What Factors Contribute to Exceptional Content?

It’s understandable that you’re tired of the overused phrase “content is king.”

“Content is king” has become a cliché in the world of web marketing, just like the outdated notion that “SEO is dead.” Another common piece of advice that follows closely is the suggestion to “create great content.” If you’re seeking a surge in Google traffic, highly qualified leads, and record-breaking sales, you might be told to disregard SEO and conversion rate optimization and simply focus on creating great content. But what does that actually entail? What are the defining characteristics of great content, and what exactly does “content” encompass?

Here’s a straightforward definition: “Content” essentially boils down to information – as simple as that! When you create content, you are presenting information on your website. This information might serve various purposes – to educate, to persuade, or to entertain. Great content effectively teaches, persuades, or entertains your audience while simultaneously contributing to the achievement of your business objectives.

To provide more clarity, let’s delve into eight key attributes – all ending in “able” – that your content should strive to embody. If your content aligns with most or all of these qualities, you’re on the right track to content excellence!

1. Discoverability: Making Your Content Easy to Find

Even the most well-crafted content is ineffective if it remains hidden from your target audience (unless you’re aiming for posthumous recognition like Emily Dickinson).

Let’s be real, Emily Dickinson wasn’t exactly an SEO guru. Those who advise neglecting SEO in favor of focusing solely on content quality are misleading you. Effective SEO plays a crucial role in making your content exceptional.

Your content should be easily discoverable through two primary avenues:

Internal Search: Visitors already navigating your website should have no trouble finding your latest and greatest content.
External Search: This primarily refers to search engine visibility. Even those unfamiliar with your website should be able to locate your content through platforms like Google.

Aligning your content with highly relevant keywords is key to enhancing search engine findability. Optimize your content around these keywords. For a comprehensive guide on this process, refer to: How to Rank for a Keyword in 10 Steps.

For visitors already on your site, consider these strategies to enhance content discoverability:

Optimize Your Information Architecture

A well-structured website makes it significantly easier for visitors to find specific pieces of content (and as a bonus, Google appreciates a well-organized site too). Incorporate a site map that provides visitors with a clear overview of your website’s structure. Utilize breadcrumbs or a left-hand navigation menu to visually guide visitors through your site’s hierarchy. Take Amazon’s left-hand navigation as an example:

These design elements not only enhance the visibility of related content but also facilitate seamless navigation between different levels of your website’s content structure.

Think of it like leveling up in a game!

Include a Search Function

This one’s a no-brainer – a search function allows visitors to quickly find specific topics you’ve covered or relocate content they’ve previously read on your site. (In the interest of transparency, the lack of a search box on the nexus-security site is not something I’m thrilled about.)

Showcase your most popular content to ensure its continued success. A sidebar module displaying your top-performing blog posts, like this one on the Moz blog, can effectively achieve this:

This strategy increases your site’s “stickiness,” encouraging visitors to spend more time exploring your content.

Promote Your New Content

Content promotion plays a vital role in maximizing your content’s reach. Whenever you publish new content, promote it prominently on your homepage or other high-traffic pages. Consider sending out email blasts to your subscribers. The more people aware of your content’s existence, the higher the chances of it being read, enjoyed, shared, and acted upon.

Shareable content fulfills two essential criteria:

It’s Highly Engaging: When people come across truly remarkable content, they’re naturally compelled to spread the word, whether it’s through word-of-mouth or sharing it on social media platforms like Facebook.
It’s Easy to Share: Creating content worthy of sharing is the first step; making it effortless to share is equally crucial.

Upworthy excels at driving content shares. Let’s borrow some insights from their expertise, based on a compelling slide deck they shared on maximizing a content’s viral potential. While I recommend reading the entire presentation, here are the key takeaways for creating shareable content:

Begin with Exceptional Content: Would you personally share this content? If you hesitate to even mention your latest blog post to your colleagues, it might be time to revisit the drawing board – it’s simply not good enough.
Invest Time in Effective Framing: This encompasses elements like the headline, share text, featured image – essentially, everything that’s visible on platforms like Facebook. Think of it as a funnel – the more captivating your headline, the higher the chances of people clicking through and reading your content, subsequently increasing the likelihood of them sharing it within their networks, and so on.
Implement User-Friendly Social Sharing Tools: Explore options like hovering share buttons, “Click to Tweet” tweetables, or even a prominent pop-up encouraging readers to share. Within reason, utilize strategies that nudge your audience towards sharing your content.

Having a readily available button significantly increases the chances of me tweeting an article.

No need to scroll endlessly, that share button is impossible to miss. If I’m forced to manually copy and paste the headline and link into a tweet compose box – well, let’s just say your content better be exceptionally mind-blowing to warrant that level of effort.

