Why good content is more important than ever

Everything in life needs maintenance, from houses to cars to your own personal health. This correlates to marketing as well, where most, if not all, leading brands are investing huge amounts of capital into their online campaigns. The digital landscape changes regularly, where search engine rankings are seen to be one of the most pivotal ways in which to create a meaningful dialogue between the brand and consumers. It's not as simple as paying for enough ad space on Google or Facebook or boosting a particular post. The shape-shifting digital arena has given marketing experts an invigoratingly exciting task, where an all-around package is synonymous with success.

One of the branches on the SEO marketing tree is content, and companies are slowly but surely seeing the benefit of hiring writers who can produce informative, engaging and well-researched articles and advice pieces that consumers want to read. Internet marketing isn’t an exact science but people are starting to see that this method of crafting good readable copy is producing results.

"The more often you update your content, the more often your site is crawled, increasing your opportunities to rank. While Google has yet to come right out and declare that fresh content will springboard you into first page results, there’s plenty of evidence to believe that’s the case". -Tyler Thursby (www.searchenginejournal.com)

Google can impose penalties for bogus link stuffed articles. In some drastic cases, they’ve even wiped a website clear off their search engine if found guilty of misconduct in terms of poorly written posts with an overbearing amount of keywords or links. This is why quality content is more important than ever before.

An example of great copy spearheading marketing results is when Julia McCoy, founded the content creation agency Express Writers. The company has rapidly grown since their inception in 2011 from an idea to a leading business that now boasts over 75 staff members who have successfully finished over 14,500 content projects. They have a client roster which is nearing the 5,000 mark, and enabled a UK based marketing company to double their monthly visitors from 25 000 to 50 000 and in return increased various revenue streams through competent SEO practice.

According to an article published off business.com, the real estate industry is leading the way in online content creation which is proving to be highly beneficial within all areas of providing quality information to consumers.

“Being an industry leader means having visibility across all digital channels and social spaces. Nowhere is this better understood than the real estate industry, a surprising new force in content marketing. Real estate agents aren’t just dabbling in content marketing, they’re dominating it with best practices that are relevant to all industries”. - Brian Hughes (2017).

This is proof that the consumer is still looking for quality content that is useful and relevant. Preferring this over flashy clickbait, keyword and link stuffing and generally poorly researched material. If you’re not going for quality and are looking for quick ways of achieving results, you will surely be left behind.

According to an article published off searchengineland.com, one of the penalties that Google can impose is for copy being lesser in quality meaning information is too “thin” and considered irrelevant.

“Google rolled out its “Panda” update in February 2011. Panda targets what is described as “thin” or “shallow” content or content that is lacking in substance. This domain-level penalty targets sites with a predominant amount of so-so content and essentially treats it similarly to the way it treats overt spam techniques”. - searchengineland.com.

The same article also made mention of Google taking action against their own brand where they banned their Japanese branch for 11 months when they were found guilty of buying links. This is a clear example of how no tricks or shortcuts will garner successful search engine results.

Poorly executed marketing tactics will not be exempt from the all-seeing eye of Google, even if its Google itself implementing these cheap tricks. Humans still desire credible and trustworthy, regularly updated content and that is why the role of a well-trained copywriter or journalist is still the best practice when it comes to producing copy that is going to produce results.