to drive potential buyers to your website. 

In a lot of cases it makes sense to use your blog as well for what I call “stay-in-touch” or “goodwill” articles for existing or past customers. This type of content is great for sharing on social media or in company newsletters and will continue to drive traffic to your website as they keep your customers engaged or warm.

It’s helpful to ask the following questions for topic ideas for this type of content. Just note that you may not necessarily see a ton of organic traffic with these topics, so I don’t recommend making this your focus but considering it to be a secondary purpose for your blog. In order to develop content current or past customers want to know about it, ask them:

• After you buy from us, what sort of things would you like to know about that would help you with your business [or insert another category of interest for B2C consumers]? 
• What questions do you have about using our product?

Step 4: Create content audience personas

Now it’s time to gather your info and tabulate it in an easy-to-reference format.

In a table, you’ll answer the following questions:

• What challenges, needs, and questions are your target audiences trying to solve with content?
• What is their favorite type of content to consume?
• What topics are they interested in learning about?

And you’re going to provide this information for each one of these stages because it will be different for each one:

• Upper funnel awareness stage
• Middle funnel consideration stage
• Post-sale or post-experience stay-in-touch stage

You can create something like this for each one of your audiences:

	Upper Funnel	Middle Funnel	Post-Sale/Post-Experience
Who They Are
Challenges/Needs
Questions They Have
Preferred Content
Topics of Interest

Note that the lower-funnel conversion stage is absent here. That’s because this sort of content — sales content — does not belong on your blog. At this point in the funnel, potential buyers will be on your website, eagerly eating up your FAQs, case studies, and white papers; watching your customer testimonial videos; and getting kick-ass close emails from you to nudge them to a close.

Upper Funnel Column
Let’s look at a couple of examples. If you’re a cruise line, you’d provide information on traveling to destinations. If you’re an HR software company, you’d provide helpful information for HR professionals on how to do their job. At this stage you’re only trying to drive traffic from potential buyers. They’re not yet Googling cruise lines or software company names because they haven’t reached that stage of the buyer journey.

Middle Funnel Column
This is where your company’s research will come in handy, as now you know what sets your company apart from others and what questions people really have. 

Pro tip: Save the sales talk for when they’re on your product and services pages. At this stage you don’t want to be writing articles about why your company is the best at solving these challenges — you want to educate so that your readers will walk away thinking you guys really know what you’re talking about and trust you.

Post-Sales/Post-Experience Column

To use our examples again, if you’re an HR software company, stories from real users with practical tips would likely be well-received here. So would other HR-related topics that don’t necessarily have anything to do with your software but would generate goodwill because they address some of the most pressing questions HR professionals have in general. A cruise line could spotlight different destinations or attractions, making sure to include gorgeous inspirational photos, or — because branded is okay here — make announcements about new destinations or experiences.

Pro tip: Save the press releases for a separate news page rather than your blog. Instead, turn company news into highly-engaging storytelling-based content that your audience would find interesting to read, perhaps by interviewing people who have already experienced whatever you’re sharing, plus their top tips. Or share news like Disney does on their blog — like a friend who can’t wait to tell others who might be interested — not like a PR professional pitching a story to a publication.

Step 5: Conduct a competitor content audit

This is where you take a look at what your competitors are doing in the content space. You may think you know who your competitors are, but you’ll be surprised to hear other names come out of your customers during their surveys. And if you use an SEO tool like Semrush, you’ll actually be able to plug in your website and see who your competitors are from an organic content perspective — not always who you’d think.

Step 6: Look at your lowest-hanging fruit 

Most of us don’t have the luxury and time to create all-new fresh content for our blog. That’s why it makes sense to start with content we already have at our disposal, which could be turned into blog articles first for an easy win. Dig up some old e-books, newsletters, web content, etc. Round everything up and make note of the topics they cover for the next step. 

Step 7: Topics & KW research for potential blog ideas

Now it’s time to test your hypotheses and see if there’s an opportunity to generate significant-enough traffic for the topics you think your audience would be most interested in learning about.

