What Makes Good Content?
When Bill Gates stated, “Content is King,” all the way back in 1996, he was right.
In today’s ever-changing digital landscape, the immortal words of Mr. Gates still ring true as ever, but a new question pops: “What is GOOD content?” You may think the answer is purely subjective, but we’re here to tell you it’s easier than you think to measure the success of your content.
Good (web) content is findable.
We make it a point to remind our clients during our strategy and content strategy phases that stunning content becomes useless content if no one can find it. Good web content should easily be found via external search engines like Google – which means you need to put in the legwork to understand what your users are searching for. This means you’ll need a strong search engine optimization strategy – a good handle on your ranking keywords and how to best leverage them to direct users to pages that are important to your business.
Likewise, good web content is also easily findable on your own website. Is your navigation intuitive? Is content structured well so that your in-site search actually works? These are questions you’ll want solid answers to to make sure your users can find your content.
Good content is relevant.
Speaking of your users: good web content is highly relevant to their needs. You understand what they are looking for and what they want to do next. It also means that each page on your site is relevant to the title – with a single purpose.
Making relevant content requires thorough user research, too. Have you surveyed your site users to understand what they want? Do you understand what facets of your organization motivate them? Have you written content that is tailored to your target audiences, and not just tailored to you?
Good content is persuasive.
And, of course on the flip side – good content is persuasive and motivational. Good content will turn info seekers into supporters, in turn helping to convert on your membership goals and, ultimately, raise your organization money.
In other words: the best content speaks to your users by being relevant to their needs and moves them to action that support your organization. It needs to support your organizational goals while being important to your users, too.
Good content is concise.
If Ernest Hemingway were alive today, he’d be a brilliant web content writer. Prolific as he is concise, the dude packed a wallop in each sentence.
And that’s precisely what good web content does: it attracts the broadest possible audience by being concise and to the point. (Note that the author of this post is doing her best to be concise – how are we doing?).
Use visual cues like headers and bullet points. Keep your line lengths and sentences short. Follow plain language guidelines. And make sure each page of content on your website, has a purpose.
How’s Your Content?
So the million dollar question: how good is your content? Connect with us here at WDG to better understand if your content is findable, relevant, persuasive, and concise. Our expert content strategy team is here to help you!
