We’ve got our SEO goals down, keywords to target, and website structure ready. All we need now is the content.
Content is the lifeblood of any business who depends on Google to give them traffic. Google is always hungry for great content and they want those to show up on the first page.
Our job is to give them that.
The relationship here is pretty simple: You give Google what they want. They give you what you want.
You can write the best headlines and get the best CTR, add the best looking images and pictures, quote Einstein a thousand times, and make it the ultimate guide but if your content doesn’t tick these three checkboxes, it’s not great.
The ultimate question to great content
When it comes to creating content, the first thing that I always ask myself is this…
Does it solve the reader’s problem?
You can create a 5,000 word article and if it doesn’t solve the reader’s problem, it’s useless.
For example: You’re writing about how to become an accountant. You can write 5,000 words about the career of an accountant but if it doesn’t tell the user the steps to become an accountant, it’s useless.
Rand Fishkin from Moz agrees with this: Great content =/= long form content. In his post, he started off by saying…
“Yes. I’ve read the studies. I know the correlations. Long-form content, on average, earns more engagement, higher rankings, and more shares than their more concise brethren.”
The 2nd question to great content
Question 2: How fast can you solve the reader’s problem with the content?
Imagine this. You’re looking to find a TV but you don’t know how. So you google up “How to choose a TV”.
Would you prefer to read an article that covers…
- Article 1: Description of a TV, history of TV, 6 different TV sets, 4 different TV resolutions, social aspects of TV, and how to choose a TV.
- Article 2: How to choose a TV only.
If you’re like 99% of the people out there, you’ll choose article 2. If you chose article 1 then I can’t help you.
Readers want content that solves their problem and answer their question in the quickest way possible. They don’t want long fluffy content.
I’m not saying don’t create long content. I’m saying remove all the fluff and get straight to the point.
How I did it in OwlGuru.
In this case, the reader’s question is what do accountants do. I wrote 1 summary sentence of the job description of an accountant, and I also added the job satisfaction stat and how meaningful was this job.
But we all know that’s not enough to rank unless we got a super high DA. Hence, the 3rd and final question.
The 3rd question to great content
Question 3: How detailed is your content to the reader’s problem?
I like this quote by American VC, Mark Suster.
“Design for the novice. Configure for the pro.” – Mark Suster
In the content world, it means solving problems for beginners but also going in-depth to solve problems for the pros / the people who went to WikiHow and didn’t find a solution there.
How I did it in OwlGuru.
Going back to the reader’s question of what do accountants do. I already wrote 1 sentence summary of the job description of an accountant. But that’s not enough for me.
I wanted to make our content really great so we added more details about what do accountants do like…
- A day in the life video about the career
- What they do everyday on the job
- The social aspect of the job (e.g: frequency of telephone calls, meeting customers, using emails, working in a team, etc)
- What they do on a weekly, and monthly basis
- Working hours and schedule
All great content have this in common
They trigger an emotion from the readers. It could be:
- “HAHAHA!”
- “Wow… I didn’t know that.”
- “Thank you so much!!!”
- “Woah… this is amazing.”
I will cover the emotions to a great content in the future but in the mean time, to create content it comes down to these 3 questions:
- Does it solve the readers’ problems?
- Does the content solve the readers’ problem in the most effective and efficient way?
- Is the content written to help both beginners and pros alike?
A final note on great content
You can write the best headlines and get the best CTR, add the best looking images and pictures, quote Einstein a thousand times, and make it the ultimate guide but if you don’t solve the readers’ problems, it’s not great.
Other factors to great content
There are other small factors to a great content that thousands of blogs have already covered it in much more detail.