You may think you need an SEO-savvy person to do this step for you, but not necessarily. Keyword research tools are more intuitive than you’d think. I use Semrush, but there are other tools like Ubersuggest (quite easy on the pocket book) and Moz which should get the job done just fine.

You’re essentially looking at three things here:

• KW traffic
  • What it is: How many searches a phrase gets every month.
  • What it tells you: Whether or not you should bother with a keyword. If it’s a “long-tail” keyword, meaning a very specific keyword that someone ready to buy or someone perfectly suited to your company would enter, it’s okay if this is a bit on the lower side in terms of traffic. It’s an arbitrary number, but I try not to drop below 70 long-tail keywords. Otherwise, I shoot for at least several hundred. Keywords with traffic in the thousands tend to have high difficulty (lots of competition — see below) and may be too general for a blog topic. 
• KW difficulty
  • What it is: An evaluation of how difficult it is, based on various factors, to rank in Google’s organic search results for a specific term. 
  • What it tells you: Which keywords to prioritize. Aim for medium- and low-difficulty keywords. (To rank for high-difficulty keywords, you’ll need to have a robust backlinking strategy, which we’ll talk about another time.) 
• SERP listings
  • What it is: SERP stands for “search engine results page.” It’s the web page consisting of paid advertising and organic listings that pops up when you enter a query (your keywords) in Google or another search engine. 
  • What it tells you: What’s currently ranking high so you know how to stand out from your competition. Take a look at the quality of your competitors’ content — click on their content and see for yourself how well-written and in-depth it is, how professional their blog layout is, the quality of their visuals, etc.

Step 8: Final organic content strategy recommendations for high-impact blog content

I generally plan out 6 months in advance what I think would be the best topics, keyword groups, and types of content to go after. No need to do all your keyword research up front here — that comes later with content creation. 

I’m going to include examples from a cruise line because at the time of writing this I’ve got pandemic fatigue and have been fantasizing about going on vacation myself:

Upper funnel
Best vacation destinations lists
Geotargeted content: Best attractions, general travel guides, best time to travel to X city, hotels in X city 
How to budget for vacations

Middle funnel
Cruise-specific topics: costs, types of cruises, best cruise length, best cruise activities
Geotargeted content: Destination-specific cruise topics 

Post-sale (for current and past customers)
Branded content: Our tip five most popular cruises for families/couples/newlyweds/spring breakers/etc.; best activities/attractions for kids, families, etc. per destination
Cruise tips: what to pack, what should you wear, how to keep the kids busy 
Customer-centric announcements: spotlights on destinations and experiences

Your content strategy is ready … to change

Whew. You did it! Now it’s time to turn your list of general article categories into specific article topics and get writing. Remember, it takes about three to six months to start seeing results with new SEO tactics. One of my content mantras is EVERYTHING IS A TEST. So schedule some time on your calendar to regroup and carefully analyze your results in six months. 

You may find that a couple of article types or topic categories are clear winners in terms of driving traffic and/or conversion, in which case you’ll want to ramp up production on these. Alternatively, you can stop wasting your resources on any content duds. You should also dig around again online in your space to see what kind of content is now ranking high, which may spark new ideas for your strategy. 

The important thing to remember is that a strategy isn’t written in stone and continues to evolve as search engines algorithms, your competitors, and marketing trends evolve. This is what makes content strategy so much fun — and gratifying — when you start to see results.

Good luck! And remember, if you need a hand with your strategy or content along the way, you can always contact our team and we’d be happy to help.

As much as we wish we could get around it, the fact remains that producing high-quality content is the only way to differentiate your brand and increase your SEO rankings. Just as with the experience you deliver, your content needs to go above and beyond, wildly surpassing your readers’ expectations so that they’re compelled to save and share — becoming ambassadors of your brand and pushing your content to the top of Google.

Fortunately for you subject matter expert rockstars out there, it’s not that hard to create a blog that stands out. “You’ve always had the power, my dear,” says Glinda the Good Witch, and it’s just as true for businesses today as it was for Dorothy. Even though it can require more resources, as long as you have the right content team in place, creating great content is practically something you can do in your sleep because you already have what you need — industry expertise, data about your customers, and a commitment to exceeding customers’ expectations.

