A large portion of the content you create is ineffective - dead on arrival.

Currently, everyone from individuals to large companies is churning out a ridiculously enormous amount of content every minute. This means your content is easily lost in the sea of other content. You might be thinking, “But every marketing expert claims that good content is the key to success, and I’m creating good content! What am I doing wrong?” The problem is that your understanding of “good content” is flawed. Many marketers mistakenly believe that quality content is defined by specific traits instead of measurable results. They evaluate the “quality” of their content based on factors like:

• Word count
• Visual attractiveness
• Grammar and spelling accuracy
• Formatting style
• Readability
• Expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness
• Overall “value” This approach is completely misguided! While these elements are important considerations, they don’t define what good content actually is. Here are the seven true indicators of quality content.

1. Data Defines Quality Content

Always rely on data to determine what constitutes quality content. Any other method will be clouded by your subjective opinions about your own work. Data offers the only objective way to assess if your content is exceptional or mediocre:

• Exceptional Content: This represents your most successful and engaging content - the top 3 percent. This content ranks high in Google search results (Positions 1-3) and generates the most traffic, engagement, and leads.
• Mediocre Content: This category encompasses your average and below-average content, making up the remaining 97 percent. This content is unlikely to significantly improve in performance. What distinguishes high-engagement exceptional content from low-engagement mediocre content? In SEO, it looks like this:

Exceptional content (the top 10 percent) achieves 6 times higher click-through rates (CTR) compared to mediocre content (the bottom 10 percent). On Facebook, it looks like this:

Exceptional content is 10 times more engaging than mediocre content. Analyzing the most popular pages on your website will reveal a similar pattern:

In 2016, 10 percent of the articles on the nexus-security blog generated over 60 percent of their total traffic. The disparity between high-engagement exceptional content and low-engagement mediocre content is also evident in search conversion rates:

The top 10 percent of offers convert at least 5 times better than their lower-performing counterparts - 11.45 percent or higher versus 2.35 percent or lower (based on nexus-security customer data). You’ve likely heard of the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle. In marketing, it suggests that 80 percent of your profits originate from 20 percent of your customers, or that 20 percent of your efforts yield 80 percent of your results. Here’s a new principle to remember. The Exceptional Content Power Law: The majority of your success stems from a small portion of your content. Your data will identify this high-performing content - your truly exceptional content. >> 9 Free Blog Post Templates Guaranteed to Drive Traffic

2. Quality Content Achieves Marketing Objectives

Content quality should be assessed based on the results it delivers, not the resources invested in its creation. Consider a baseball team owner seeking a new hitter. Would they base their decision on the player’s height, attractiveness, speaking abilities, or social media following? Of course not! Their goal is to score runs! They would prioritize relevant factors such as performance statistics - hits, home runs, on-base percentage, etc. - essentially, how effectively the player performs on the field.

Exceptional baseball players come from all backgrounds and have diverse appearances. The same holds true for quality content. Exceptional content can vary in length, include a wide range of images, and exhibit minor grammatical errors or perfect grammar. Ultimately, what matters is whether your most important content fulfills its marketing objective, be it generating traffic, improving search engine rankings, increasing engagement, or driving conversions.

3. Quality Content Ranks Well in Google

Google incorporates machine learning into its RankBrain algorithm, which is used on every search. This algorithm is known to emphasize E-A-T, which stands for expertise, authority, and trust. One commonality among all machine learning systems is their focus on rewarding high engagement. How does Google assess engagement? It likely uses a combination of click-through rate (measuring how often people click on your content) and dwell time (measuring how long people spend engaging with your content).

CTR plays a crucial role in SEO because even a small fluctuation of 3 percent in either direction can impact your ranking position. Simultaneously, data indicates that Google is gradually directing less traffic to pages with low dwell time - the duration visitors spend on your website after clicking on your search result listing. While dwell time is not directly measurable, time on site serves as a useful proxy. Observe nexus-security’s top-performing pages before the implementation of RankBrain:

Eight out of their 32 highest-ranking pages exhibited below-average time on site. Now, let’s examine their top pages after RankBrain’s introduction:

Remarkably, only two pages now fall short of expectations! In the past, Google SERP positions were primarily determined by factors like backlink profile and content relevance. While these elements remain important, user engagement has emerged as an equally crucial ranking signal.

