What Is “Good, Unique Content”?
It’s intended to describe the kind of copy site owners should create in order to make both their visitors and search engines happy. But at this point, the definition is a little ambiguous.
So what, exactly, is “good, unique content”? And how can you create it? On this page, you’ll find the answers to both of these questions, and a few tips to help you improve your overall content marketing strategy.
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What is “good, unique content”?
This phrase, touted by both some of the most well-regarded SEOs in the industry, was originally used to describe the opposite of thin content. If you’re unfamiliar with “thin content,” it refers to information on a page that provides little or no added value to visitors, which can result in a penalty from Google.
When Google first introduced this penalty in 2013, it was a big issue for many site owners who used black hat or spammy SEO tactics. And with recent algorithm updates, like the Google helpful content update, there’s even more pressure to create quality content.
As a result, SEO experts began placing more value on content quality than ever before and proclaiming the value of good, unique content.
Unfortunately, this led many site owners to believe that if their content simply wasn’t bad or identical to the content on other sites, they deserved to rank well in search engines. This is not the case. And while the people who coined the term “good, unique content” likely had the right idea when they started using it, it has slowly become basically meaningless.
How can you create strong content?
Instead of trying to decipher the meaning of “good, unique content” and figure out what that means for your brand, the best content marketing strategy is one that is built around your specific audience. Focus on writing articles, creating guides, and designing graphics that will be genuinely interesting and useful to your potential customers, and you’ll be off to a great start.
However, after years of experience in content marketing, we know that can be easier said than done. That’s why we’ve put together the following tips to help you get started:
1. Analyze your existing content
If you already have a significant amount of pages on your site, you can use them as starting points for your content. Log into your Google Analytics account and navigate to the “Acquisition” tab, then select “Organic Search” and set the primary dimension to “Landing Page.”
This will give you a complete list of the pages on your site that get the most traffic from search engines, as well as the bounce rate and average session duration for each. If you notice that a page has a high volume of visitors, but most of them don’t stay long or immediately return to the search engine results, that’s a prime opportunity for improvement.
You already have a surefire topic and starting point—not to mention an established position in search engine rankings—and adding to the existing content is an easy way to decrease the page’s bounce rate and make it more valuable to your site.
2. Do keyword research
Once you’ve improved upon existing high-value pages on your site, it’s time to move on to entirely new topics. Thankfully, this doesn’t mean staring at a blank sheet of paper (or Word document) until a brilliant idea appears.
Instead, you can use a wide variety of online tools to research keywords. This research will allow you to determine the most valuable keywords within your industry, as well as how difficult it will be to rank for them. Keywords with high search volume and low competition are ideal and should be used for your first topics.
3. Listen to your customers
You’ve probably heard this before, but it bears repeating: Your customers are your best source of content ideas. After all, they’re the ones you really want to attract to your site!
Gathering ideas from them doesn’t have to be difficult, either. In fact, it can be as simply as asking your sales and customer service teams what questions they’re most commonly asked. Questions with complex answers can serve as topics for blog posts or long-form articles, and questions with short answers can be used to create an on-site FAQ.
You can also use social media to ask your fans and followers what kind of content they’d like to see from your company. This will not only open you up to an entirely new perspective, but also ensure that you have a built-in audience as soon as the content is ready to be published.
As an added bonus, social media is a great place to find user-generated content. If your customers are willing to share their own photos and opinions about your products or services, this can be a great way to get them involved in the content creation process.
4. Get creative
Although data-backed keywords are a great source of topics at the start, the chances are strong that your competitors are using the same exact ones. So if you want to stand out, don’t be afraid to go out on a limb every once in a while!
If you’ve ever attempted to brainstorm topics for your company’s site, but wrote certain ones off as slightly irrelevant or unlikely to succeed, consider giving them another chance. If you approach them in an interesting way (maybe with unique graphics or humor), you may end up creating something great.
Want to improve your content marketing strategy?
If you want to improve your company’s site content, we’d love to help! Our team will assist you in creating a customized content marketing plan that is designed to attract traffic and tailored to your specific audience.
For more information, don’t hesitate to contact us! One of our Internet marketing strategists will be more than happy to discuss your content marketing challenges today.