Avoid Creating Forgettable Content – Quality Over Quantity.

This post was inspired by advice given to a potential new client by another company. Their guidance focused on the importance and benefits of blogging and general content creation, emphasizing quantity over quality. The client was advised that regularly creating content was essential for SEO, suggesting that frequent content would signal activity to Google and prompt more regular site crawling. What concerned me most was that content quality wasn't mentioned. The implication was clear: More content equals success. I want to set the record straight.

Content created solely for the sake of having content offers minimal value. It does little for your SEO or audience engagement. The best-case scenario is that it has no effect, but poor content can actively harm audience engagement and even negatively impact rankings.

How do we avoid these pitfalls and ensure our websites and blogs contain high-quality, engaging content? Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Generating Quality Content

Do your research

Research involves more than ensuring accuracy (though that remains very important!). To write valuable content, we need to understand what others are saying, the questions being asked, and identify gaps or needs we can address. Meaningful conversation and engagement require listening before responding. Too often, we rush to share our opinions without truly understanding our audience. Nobody enjoys conversations with someone who only speaks and never listens, yet this is how many approach content marketing. Effective research takes effort but is crucial for creating high-quality, shareable content.

Create content that inspires conversations, meets needs, or answers questions

Of course, there are multiple reasons to create content, but your primary goal should be to engage your audience. Based on thorough research, you should identify content that people want to consume, share, discuss, or that will help them solve specific problems.

Create unique content

Your content should either present completely new ideas or offer existing ideas from a fresh perspective. You can achieve this by providing a unique opinion or emphasizing a different aspect of a familiar topic. By doing this, you add valuable insights to existing conversations.

Add value

Ultimately, one of the most critical questions to ask when creating content is: "Am I adding value?" Will this post genuinely help or interest your audience? Will it answer their questions or solve their problems? If your content offers little or no value, it becomes mere noise, failing to benefit your site, your SEO efforts, or your lead-generation and link-building strategies.

Make a commitment to produce less content overall, focusing instead on high-quality, valuable material your audience genuinely wants to read, engage with, and share. This approach benefits your site and supports your broader marketing goals.