One of the main goals of a content marketing strategy is to attract and engage new customers. But a content marketing campaign’s success is largely dependent on the content that you build to accompany it — things like the type of content and the quality of that content have a substantial effect on your ability to pull those new customers.
But how do you determine the quality of a piece of content? Much like anything we do in marketing, the success of our strategies is communicated in the data. One high quality piece of content can have the same (and in most cases, even better) results than a handful of lower-quality pieces of content.
Some of the things to look for when assessing your content and planning for future campaigns are:
1. Is the content helping you achieve your marketing goals?
If you find yourself in a situation where you have more content than you know what to do with, but it isn’t necessarily producing results that help you meet your goals, it may be an indication of the quality. High quality content almost always has a positive effect on your ability to meet your goals!
2. Is the content being received well and engaged with on social media?
High quality content tends to do better on social media than something of a lower quality. The success of that piece of content should also translate across any of the popular social media channels.
3. How is your content ranking on Google?
Google has a very specific algorithm, which we’ve discussed in more detail here. And if we take a look at one of their Webmaster Guidelines, we can glean some important information on how they define quality content:
- Make pages primarily for users, not search engines.
- Don’t deceive your users.
- Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.
You’ll need to heed these suggestions when creating your content, which at the same time ensures that it’s well researched and written to give you the best chance of a high ranking.
4. Does your content have a high click-through rate (CTR)?
It may go without saying that higher quality content almost always has a more consistent CTR. You can even use the data you gather from CTR’s to determine the quality of your content and change it as necessary to help you meet your goals.
There is always room for improvement in any facet of marketing or business, so you shouldn’t be discouraged if you find yourself struggling to achieve any of the above criteria. And if you need some expert insight or guidance, we’re always here to help.