Running a successful online business these days requires a solid blog. If you want to draw in a large number of visitors, even just in a local market, you need the right type of blog content.
Just like shallow people can only be tolerated for a short time before they lose our interest entirely, shallow content won’t cut it and will only take away from the potential value of your blog.
When you provide shallow content it can ruin your reputation, turn visitors away and stall your growth. Content is simply too important to provide anything less than the best quality possible for your visitors.
Here’s what you should know about blog content.
How Content Became King
Originally, as the internet became more than just a fad, the importance of and focus on content exploded and grew through the early 2000s. With many content mills starting to form, such as Demand Studios and eHow, writers could easily make a living by providing average or even low quality content with the right keywords.
It was a game of “how much can you product” and quality didn’t really matter.
People have been using the internet to find information ever since the first sound of dial-up internet was heard. It didn’t take very long before the explosion of content, specifically written content happened.
However, the first content boom brought about quite a bit of very low quality content and it didn’t last forever.
The Transformation of Online Content
After many content mills made a ton of money, Google made huge changes to their algorithms. These changes caused profits to disappear overnight for many blogs, websites and content mills.
The changes had a negative impact, at first, but they ended up causing blogs and websites to provide better, higher quality content.
This was the first time shallow content was actually smacked in the face and penalized. At the time, and still today, Google was in charge. They provide more traffic online than any other website, which was why the changes they made killed many shallow websites and blogs.
When these changes came about, writers, bloggers, website owners and anybody providing content had to make changes. They had to start providing content for the reader instead of just the search engine.
This has caused shallow content to fall off the map and now, if you try to provide shallow content, you won’t be able to rank on Google nearly as well and your readers won’t be interested.
How Shallow Content Destroys Your Blog
While some may say the content online is headed back to a shallow time with infographics and shorter bursts of information, Google won’t rank these types of content very well.
Content has to be high in quality and provide usable information for the reader. It doesn’t matter if the content is written, video, images, infographics or any other type of content–it must provide value.
Of course, images make content better, but the written word still has to be formatted properly and given to the reader in the way they prefer. Research matters and many businesses are smartly moving towards research-driven articles linking to sources and providing in-depth information.
Whether you run a large corporate blog with thousands of daily visitors or a small, local blog with just a few daily visitors, shallow content may be the reason you can’t grow. When you provide only shallow content, you don’t have your readers’ best interest in mind. Not only will readers quickly figure this out, but so will Google and other search engines.
If you want to be successful online with your blog and your business, you need in-depth, high quality content. Shallow content won’t cut it, even if you provide a cool infographic. Longer, well-researched content is the best way to go, if you want to build a blog for the long term and not just a short traffic burst.