But what exactly does “high-quality” mean? While it may seem like a hazy term, in actual practice, there are specific ingredients that will make your content stand out well above the rest. When it comes to SEO content, quality is a two-fold consideration, as you always have two consumers of your content — your audience and search engines. So let’s take a look at quality from the perspective of both of these.

What Makes Blog Content Good — According to Your Readers

No matter what sort of fancy-pants SEO hacks you use, if your content doesn’t resonate with readers, you’re not going to see results. That’s why the most important place to start is with the humans.

1. It follows the Golden Rule of Content.

Turns out the golden rule applies to SEO as well: Do content unto others as you would have them do unto you. Be honest as you ask yourself this question: “Would I read our content myself if I were in the same shoes as my audience?” Would it be so valuable that you’d bookmark your articles and share them with others, or would you hit up your competitors’ websites instead? If you’re not convinced the answer is yes, chances are your customers feel the same way.

2. It positions you as experts in your field and builds credibility and trust. 

Your blog should be selling your expertise, not your product. Address your audience’s true pain points and give it to ‘em straight. Don’t shy away from talking about the hard things people in your industry may be afraid to bring up. Surprise readers by addressing the more technical aspects of the subject at hand — or other details most content creators overlook. The ultimate goal is to make your audience think, “Man, these guys really know what they’re talking about. They’ve been in my shoes.”

3. It addresses the (searchable) pain points of your target audience.

While this ties into number two above, it’s worth bringing this up on its own. Your audience comes to Google to solve certain problems and they search for solutions to these problems with specific phrases. This is where surveying comes in. 

Before you even start to sketch out a content strategy, take one of the most important foundational steps of talking with sales reps and clients to learn what challenges your audience is trying to solve in general, and what they’re trying to solve with content online. Be sure to ask them for examples of phrases they’re entering into Google to find the solutions they’re looking for.

4. It has personality.

Whether you’re in the B2B or B2C space, people like to connect with people. Adding personality to your content not only keeps your audience reading but it also fosters a rapport with them. Put some thought into your brand personality by surveying clients and looking at high-performing content in your industry. 

Even while you may have the requisite nomenclature in more technical fields, you can still write naturally and even conversationally while still being professional. Forget about forcing keywords that don’t sound natural. Add a touch of humor every now and then. Speak from your own experiences using first person if it feels called for. 

5. Save the sales pitch for another time.

It’s the oldest rookie mistake in the book: producing blog content that sells your product or service. You know what I’m talking about: articles where you can’t get through the first paragraph without the writer firmly reminding us that their company is here to help us because they’re superior for the reasons of X, Y, and Z. Well, what do you do when you come across articles like that? I don’t know about you, but most of the time, I’m ready to bounce! (Pun intended.)

People found your blog because they’re looking for helpful information. Your content should educate them, and while it should point them in the direction of products and services that could solve their challenges, you need to strike the right balance. 

Don’t talk about your own products unless you’re creating a helpful comparison guide and keep the tone neutral and informative. Save calls to action for the very last paragraph, or better yet, use a call-to-action box that is separate from the body of the blog. Sell your expertise, not your product, and your audience will be far more likely to stick around your website and convert.

6. It’s user-friendly. 

What do you do when you come across big, honking paragraphs of content? I bet, like most people, you run the other way. Break up sections with engaging photography, add plenty of pictures and other visuals, split up big paragraphs into a series of smaller paragraphs, use bullet points, start paragraphs off with bolded subheads, bold key phrases to make them stand out. 

Creating content that’s inviting to the eye is like laying out a virtual welcome mat. Making your visitors feel more at home on your site makes them more likely to engage — which Google will take note of and reward with higher rankings.

7. It goes “above and beyond.” 

I firmly believe that to stand out in today’s environment, your content needs to be next-level in terms of quality. If you were writing a how-to article on making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it wouldn’t just be a step-by-step recipe. It would take the time to answer some of the most pressing questions we have about making PB&J’s: To toast or not to toast? What’s the difference between jam, jelly, and preserves? Can creamy peanut butter lovers still be friends with chunky advocates? 