3. Usability: Ensuring Effortless Content Consumption

Usability is a fundamental principle in design, whether we’re discussing an online tool or something as simple as a fork. Great content must also prioritize usability, meaning it should be effortless for your audience to consume the information you present.

Starting with a well-designed, user-friendly website naturally enhances the usability of any content you add. However, it’s crucial to consider usability at the individual content level as well. This is particularly important if:

Your Content Is an Interactive Tool: Remember, tools and apps are forms of content too! However, if they’re not user-friendly, people won’t use them. Conduct thorough user testing and take feedback seriously. Ensure compatibility across various browsers and devices.
You Have a Desired Call to Action: This could be as simple as encouraging content sharing (as discussed earlier), or it could involve prompting users to provide their email addresses, donate, make a purchase, or any other action. This is where conversion rate optimization comes into play.

Consider the online stopwatch as an example of a tool as content.

I was ready to point out the small size of the tool, but then I discovered the resizing option:

Excellent usability hack! That’s much better. Other aspects to consider from a usability perspective include your website’s mobile responsiveness and loading speed.

Now, let’s shift our focus to traditional articles. How do you enhance their usability? Let’s explore our next “able” word.

4. Readability: Optimizing Text for Easy Consumption

Readability can be considered the equivalent of usability for text. It involves a harmonious blend of effective design and compelling writing.

From a design standpoint, readable content is visually appealing and easy to process. Consider readability factors such as:

Font Size: (We recently increased our blog’s font size based on reader feedback about the difficulty of reading our “great content.”)
Text and Background Color: (Avoid jarring combinations like red on black.)
Column Width: (Excessively wide columns make it challenging for readers to maintain their place when their eyes move back to the left margin.)
Leading: (Leading, the vertical spacing between lines, should be comfortable and not overly tight.)

When it comes to writing for the web, it’s a specialized skill. My list of 50 essential tips for content marketers includes numerous pointers on enhancing readability, but here are a few to get you started:

Lists: While it might seem cliché, people genuinely appreciate lists – they’re inherently easy to digest. Utilize lists as both the overall structure for your article (this one, for instance, comprises a list of eight) and a means to improve readability within your article – notice the abundance of bullet points throughout?
Scannable Chunks: Another important “able” word! Divide your text into smaller, digestible chunks to facilitate scanning for online readers. This includes incorporating bullet points, headings, subheadings, bold text, pull quotes, and other visual cues that capture the reader’s attention.
Clarity and Concision: These two C’s are a copywriter’s best friends. Strive for conciseness at the sentence level – there’s nothing wrong with long-form content as long as every sentence delivers valuable information. However, avoid rambling. To enhance clarity, refrain from writing anything that would sound unnatural if spoken aloud. Write in a conversational tone (while maintaining proper grammar).

5. Memorability: Creating Content That Sticks

Exceptional content transcends fleeting entertainment; it leaves a lasting impression, prompting readers to revisit and recommend it to their peers. To enhance memorability, ensure your content addresses the “So what?” question or presents contrarian viewpoints that challenge conventional wisdom.

Let’s illustrate this concept with examples. Below are a few pieces of exceptional content that have resonated with me due to their captivating, unconventional, or simply masterfully executed nature (keep in mind that my selections are influenced by my perspective as a woman; your mileage may vary).

25 Ways to Wear a Scarf

My first encounter with this video was likely through a Joanna Lord tweet. (Remember, videos are content too!) I instantly emailed it to my mom, and that weekend, my friend Katie and I attempted to recreate some of the styles (with varying degrees of success). This video is captivating – she’s adorable, and the editing style, with its split screens, time-lapses, and slow-motion segments, keeps you hooked:

Consider creating your own video content in the form of helpful how-to or explainer videos.

10 Charts About Sex

This is just one example from the treasure trove of content on OkTrends – OkCupid’s blog. Every post they published was both insightful and unforgettable. I use the past tense with a heavy heart because they haven’t published a new post since this one in April 2011. Nevertheless, their content marketing gems, brimming with charming, witty, and surprisingly intriguing data analysis (yes, data can be sexy!) on their user base, continue to attract traffic. Take this graph, for instance:

To quote their analysis, “the more your parents are paying for your education, the more horny you are.” (Perhaps those Ivy Leaguers, freed from the constraints of juggling jobs and studies, have more imaginative freedom… who knows?)

