Written by: Ryan Walsh
Date: 15/07/2024

 

Introduction
Understanding that quality is a subjective term is crucial. It can mean many things and even be assigned to a product or service that is far from quality. This realisation can open up new perspectives and approaches in content marketing.

Effective content marketing can provide valuable information to customers and boost a business’s search engine optimisation.

However, the real magic happens with high-quality content marketing. It can lead to a significant increase in customer engagement and a substantial enhancement of brand reputation, painting a promising picture for your business’s future.
On the flip side, low-quality work can be detrimental to a business’s search engine optimisation, potentially leading to a high bounce rate on the company website. This underscores the importance of not compromising on the quality of your content marketing strategy and being mindful of the potential risks.

So, we thought it would be a good idea to write a comprehensive article explaining what renders a piece of content marketing “high-quality”.

Before we delve into the specifics of high-quality content marketing, it’s essential to grasp the concept of white hat SEO. This understanding is a cornerstone for navigating the digital landscape effectively and ensuring your business’s online success.
We are all short on time, so naturally, we look for shortcuts in life. Whether that’s starting work that bit earlier so we beat the traffic or perhaps just grabbing a microwave meal on the way home from work because we don’t fancy cooking that evening, we don’t hesitate to take shortcuts.

So, those shortcuts are fine, well, maybe not too, maybe microwave meals! However, when it comes to search engine optimisation, there are no shortcuts; your business cannot quickly reach the top of Google’s results unless it wants to pay for

 

Google AdWords.

Yet, with search engine optimisation, there are no shortcuts; your business cannot quickly reach the top of Google’s results unless it wants to pay for Google AdWords.

 

Google Spam Filters

People hate spam e-mails, and Google hates Spam or low-quality SEO. Most businesses, whether you’re a hairdresser or an architect, want to be at the top of Google, as SEO done right can dramatically increase sales.

However, there will always be SEO agencies offering super cheap deals, and guess what? That often means rubbish SEO, low-quality methods, and, sooner or later, a big fat Google penalty.

So, Google has incorporated into its impressive algorithm the ability to detect spam methods of SEO quickly.
Google Panda, Google Penguin, and Google Helpful Content Update are all major algorithm updates that aim to weed out spam and low-quality SEO and reward businesses that follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, offer quality work, and use white hat methods.

 

White hat & good quality SEO take up heaps of time

So, is SEO fast?

No, SEO doesn’t happen overnight; it blooms slowly, taking considerable time and effort if done correctly. This patience and commitment are crucial to achieving long-term success in the digital landscape.

So, let’s explain why good quality SEO takes up so much time yet why it is also worth all that effort:

 

Keyword research

First, you need to understand the keywords for which you want to optimise your company website.

Then, you can evaluate whether we have enough main pages, each describing a leading service or group of products on its page.

Have we ever written green content marketing that our customers will likely find helpful?

Then, you can see keywords for which you haven’t optimised your company website. These are called “content gaps,” keywords for which your business doesn’t appear on Google.

 

Then, you can start to plan a “content calendar.”

So, now that you understand the keywords for which your business is not on the first page of Google or which need more optimisation, you can start to plan a “content calendar.”

This allows you to plan what you will write about and to brainstorm ideas for your work’s titles.

So, for example, let’s say that you’re a plumber:
You might write about:

• How to better protect your pipes in commercial premises during the colder weather
• What to do when your boiler displays a fault code
• What to do if water pressure drops in your home

 

This allows you to plan what you will write about so you don’t cover the same topics twice.

If you repeatedly write about the same thing, we SEO consultants refer to this as creating “over-optimisation” issues.

Over-optimisation issues occur when Google sees that you are mentioning the exact keywords too many times. It can also happen when you add blog posts regularly discussing the same thing. This is why it’s a good idea to vary the advice your business offers and cover a broad range of subjects, all still related to your business’s services or products.

 

Content marketing length

If you haven’t got enough time to write an in-depth article of at least 1,000 words per blog post, we recommend waiting until you do.

The reason is the excellent content marketing, the work which Google’s algorithm has placed on page one of Google, well, commonly today; this work will have a high-quality count. The reason is Google will know that you’ve offered an in-depth answer to a question, which is often what shoppers want.

Don’t get us wrong; this doesn’t mean writing 1,000 blocks of text that may overwhelm the reader.

The text could be split up with drop-down boxes, infographics, and YouTube videos to make the information more interesting; what you want to improve across your company website is engagement.

 

What does engagement mean in terms of improving a company’s SEO?

Improving a website’s engagement is essential in optimising the company’s organic search engine. Here are just some of the metrics which you should be following in your company’s Google Analytics account:

 

Reduce the website bounce rate.

The bounce rate is simply the percentage of visitors to your company website who have landed on a page like a homepage and then decided to leave without clicking on another page. If the bounce rate is high, this is a clear sign that shoppers’ engagement is low.

So, you want shoppers to visit many pages rather than having a high bounce rate.

You want shoppers to spend a long time on your company website and ultimately buy an item or fill in a Contact Us form so a sales representative can call them back. Marketing companies refer to this as a “conversion.”