Pro tip: When you search your primary keywords, take a look at People Also Ask and Related Searches and see what people are asking about your topic and be sure to address these in your content.

8. It drives your readers to more helpful content.

The reader’s journey isn’t over after just one article. Keep them going by pointing them in the direction of more helpful articles. Add call-out boxes with links to related articles or suggest where to go next in your closing paragraph. When you keep readers engaged, they’ll continue to educate themselves and appreciate the vastness of your expertise, making it that much easier when it’s time for them to convert.

What Makes Blog Content Good — According to Search Engines

8. All the points above are stressed first. 

While understanding Google’s Algorithm is key to ranking high, keep in mind that Google will not value your content if your readers don’t. When it comes down to it, the longer your readers engage with your content, the more Google will reward you. No matter how savvy you are with your keywords and meta data, if you’re not addressing your audience’s most pressing questions with helpful, engaging information, your rankings will likely suffer.

9. There’s a defined strategy behind your topics and keywords.

When it comes to content ideation, there are lots of great ideas out there for articles, BUT are they the best articles for your audience when they’re in the upper and middle funnels? If you’re a cruise line, for instance, while your readers will want to know what to pack for their cruise, by the time they’re asking that question, it’s likely they’ve already booked their cruise. 

Take a step back and ask yourself what your readers will be searching for in the very beginning stages of their planning. In the case of cruise lovers, they’ll probably be searching out content about destinations they want to visit. This would be great upper funnel content. And the more strategic you are in the destinations you choose, taking business goals and keyword traffic into consideration, the better. 

After your hypothetical potential cruise customers decide on their destination and they’re in the consideration phase of their journey, they’ll have other questions next — for example, “What’s the best length of time for a cruise?” or “What’s the average cost of a cruise?” Create helpful content for this middle phase of their journey and be sure to include links to your quote widget (without being obnoxious about it), and you’ve got yourself readers who are ready for conversion. 

10. It isn’t stuffed with keywords.

And so we come back to the perennial theme: write for humans, not for search engines. Google’s algorithm is more nuanced than ever when it comes to semantics. Include your primary keyword, or some variation of it, in your headline, subheads, and opening paragraphs. Make sure your secondary keywords show up in your H2 and H3 headings every now and again. Use related phrases — SEOs call these LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords — where you can to switch things up. Focus on answering the People Also Ask questions that pop when you search for your keywords and generally just provide helpful information about your topic, and you’ll be golden.

11. It gets more clicks than your competitor’s content.

Before you sit down to write your brief for your article, do some searches on your own for the primary and secondary keywords and make note of what’s ranking at the top. 

If you’re writing an article on how to organize your widget collection and the number-one article is “10 Great Tips to Help You Organize Your Widgets,” your article should have more than 10 tips — and they should be better than great: “14 Amazing Tips for Organizing Your Drawers.” If all your competitors for the keyword are offering tons of tips, but you don’t see any definitive guides, turn your article into the “The Complete Guide to Organizing Your Widgets in 10 Easy Steps.” If the top-rankers are publishing 1000-word articles, offer 1500 words of carefully researched wisdom. You get the picture. If you want to outrank your competitors, you need to offer more value. 

12. It answers users’ specific questions in complete sentences.

As you create your briefs for your writers, make sure to review the People Also Ask and related searches for your primary and secondary keywords. You don’t need to write out answers in a Q&A format to win these spots — which might seem a little weird to readers — as long as you use complete sentences to answer these questions.

13. It links thoughtfully and safely to reputable content.

There should be no more than 2 to 4 links to your product/service pages — and make sure the pages you’re sending your readers to are the most relevant for those reading the article. Link to other helpful articles on your blog as well. And if you’re referencing studies, link to primary sources only and try to make sure the data isn’t more than a couple years old.

If you’re going to invest time and money into creating organic content, you want to make sure it’s going to pay off. The good news is it’s pretty simple — all you have to do is make sure it’s great.

Looking for a partner to help you make great content? Contact our team to get started today.