Since the arrival of Panda, having ‘good’ content is no longer good enough. To rank on Google these days you need to keep regularly producing fresh, exceptional content that answers all your audiences’ queries.
No longer can you shove keywords into an article and hope for the best. There needs to be a goal to your content. A purpose behind its publication that succeeds in keeping your audience’s attention, interest and desire to purchase/link back to your site.
Yet, this is only the first hurdle.
With everyone vying for the same goal, getting one of top 10 positions on Google is becoming more and more elusive – especially as the content arena is becoming a more crowded and competitive place.
How can I make my content stand out?
The first step to creating great content is recognising your limitations. If you can’t produce content on a topic that is 10 times better than the best result that is already out there, then don’t pursue it.
Instead, we suggest pursuing content in areas where you can easily surpass the existing ‘best’ and maintain it.
In other words, you need to be able to create a new standard of writing that others can only aspire to – yet never meet.
Other things to consider:
- Stay topical – to stay ahead in your industry, you need to be the leader in discussions. You need to be one of the first – if not the first – to address an issue and reach out to your audience. If there is something going on within your industry, your audience will be searching for news on it. So be the first to answer their call. Be the one others are trying to beat.
- Stick to what you know – there is no use writing about something you know little about as your audience will soon figure it out. Instead, you need to become an authoritative figure in your field, so the more naturally a topic comes to you, the greater quality of writing you’ll produce.
- Become your audience – by putting yourself in the shoes of your audience and performing your own searches; you can review the top ranking results across Google and Social Media, and ascertain what they are doing differently.
More importantly, you can ask yourself the following:
- How detailed/thorough is the information provided? Where is it lacking? Is it great?
- What questions are being asked and in turn answered through these search results?
- What visuals have they used? (Often one of the easiest ways to raise the quality of your work is incorporating the right visuals).
- What is the quality of the writing? What are their sources? Are they reliable? What information have they missed?
‘What have they missed’ is an important question and the key to making your own content incredible. By analysing the strengths and weaknesses of existing top results, you can use their mistakes to produce content that is 10 times more informative, detailed and empathic to your readers.
Put all these elements together and you have got the foundations, to push ahead of the competitive herd and become a real voice in your industry.
Just remember to be strategic; recognise your own weaknesses and not be afraid to use the mistakes/weaknesses of other articles to produce content that is above and beyond existing top posts.
