I can remember, not too long ago, being asked to write content on a huge range of themes from surgical supplies to stairlifts, from gemmology to car hire and being constantly shocked, when reviewing existing material online, at the ridiculously poor quality that was out there. Stuffed full of keywords to ‘fool’ the search engines and written without any real attention to the human audience, it seemed that the trick was to get your page in front of a reader and they would be in no doubt that your product or service was perfect for their needs and immediately make a buying decision.

There even were hundreds of courses and mountains of online advice from ‘experts’ exposing this dark art, in the name of search engine marketing and on site SEO, or claiming to be able to get you ranked at the top of page one on Google by providing you with pages of drivel and charging you fortunes for the privilege.

Of course, since Google launched Panda and updated its algorithms, it isn’t so easy to trick the search engine with machine like, keyword loaded text and I truly believe what works now is exactly the same as what worked for any written content before the bots invaded the internet – it has to be entertaining, informative and add some value to the readers world.

What’s the trick to creating great content? Frankly there isn’t one. From my perspective it is really down to quite a lot of hard work starting when I was very young. First I learned to read great content – I consumed books by the truck load (there was no internet then!) and had a really broad range of favourite subjects. OK, then I went through the education system and learned to write and most importantly to research. Then I had to work for a living and spent 20 years in sales, marketing and business development – writing contracts and proposals and standing in front of clients and pitching. This wasn’t for educational purposes, I might add – my bonuses were on the line!

So much content is written without a detailed knowledge of the subject matter and that becomes blatantly obvious to any reader worth their salt that no real research has been done. And by research I don’t just mean Wikipedia – I mean get your knees dirty. Sit next to the poor salesman who has to pitch a product everyday and understands features/ benefits/ SWOT/ handling objections/closing arguments and learn what works and what doesn’t. If you don’t work this hard at research then how do you expect your content to convince someone to enquire or even buy your product or service.

My final observation is quite straightforward really – when I have produced content that doesn’t make the grade it goes in the bin. Be very wary of publishing content just to keep the volumes up – crappy content will sit forever next to any good work you have done and that my friend can never be a good thing!

More articles you might like
  • Congratulations to BWFC, promoted in season 16-17

    Bolton Wanderers will play Sky Bet Championship football next season after easing to a convincing 3-0 victory over Peterborough United on Sunday lunchtime and securing second place in the process. Our infographic gives a brief overview of the stats for season 2016-2018. Congratulations to all the staff, team and fans at BWFC Twitter LinkedIn Google+  Read More

  • Are You Ready to Blaze an eCommerce Trail with Magento 2.0?

    With over a quarter of a million online shops on the Magento platform it is fair to say that the market has grabbed the functionality and flexibility of Magento 1.x with a great deal of enthusiasm and in many cases worked around any functional constraints ‘without concern’ (albeit with some fancy API and developer budgetary  Read More

  • A brief history and meaning of Lorem Ipsum

    I wonder how many of you, with time on your hands, ever tried to cast you minds back to the good old days of school and tried your hardest to translate the most common text in the history of web and graphic design. You may have struggled with the conjugation of the verbs, the nature  Read More

Whatever your
next project . . .
we’d love to help
‘make it a success’ . . . . get in touch now

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This

Share this with your friends!

Choose you favourite social network below