A conversion is when you convert a shopper into someone who buys from you, requests a newsletter or perhaps a callback.

What’s for sure is regardless of what your business sells, whether you’re a solicitor or a hairdresser, you want to work on reducing your company’s bounce rate.

 

Increase time spent on site.

So, the time shoppers spend on your company website is one of the most transparent SEO metrics that Google’s algorithms can use to monitor engagement. Let’s say the average shopper spends 10 minutes on your website. This is excellent engagement, and it clearly shows to Google’s algorithms that the shopper is interested in the products or services or just the valuable information your business offers.

Good engagement, in terms of shoppers staying on your website for a long time, will, over time, improve your business’s SEO.

However, on the other hand, you have company websites that only keep shoppers on the company website for a few seconds.

This is low engagement, and only being able to keep shoppers for a short time will damage the business’s SEO. When Google’s AI, Google RankBrain, detects that the average shopper is only spending, say, less than 7 seconds on the company website, then, when it comes to the next major algorithm update, it is more likely that the business will move down Google’s ranks because its precise shoppers are not spending long on that company website.

 

Increase the number of pages visited.

So, a shopper interested in the products or services your business sells will likely spend a long time browsing your website, browsing many items or reading about your services.

To recap, this is ideally what you want to happen to improve your business engagement and organic search engine optimisation:

– High “dwell time” or time spent on site (monitor this using Google Analytics)
– A low bounce rate
– High number of pages visited by each shopper

 

Google E-EAT

So, Google released advice on how businesses should write content marketing. In a nutshell, Google wants the work to be high-quality and written by an expert.
So, here’s what Google’s E-EAT update is looking for when it’s trying to work out how good quality each page or blog post on your company website is:

 

Experience

Does the person writing the work, the blog post or the page show that they have real-life experience of what they are talking about? For example, if someone advises on how to fix a burst water pipe after cold weather conditions, Google’s algorithms will know if an expert writes the work.

If the work is written with the help of an expert plumber, then Google’s algorithms will consider it high-quality. If, on the other hand, it is written by a copywriter who clearly hasn’t a clue about plumbing and is just trying to place a few keywords in places like the page title or alt text to try and optimise the page, well, Google will know that this work is low-quality SEO.

 

Expertise

The written work on your company website should demonstrate that your company is an expert regarding the products or services that it offers.

Often, a business doesn’t get the time to write all of the text for the main pages or the blog posts each month. Yet, the company should work closely with their marketing company to ensure that each page shows that the author of the text has demonstrated that they have detailed product knowledge or knowledge about the services the company sells.

 

Authoritativeness

Google E-EAT, the “A” part stands for authoritativeness, and you can improve this by building more quality backlinks to your business. So, for example, let’s say you run a solicitor’s practice. If you gain a lot of quality links, this will improve your company’s organic search engine optimisation and the authoritativeness of the page.

For example, a page with a lot of link equity ranks much higher in Google’s results. So, whether you’re looking for “the best kitchen blenders of 2024” or for “best places for holiday in Devon,” it’s normally the pages with high-quality, white-hat links that rank higher on Google’s results.

This is why various SEO companies often spend a considerable amount of time building links.

 

Trustworthiness

SEO agencies should work to improve the trustworthiness of your website. This could involve earning links from high-quality websites, gaining positive business reviews, and making it clear that the author of the work is an expert.

For example, when an employee at your company writes a blog post, link to their LinkedIn account and also link to their staff page on your website.

On that page, it’s likely to state the person’s qualifications and length of experience, such as whether they are a solicitor, marketing consultant, or architect.

Therefore, Google’s algorithms can see through LinkedIn and the author’s description that the person is an expert on what they are writing about.

 

It takes time

So, a common mistake people make, especially if they have never tried to improve their companies’ SEO before, is to think that one piece of content marketing will be all they need to see their organic SEO improve.

It often takes many pieces of well-written content marketing; each page needs good quality links, plus the onsite SEO must be optimised in a white hat way.

Then, over time, and often it takes many, many months of hard work, you should start to see gradual improvements in terms of where your business is ranked on Google.

 

Use Google Search Console to see where your company ranks

We highly recommend using a free tool called “Google Search Console”. Your web designers should be able to set this up for the company in a few minutes.

Then, you need to wait, often 48 hours, for the information to appear in your business’s Google Search Console account.

Then, you get important information, such as “average position,” which shows, over a specified time frame, whether it be the last seven days, last month, or last year, where your business ranked on Google for a keyword. Then, you can start to make checks to see if your company’s search engine optimisation is improving or not.

For example, if you moved from 18.7 for a keyword six months ago to this week’s average of 7.1 for the same keyword, then you have improved the SEO for that keyword.

This allows SEO consultants and marketing teams to track whether the SEO is working, whether they are improving the SEO for each keyword, and possibly identify areas that may need improvement.

 

Does your business want to improve your SEO?

We currently work with many companies, mostly based in Cardiff. We have helped many companies climb to page one of Google.

This has helped those companies to grow, and we have long-term business relationships with these businesses.

If you would like to partner with us to improve your business’s SEO, do call us.