With the rise of social media and other online resources and platforms, content has become to play a more critical role than before. Many people communicate via electronic means that makes content and its quality dramatically important for business. Just imagine: if you see a text full of grammar mistakes, your first reaction is to stop reading it. Needless to say, you will not buy anything from a shop whose profile is full of typos and misunderstanding.
Thus, the company’s dedication to content quality has developed into a culture. Many companies agree to spend huge amounts of money to make sure that the best copywriters work for them and that their content withstands all criticism. In addition to it, big companies often launch content audit where they check not only grammar and style but also the quality of content ideas and content strategy.
Trustworthiness is a new level of content quality. With a quick rise and penetration of fake news throughout social media, people now tend to put every information they read in question. Some of them conduct content credibility analysis by themselves to check the source of the news. By doing this, they may conclude on content quality of the given resource in general.
However, companies should carry on their content analysis to make sure they supply readers, followers, customers and website visitors with top quality information and maximize their benefit from it. Here are several ways in which business can conduct qualitative content analysis, come to conclusions and quickly improve content if needed.
Content analysis is a perfect tool that helps in determining the quality of the message sent via text, image, visuals, etc. In the era of global penetration of written communication, content analysis is a must. It is applied to books, essays, news as well as to social media posts and website content.
Nowadays, there are many technological devices that help conduct content analysis based on several criteria ( for exampe, combination of two platforms Databox+Google Analytics or On-Page Optimization Tool ). However, despite its loud name, qualitative content analysis is hardly of an analytical nature. It rather serves for data reduction and control. In this article from our Nashville Digital Marketing Agency, we will omit the usual steps of content analysis and focus on its practical value.
First of all, content analysis helps reduce long materials and make them readable. People do not like to read long texts with complex information. Thus, the criterion of readability is critical in content analysis. It helps condense the text to the needed size without losing the main message.
The second criterion is content’s compliance with marketing strategy. Every company has its marketing department whose task is to prepare a viable content strategy, reflecting every aspect of the company’s operation. Content strategy is a direction, while a content plan is a path. The way content plan is achieved and fulfilled also demonstrates the company’s dedication to quality content.
Good qualitative content analysis is usually based on analyzing the impact content has on a reader. In order to do it, you need to select keywords and phrases that actually fell into certain categories that serve specific goals. The frequency and word count of these words and word combinations can actually tell you about the marketing value of the text. These words are the key anchors, which your readers will see and comprehend. This is called coding, and it makes qualitative content analysis similar to SEO analysis.
Content analysis will drive you to certain conclusions that can be helpful in content improvement. Sometimes, these findings require a complete turnaround of the entire content strategy. Moreover, if you compile a content audit report after each of such check-ups, you can come to valuable conclusions regarding the advancement of your content throughout a certain timeline.
There are many requirements to the content your company posts online. Most importantly, it should be written in an appropriate style using a friendly tone. Your audience should trust the opinion expressed in the article. For this, you need to make sure that you use only credible sources and provide links to related articles.
In addition to it, the following criteria can also improve your website content quality:
If you publish something online, whether it is a landing page or a guest post, you should be clear about the person who owns responsibility for the expressed opinion. A reader should see that there is an author or a team of authors behind the article to believe that the information provided in it is proofread and credible.
You should be clear about the purpose of posting every text you prepare. This purpose should be clear from the first lines of the article. If you intend to entertain or educate, state it from the very beginning. Selling or promoting something still can be your real motivation, but the audience looks for something new and interesting. You should present your product knowledge through the information that your visitor can really find useful.
Your website content should rely on other materials provided online. Do not hesitate to include links to other resources or companies. Link building can actually serve for your benefit since you improve your coverage. You offer your visitor an easy way, and by doing this, you improve your own content visibility.
Your website information should be up to date. It is wrong to assume that the content that was once written for you can serve for a decade. Trends change, the industry moves on, and you should continuously think about updating your information. Its currency and relevance are critically important for the quality of your website and its traffic.
For many readers, objectivity of your content is critically important. If they feel even the slightest doubt concerning the content on your website, you can count them out of your potential customers. Thus, make sure all your articles are written prejudice and bias-free.
Accuracy includes the credibility of data and its value. You should not manipulate with fake or suspicious data if you cannot find its original source. Facts are the only thing you can rely on in your content.
However, even following all the criteria described above, you may still underperform if your business does not have a SEO content strategy. The main purpose of your website content – its ultimate goal – is to increase your target audience, improve your retention rates, convert new customers, etc. It is impossible if you fail to make it visible on the Internet.
Your team should be concerned with creating SEO content which should be optimized in the way required by search engines. Each and every piece of content you post online should contain keywords that would make it easy to find. The more relevant keywords it has, the better.
Each text you are going to post should be easy to read. People can read books with a complex writing style, but they will never read anything online that is beyond their threshold of difficulty. Check the readability of your posts and articles to find out why some of them have better statistics.
It goes without saying that copy-pasted posts and articles do not get high positions in search engine results. Your content should be 90–100% unique to rank high and be visible.
As a part of your content strategy for SEO, you should think about visuals, images and other effects that would grab your readers’ attention. They grab attention of your readers and highlight the written part of content. So do not neglect them.
Qualitative content analysis and content improvement are important for business to stay on track with all new trends. Change implementation is critical for staying competitive. As the role of content in marketing continues to grow, content strategy planning has become an important task of each marketing team. If the company fails to provide content that meets the expectations of the target audience, it risks losing its market share. In other words, today, website and social media content quality have become a definitive characteristic of business success.