Quality content is increasingly important to online success. As Internet users become more and more savvy, they are quick to judge and even quicker to click away from websites that don’t address their needs and wants. Web pages full of links and ad, and devoid of information, not only turn away visitors, but popular search engines are now using sophisticated programs to week out such sites.
Good content helps your site get to the top of Internet searches and it’s important to help make you money once people get to your website. Visitors figure if your website isn’t high quality, neither is anything they can find there. Quality content helps them stick around longer and helps builds trust in the quality of your site and products and services.
Quality content is also important for getting links to your site. You can submit your content to article archives and when other webmasters use your content it includes a link to your site. This raises your search engine rankings. Quality content also gets people talking about you, whether it’s on blogs and on social media.
So, what is good content? Good content should be written specifically for your target audience. If your customers are newcomers to the Internet, you don’t want to use technical jargon that they won’t understand. Similarly, if you are marketing to seasoned businessmen, you want to use more specific terms and ideas so they view you as a reliable source of information.
It may seem obvious, but good content should be well written. In an effort to improve search engine ranking you may be tempted to add many keywords or use other techniques to improve ranking, but if your content isn’t readable, people aren’t going to stick around your website very long. If you can’t keep your vistors’ interest, you’re probably not going to make much money. Plus, you’re probably not going to be able to get anyone else to post your content and link back to you.
While it’s fine to use some free reprint articles, it helps if a good deal of your content is original. There are hundreds of services out there that will give you great content to post on your website for free, as long as you don’t change it. This is great for them because it generally contains a link back to their site and boosts their search engine rankings. It helps you out because it gives you content; however, if the content is all over the Internet, it’s not going to do you much good in getting yourself high on the search engine lists.
If you aren’t confident in your writing ability, practice will help you improve. An alternative is to use private label rights content which you can rewrite, or find ghostwriters to help you. It may take you a while to learn to write or to find quality writers, but after you do you will quickly see the benefits.
Look at your website from the eyes of your customers and see if your content will attract and hold their interest. The better your content the more success you’ll find.
Resources and related articles:
Should You Write Your Own Copy?
Content Marketing Explained
Private Label Rights Articles
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July 10th, 2009 at 9:13 AM
You’re preaching to the choir here. I have always took the time to create unique self written content, I wouldn’t even outsource the work.
July 10th, 2009 at 1:13 PM
It’s funny that you posted that today. I just read an article on Copyblogger called “Why Preaching to the Choir is a Good Thing.” So I guess I did good.
The point of the article is that instead of trying to convince people they want what you’re selling, sell to people who want what you’re selling. It’s a great read. Check it out at
http://www.copyblogger.com/preaching-to-the-choir/
But back to your real point… writing unique content yourself. I also write a lot of my own content, but since I’m not the most skilled writer, I often struggle with coming up with ideas and/or expressing them in a readable manner. So I sprinkle in some free content, but my favorite source for non-original articles is PLR. I think it’s an excellent compromise because I can rewrite it to my style and to make it somewhat unique.
July 12th, 2009 at 1:50 AM
Yes, quality content is required but for us non-English speakers, it is quite difficult but I did try and and manage to add some content of my own.
Costa Rica HQ
July 15th, 2009 at 9:29 AM
I have a couple ideas of how you can work around the challenge of being a non-English speaker.
My first thought was that there must be a market for your goods or services whose native language is the same as yours. Could you make a living marketing to them?
But for articles in English, have you considered outsourcing? If you spend a great deal of time writing, outsourcing would free you up to spend that time on other activities that would increase your income.
April 26th, 2010 at 5:48 AM
This is really true, I just want to add, it must be unique good content and must be related to your website topic/niche. Original content is very important in internet marketing and partnered with quality backlinks, you will dominate google search engine result page for your keywords