9 Ingredients to Make Great Content
Creating content isn’t always easy, but it is extremely important to improve your SEO scores as well as to build brand recognition. If you have information on your site that people are looking for they will stay on your page longer and begin to know your name. Creating content that is related to your business is an excellent way to become relevant to your target audience. Here are some tips on creating quality content that your readers will crave.
1. A Clear Goal
First, you must decide what you want to make, will it be a cake, a pie, or maybe even a tart? Then, you start research for creating your recipe with your final product in mind. It wouldn’t make sense for you to start creating your recipe without knowing what you want to create and in the same way it wouldn’t make sense for you to start creating content without knowing what the subject is and where you want to go with it. It is important that you have a goal in mind while creating content such as who you want to create this content for, what the purpose of the content is, and what you want the readers to take away from your content.
2. Knowledge of Who Your Audience is
In order to create content that people are interested in, you must know who you are creating the content for. You must know who is going to be reading your recipe and attempting to make the final product. It can help to ask yourself questions such as what baking skill level do I want to create for, how many people is this going to feed, and how long will this recipe take to make? This can give you insight into the audience you should be targeting. If the recipe requires a high skill level, feeds 100 people, and takes 5 hours to make you probably should not target stay at home moms looking for dessert ideas. If you know who your audience is and keep them in mind, it will be much easier to create content they will enjoy.
3. Useful Information
Once you know who is going to be interacting with your content you will need to decide if what you are writing is something that will be useful to them. If the information you are providing is not something that people are searching for you will not get many views, which is where keyword research comes into play. Once you have determined that you are providing useful information, that people are searching for, you must designate keywords to the content.This is so that Google will index it and your audience will be able to find it. People will search for and read your content if you are providing useful information and use keywords properly.
4. A Strong Title
A strong title is like icing on the cake, it is at the top and is the first thing people see. The title, like icing, brings the viewer in, piques their interest, and makes them want to explore the content (cake). A title must go with the media and quickly, but effectively, explain what the purpose is. Strong titles make the reader curious, are not too long, and should inform the reader of what the content is about. Titles are also an important part of SEO that help Google to know what the content is going to be about. Without a title your post is going to look much less appealing to your audience and without it, they won’t even be able to find your content. The icing gives you an idea of what the cake tastes like and the more effort you put into making sure the icing(title) fits with your cake(content) the more it will benefit your audience.
.5. Facts/Truth
It is important to note that lying in your content, in order to get more views, is never a good idea. This can result in a lack of trust from your audience, and if they do not trust you they will not visit your site or consume your content. This is like telling people that your product does not contain nuts when, in fact, it does. This could be an issue if people do not like nuts, or worse, are allergic. Lying to your audience could hurt them and end up hurting you as well.
6. Originality
Make sure your recipe is different and offers information you cannot find anywhere else. If it is not original what is stopping your customers from going to another place for the information? Creating your own original content will bring readers to your page because it will be something they need that they can’t find anywhere else. It is okay to start out with similar content to someone else’s, but you need to make it your own. If you bring something to the content that only you can, because of your knowledge and experiences, you will attract readers.
7. Images and Video
Images can help you show how something is supposed to look. When you are baking a cake, it can be helpful to see how the end result is supposed to look and follow the instructions with that image in mind.
These help your audience to visualize the content and give them a better understanding of what they’re reading, especially if they are visual learners. Images can help you to explain things to your audience without using as many words. A good example of this would be step by step screenshots. The screenshots would allow you to show your audience exactly how to do something, such as sign up for your newsletter, without having to explain the steps.
8. Proper Spelling and Grammar
Recipes need to be accurate and a typo can throw off the entire recipe. If the recipe calls for a teaspoon(t) of salt but a typo is made, and the recipe says 1T(Tablespoon) of salt it will not turn out that same. Content must be checked and edited to filter out mistakes.
Poor spelling and grammar can be a huge distraction or a cause of confusion for your readers. You do not want to be seen as unprofessional by your readers, especially your first-time readers. You want to earn the respect of your first-time readers and you will probably not be very successful if your post is difficult to read and filled with spelling errors. Double checking and even triple checking your content to make sure that it is accurate is important for your credibility and your reader’s comprehension.
9. Solutions
You’ve given your readers the recipe, shown them how to make it, and now you can offer them solutions to problems they may run into. The end of the content is a great place to offer other goods or services that compliment the content they have just read about.
You should provide the readers with a link to your products that have been used to create the recipe. This way you are promoting your products/services as well as offering your readers solutions, such as the ingredients they would need to create your recipe.