In Which We Teach You How to Be a Woman in Any Boy’s Club

Molly Lambert’s this article by Molly Lambert from 2011 remains a favorite. It’s a manifesto and rulebook for women navigating male-dominated spaces (SEO being a prime example). Lambert fearlessly addresses a critical issue. This piece is eminently shareable – I’ve personally shared it countless times. Its readability is undeniable – notice the clear structure with scannable sections, impactful subheadings, and visually appealing yet relevant images. Its inclusion on this list speaks volumes about its memorability – it’s both unique (I’ve yet to come across another article quite like it) and impeccably executed (exuding confidence and fearlessness). Moreover, it’s remarkably quotable (more on that in the next section) – here are a few memorable lines:

Megan Fox Syndrome, aka Wendy from Peter Pan. It is the delusion that you can become an official part of the boys’ club if you are its strictest enforcer, its most useful prole.
Some conversations are uncomfortable but also necessary. They are so uncomfortable because they are so necessary.
The only men who are turned off by ambition and success are men that are insecure about their own talents and success or lack thereof.
Whatever you look like, it will be used against you. And so on.

6. Quotability: Crafting Content with Shareable Snippets

The inclusion of memorable soundbites is a hallmark of exceptional web writing. Some writers excel at this, infusing nearly every sentence with wit and keeping it under 140 characters (though this can become tiresome if overdone). Quotable content enhances both memorability and shareability. Notice how these “able” words are starting to intertwine?

Here are some tips to make your content more quotable:

Read Extensively: The most effective way to improve your writing is to immerse yourself in good writing. Absorb the nuances of language and style. Emulate writers you admire until you discover your unique voice. (It’s unlikely you’ll perfectly replicate their style anyway – you’re not an impersonator.) If you primarily write for the web, don’t limit yourself to books and print publications – explore blogs and websites as well.
Prioritize Concision: To reiterate a point made earlier in the readability section, clarity and concision are your allies! If your content lacks tweet-sized sentences, it might be time to step away from the Henry James novel and embrace the period key more frequently.
Embrace Humor: People gravitate towards humorous quotes. If you’re naturally funny, let your wit shine through in your writing. If humor isn’t your forte, explore other avenues – strive for wisdom, brilliance, or poignancy.
Highlight Quotable Moments: When you craft a particularly strong line, emphasize it with bold text or a pull quote. Don’t let your gems get lost in the text.
Avoid Clichés: Your goal is to have readers quoting your original thoughts, not the same tired marketing clichés that have been overused ad nauseam.

7. Actionability: Empowering Readers to Take Action

As a business, one of the primary goals of content creation is to establish yourself as a thought leader and authority in your industry. When you provide valuable assistance to your audience, they appreciate your expertise, trust you more, and are more likely to return to your site (and potentially become customers).

When it comes to informational content (the kind people find through informational search queries), actionability is key. This means readers should walk away thinking, “I can implement this! I’m going to try it right now.”

Actionable content provides clear steps for readers to follow. Here are a couple of examples:

Using Symbols to Get an 89% Lift in Conversions – Instead of simply stating, “Write better ads to improve click-through rates,” which is vague and unhelpful, provide specific, actionable advice. This post highlights data on the impact of symbols (like registered trademark symbols) on CTR. Read, implement, and reap the rewards.
5 Landing Page Headline Formulas You Can Test Today – Similarly, merely advising people to write better headlines for their landing pages is insufficient. What constitutes “better”? How does one achieve that? This Unbounce post offers practical formulas and numerous examples to guide you. Notice how the title itself emphasizes the actionable nature of the content.

8. Reportability: Measuring Content Performance

Remember our earlier discussion about great content supporting business goals? You can’t gauge the effectiveness of your content without ensuring its reportability.

Always establish clear goals before creating any piece of content. You’ll likely have multiple, intertwined objectives. Design your content with reportability in mind to assess its ability to achieve these goals, which might include:

Traffic: This is the easiest metric to track, though it doesn’t reveal much on its own – what truly matters is how you leverage that traffic.
Engagement: We analyze various engagement metrics, including social shares (the handy sidebar provides insights into tweets, likes, and more), comment counts, time on page (our shift to long-form content has boosted our average time on site!), and bounce rate. The goal is to encourage visitors to delve into our content, not just skim and leave.
Conversions: While more complex than tracking traffic, conversion tracking is invaluable for understanding which types of content effectively generate leads and sales, not just pageviews. (For a deeper dive, explore Glenn Gabe’s beginner’s guide to conversion goals in Google Analytics.)

Prioritizing content reportability is crucial for two main reasons:

Non-reportable Content Is Unmeasurable: If you can’t measure it, you can’t determine its effectiveness, and the whole point of this exercise is to create exceptional content! Over time, you’ll develop an intuitive sense of recognizing greatness when you see it.
Great Content Breeds More Great Content: This involves learning from both your successes and failures. Content reporting simplifies the process of replicating triumphs and avoiding future missteps.

These are the eight pillars of exceptional content. I trust you found this (easily findable) guide to be readable, memorable, actionable, and quotable. If so, please feel free to share it!