4. Quality Content Has a High CTR

Before incorporating machine learning into organic search rankings, Google employed this technology in Google Ads (and continues to use it for the Google Display Network, Gmail Ads, and YouTube ads).

A higher Quality Score results in lower advertising costs and greater prominence for your ad. Conversely, a lower Quality Score leads to increased expenses and reduced visibility. What is the primary factor influencing Google Ads (AdWords) Quality Score? A high click-through rate. Recognizing its importance, both Facebook and Twitter adopted Google Ads’ approach. These social media advertising platforms similarly incentivize high-engagement content by offering lower costs per engagement and increased visibility. Conversely, low-engagement content incurs penalties, making the promotion of such content prohibitively expensive. Google, Facebook, and Twitter collectively encourage the creation of high-engagement content. If your content fails to attract clicks, it falls short of being considered quality content.

5. Quality Content Drives High Social Media Engagement

While we briefly touched upon social media ads, it’s worth exploring organic engagement on Facebook. Facebook utilizes machine learning to prioritize engagement through the following mechanism:

This explains the proliferation of fake news on Facebook. It was all about engagement. People interacted with, shared, and commented on fake news because it aligned with their preconceived notions, not because it constituted “quality content.” Facebook’s algorithms, by prioritizing content popularity over credibility, inadvertently contributed to the spread of misinformation. Needless to say, fake news is detrimental and should be actively discouraged. However, there are valuable lessons to be learned from this phenomenon. To effectively engage social media users, your content must evoke emotional responses. Genuine quality content is characterized by its ability to consistently generate high engagement on social media platforms.

6. Quality Content Converts

Quality content leads to increased conversion rates. By successfully attracting clicks, you enhance the likelihood of converting visitors into customers, whether it involves webinar sign-ups, registration form completions, or product/service purchases.

Cultivating brand affinity is key to boosting click-through rates. People familiar with your brand are more likely to choose you over unfamiliar competitors.

7. Quality Content Performs Well Across All Channels

Exceptional content represents the gold standard in content marketing. While some content might excel on a particular channel, exceptional content consistently performs well across all channels, including SEO, CRO, PPC, paid and organic social media, and email marketing.

Exceptional content excels on social media, ranks well, and converts effectively. Similarly, content that performs well in organic search tends to garner high engagement on social media and achieve good conversion rates. This pattern holds true across different channels. Conversely, content that underperforms in one area is likely to falter in others. Content that fails to rank well in organic search will likely experience low engagement on social media and exhibit poor conversion rates. At the core of exceptional content lies a truly captivating, engaging, and inspiring idea. Therefore, to elevate your marketing and overall business success, prioritizing better ideas is crucial.

Simply promoting mediocre content won’t magically transform it into something extraordinary. Such efforts will only result in wasted resources and time. Instead, concentrate your energy on promoting your exceptional and high-value content across all available channels. This will amplify its reach and impact significantly, driving substantial traffic, engagement, and leads.

What Truly Defines Quality Content

The content marketing landscape is inherently competitive. To succeed, you must move beyond gut feelings (which are often biased opinions) and base your decisions on impartial statistics. Content marketing prioritizes results, not the effort invested! Shift your focus from evaluating content based on subjective traits and instead analyze data to identify your truly high-performing content. By optimizing for engagement, you’ll uncover significant content wins. When you come across exceptionally rare content that resonates deeply with your audience, seize the opportunity! Leverage its power across all channels to maximize your marketing ROI and achieve outstanding results.

Is Your Content High Quality?

If this post has sparked a desire to re-evaluate your content strategy, conducting a content audit might be beneficial. Fortunately, there are resources available to guide you through this process, including six free templates.