Why Quality Is Better Than Quantity With Content Marketing

Top-down view of a person working on a laptop

September 22, 2015

Why Quality Is Better Than Quantity With Content Marketing

5 min read

Content marketing strategy and practices are altered all the time as audiences and search engines change, but some key rules of thumb have stuck. One of those is the fact that the quality of content is always more important than the quantity.

You probably wouldn’t continue to read something that didn’t resonate with, interest, or educate you. As soon as the article or blog loses your attention or understanding, you move on, right? Now, keeping that in mind, switch your perspective to that of the author. The reader isn’t lost because the content fails to meet a certain word count or amount of posts in a series: The quality and engaging or informative nature of the content is what counts.

Lucky for us, search engines such as Google are specifically designed to follow the behavior and fulfill the needs of real people. This means that search engines also care more about quality than quantity or length. It’s never about “more”; it’s about “better.” Think about the viral nature of memes, where a simple phrase or sentence paired with an image makes a massive impact. In the same way, a short blog post that clearly expresses an important point is better than an unnecessarily long and complex one.

So it’s okay if you can’t shell out a 1,000-word blog every day, or even every week. In fact, you shouldn’t. Instead, focus your efforts on writing one or two high-quality blog posts each month. And don’t stop! Companies that blog have a significant leg up in online content marketing success: Hubspot reports 67% more leads per month for companies that blog, 434% more indexed pages, and 97% more indexed links. That’s great for your audience as well as your potential audience and customers.

How do you ensure that your blogs put quality first? Here are a few tips.

Connect to Your Audience

Connecting with your target audience through your content keeps them engaged and coming back for more.

If you try to write to everyone, chances are that you’ll connect with no one. Instead, focus on your ideal customers with relevant, specific, and current content. Consider who your readers are and why they’re reading your content in the first place. What problems are you solving? What are they getting out of your blog?

Be sure to write in a way that’s personable, friendly, and approachable. After all, your readers are real people, so you should sound like a real person, too — not a machine.

[Related: Content Marketing: A Crash Course]

Give Readers What They Want

And give it to them quickly.

The old adage from the days of newspapers rings true today online: “Don’t bury the lede.”

Today’s readers are impatient: With so many avenues for information at their fingertips, the likelihood that they’ll keep their attention focused on your website for more than a few seconds is very low. That is, unless you give them what they came for and it’s better than the other sites they have open in successive browser tabs.

You also have to avoid overwhelming your readers with too much content or distractions. Limit your blog to important information, and leave out everything else. Too many ads and popups will frustrate and drive readers away.

Keep People On Your Site

High bounce rates are killer metrics for business websites (and not in the downhill snowboarding kind of “killer”). Bounce rates measure the number of people who visit a website either through direct referral, organic search, or paid advertising and then leave without visiting another page.

The average bounce rate for websites is about 40%, with 63% of those visitors being first-timers. And one of the most popular styles of modern web design — single-page scrolling themes — reports the highest bounce rates on the web (70 to 90%). Why? Because visitors have nowhere else to go.

These single-page designs have prompted contrasting viewpoints. From a user experience perspective, they present information in a clean, concise manner; but on the other hand, the expectation of that design limits the quantity and quality of information the site can inherently provide.

Traditional, layered web design with detailed, useful content provides plenty of opportunities for further exploration and research without having to visit another site. Plus, these simple, structured websites play nice with big search engines, which use sitemaps to interpret how a site is put together.

Be Consistent

Consistency is key with content marketing: Readers want to know what to expect and when to expect it, not to be surprised by random and irregular blogs.

Nevertheless, only 32% of marketers have a defined content strategy.

Those who have a strategy are 60% more likely to be successful with their content than those who don’t — proof that planning pays off. To ensure your own success, schedule out all of your content topics with a content calendar. This schedule will make it easier to plan ahead, become more creative in your strategy, and track engagement levels.

Sharing your content calendar with other departments allows them to both promote and utilize the resources you create. For example, our SEO department may look for backlinking opportunities for certain blog posts, and our social media department will share each blog across the client’s social feeds for higher visibility.