High-Quality Content Production in All Aspects

Comprehensive principles for producing user-first, search-intent matched content that drives sustained organic growth.

Speakers: Osman Mutlu

Content author

Osman MutluinSEO on Board

05 Apr 2017

Video Transcript

⏱ 9 min read• 1,613 words

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Hey Zeo followers. Today we want to talk about building quality content. We follow both the global scene and Turkey. That comes with the job. And the content examples out there are better than ours. Higher quality, too. So let's talk about how to produce that quality content. But what's the first step before you write anything? It's market analysis, really. How do you do market analysis? First, define a target audience. Then study your competitors. You have to be careful when defining your audience. Who are we creating this content for? That's the key question. If it's for everyday users, write it for them. If it's for industry pros, write it for them instead.

Next up is competitor analysis. Who's already in the space you're writing for? Research those sites thoroughly. Look at the kind of content they publish. Which pieces took off? Which ones got shared the most? Once you know that, you can build your own content template. Next, you'll need to do keyword research before writing. Our teammate Ozan already covered this in another video. He went deep on it. So I won't get into the details. But here's what I can tell you. There are tools for keyword analysis. The most important ones are actually Google's. So what can we do? Run any search on Google. Scroll to the bottom of the page. You'll see related searches.

Most users and content creators miss this part. So take full advantage of those terms. Beyond that, you've got Semrush, Searchmetrics, Ahrefs, and SEO Monitor. Use them for keyword analysis and research. Google updated this recently. Their own tool, Keyword Planner, now shows keyword volumes in broader buckets. Want more detailed data? You'll have to spend a little money. But the other tools can fill that gap. Headline choice is one of the biggest parts of content writing. Why does it matter so much? You can write killer content. But with a weak headline, nobody clicks. And nobody reaches your content. Picture a Google search results page.

Say we wrote a piece and we're ranking on page one. But our headline falls flat. It just doesn't pull people in. Nobody clicks it, so nobody sees the content. So what should you look for in a headline? First, it has to spark curiosity. People love clicking on content that sparks their curiosity. But don't hide all the info in the title. The title still needs your keyword in it. That's how you rank better. Picking a title matters a lot when you write content.

Some people even argue this: spend as much time on the title as the article. Because the title is what makes people click. A good title also affects your CTR. That's your click-through rate. Curiosity-driven titles get more clicks. But don't skip the keyword. Keywords in the title carry real weight for ranking on Google. And it's not just the main title. Subheadings matter too. Write every subheading cleanly. Target keywords in them. That pays off. Let's talk content format for a second. You picked your title. You did the analysis. You checked the competitors. Now you're ready to write.

So what template should you use? The most important thing here is readability. Make it easy to read. Mobile searches have passed desktop searches. We all know that by now. So your content has to read easily on phones too. One way is using bullets. Bullets make content easier to read. They lay the content out in a set pattern. That makes it easier to scan with your eyes. Second is using paragraphs. You should always break content into paragraphs. This makes reading easier too. On mobile, following a paragraph gets hard. For mobile, short and clear paragraphs help a lot. Then there's the list format.

Lately we see this everywhere, here and worldwide. Content gets built as lists. So what does that do? It makes content really easy to consume. That's why users find it appealing. Next up: bold, italic, and underlined text. Bold the most important words in your content. Users will read that part more carefully. It pulls their attention there. Got something really important to stress? Use bold. Quoting something from another source? Put it in italics. Just italicize the text. That grabs attention too. Same goes for key points you want to hammer home. Underline them. Your users get the message better.

The last piece of content formatting is spelling and punctuation. This one matters a lot. I think users really notice it. Too many typos and punctuation errors? That kills your content's credibility. So go over your content again and again. Get those errors down to a minimum. Another thing to watch is your use of images. Why do images matter? Because we're all used to looking at images. They grab our attention way more than text. That's why you need real, good-looking images. Here's the mistake people usually make. Everyone reaches for stock photos. Some stock images show up on so many sites that we recognize them instantly. That drags your content quality down. If you're using images, try natural photos. Shoot them yourself. Draw them yourself. Or have your own designer make them.

That gets you a much higher-quality look with your images. Beyond images, video matters a lot too. Video makes your content easier to consume. Users watch it instead of reading it. It also enriches the page. And it boosts time on site. So the videos you pick matter. One of the most common questions we get is this. Should we host videos on our own site? Or embed them from YouTube? If you can, host and serve the videos on your own servers. That's the better option. But it's not a must. Index the videos on your own site first. Then you can put them on YouTube too. That won't cause any problems.

What matters here is keeping the user happy. Serve the video content correctly, fast, and at good quality. There's another big factor when you create content. It's the links you use inside it. When you write content, always link to other pages on your site. Say we wrote a piece of content. What could it be? Let's say we wrote a travel piece. We went to Rome and we're writing about it. While we talk about Rome, maybe we have content on other Italian cities. We can link to that content from our Rome post.

Search engine bots follow links inside your site. So they'll crawl it better. And users will find the content they're curious about more easily. There's another perk here too. Users browse more pages on the site. They also end up staying longer. That's why we really want you to do internal linking. External linking matters for a different reason. I wrote this post, or I built this content. But here are the sources I based it on. Those are links that add value. That's pretty much how the web works anyway.

The web is made of links. So there's no reason to avoid external linking. What matters here is giving the user the most accurate, most detailed info. Beyond linking, there's another concept: content length. Or content size, if you prefer. Let me talk about that a bit. Content length is actually an important metric. Studies show long content ranks better on Google. Research done abroad makes this crystal clear. So keep your content long, within reason. Long doesn't mean stuffing it with filler. It doesn't mean pointless sentences. The goal is writing something genuinely detailed. Give the user deep knowledge on the topic.

Content freshness. Freshness matters. Say we wrote a piece six months ago. Then something new comes up on that topic. A new development, a new detail. We have to update that content. Users landing on that page need the latest, most accurate info. And they need it fast. Updating content has another perk. Googlebot starts crawling updated pages more often. And not just Googlebot. Every search engine bot does. That's one factor that can win you organic rankings. That's why updating content matters. After content freshness, let's talk about user comments. Why do comments matter? If a user comments, that content stays fresh. A new comment basically adds new text to the page. Search engine bots read that as a content update. And pages with lots of comments usually rank better in search results.

So how do we get users to comment? Your post can carry some emotion. It can spark a debate. It can move people. Or it can be genuinely helpful. Sometimes people comment just to say thanks. So value your user comments. Encourage people to leave them. We covered how to write content in depth. But what comes next? How do we make this sustainable? The key thing here is measuring content performance. So how do we measure it? You can use both Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Google Search Console gives you 90 days of data.

In Search Console you can see where your content ranks. You also see its CTR. And you see which keywords drive traffic. So dig into your data at the URL level in Search Console. Same in Google Analytics. Look at a URL and you see time on page. You also see the bounce rate. Check your content in these measurement tools. Try to find your most valuable pieces. Look at metrics like which content held users longer. Or which content ranked better in Google. Then keep making more content like that.

We tried to walk through how to write better content in detail. More videos are coming. Keep following us. See you next time.

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Osman Mutlu

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