It’s one of the most important aspects of publishing, yet it’s practically ignored. With the attention span and patience growing shorter, it’s more important than ever to pay special attention to the focus of your blog. If you’re not sure what the focus is, you have some work to do. If you do know the focus, look at your categories … if they don’t reflect that focus you have in mind, you have work to do.

Ultimately, I think we all have work to do.

We need to focus in on what we’re talking about.

When I work through the blog submissions during FeedbackFriday, I see a ton of bloggers writing about stuff that seems to interest them at the moment. This is certainly okay when talking about personal blogs, but when you’re blogging for a specific community of people you need to create a strong focus on your topic. If you don’t, you risk missing out on subscribers because they can’t figure out whether your blog is about collector baseball cards or fast food.

One of the best examples of this in action is over at the shopify blog, lead by Mark Hayes. The blog features five categories, all of wh

But what is it?

When Google and other search engines speak of quality content, what exactly is it that they are referring to? Word choice? Keywords? Tone? The answer is all of these things and none of them—because when it comes to content quality, it’s less about the writing and more about the source.

The Legitimacy of the Site Matters

The main thing search engines try to determine about webpages is usefulness: they want to figure out what pages will most satisfy what users are searching for when they type in a given query. And one of the best ways they determine a page’s usefulness is by looking at the entire site it comes from. If a site appears trustworthy and reliable to Google, it’s considered more likely to produce useful pages.

Questions Google Asks

For Google, evaluating websites is about more than traffic or keywords—it’s about a series of factors that all combine to create rankings. To assess the quality of a webpage, the Google Webmaster Central Blog says these are some of the questions that come into play about the source:

• Does this site have duplicate articles on the same or similar topics with just slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Is this site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

Content Affects Content

No webpage is evaluated in isolation. In determining the value of a site, search engines consider the website source as a whole, meaning very short and/or unhelpful pages can bring down the rankings of longer, more in-depth ones.  Likewise, more useful content is better than less—sites with more content often have higher rank for their individual pages.

How to Improve Content Quality

Even before you hire a copywriter, there are things you can do to improve your content quality, simply by improving the quality of your site. Consider these practical steps:

• Remove weak pages or merge them with others: Since lower-quality pages will affect the overall valuations of all content on your site, you need to do something about them. Go through your content and locate pages with obsolete content, generic information or outdated writing—then, either delete them or combine them with other pages to increase their usefulness.
• Redirect links: When your delete or combine pages, make sure you appropriately edit old URLs to go to the new links. If the page has been moved, edit links to direct there; if it’s been deleted, edit them to point to related pages or content.
• Write useful content: Simply put, according to Google, quality content is useful content. End of story. What this means is that all the content on your website should serve a purpose—for real people—and meet some kind of need. If you want to rank high for the keywords “tee times for golf,“ for example, then your webpage has to provide what users who type in those terms are looking for: tee times for golf courses. If you don’t, Google will find better pages that do.
• Write longer (but not fluffy) content: Igor Ovsyannykov at Inspiration Feed recommends writing long content rather than short—which means “800 to 1,200 words per blog post.” In the name of writing long posts, however, don’t fill them with empty content; that would only work against the goal of making it useful.

What do you think? Have you considered how your website affects the value of your content? Could you implement changes to your website that would improve its overall quality and thus improve future content?

From conferences to seminars, marketers are utilizing social network Twitter to promote all kinds of events. People are also using the platform to find such gatherings, and hashtags are the tool many of them rely on. When someone creates a hashtag, their goal is to create a viral sensation that generates hype and attention for their topic through word of mouth marketing. When it works, using those topics for content ideas becomes a powerful way to capitalize on all the buzz.

Hashtags are extremely popular, but if you talk to a few Twitter users, you will find that they are also a mixed bag of sorts. Some absolutely love them, others find them annoying. The fact of the matter is that they can be an important weapon in your content marketing strategy – if you use them correctly.

Finding the Right Hashtags

Following Twitter hashtags is a savvy way to piggyback on the success of the conferences and seminars taking place in your industry, and turn them into valuable content. Keep in mind, however, that finding the right ones can be a little tricky. Not all hashtags strike gold, so here are some tools that can help you identify those that are worthy to the cause:

Twubs

What we have here is a site that allows active Twitter users to take trending hashtags and build communities around them. Twubs groups them in categories ranging from conferences and movies to books and politics. The site has a nice social element to it, so aside from content ideas, it could also help you make some good connections. Twubs is definitely one of the better hashtag directories out there.

Trendsmap

If you’re a fan of interactive maps, you’ll probably find the Trendsmap useful in your quest. Trendsmap has some pretty slick sophistication behind it as it gives you the ability to find trending hashtags and topics around the world – all in real-time. This tool is actually perfect for tracking down events related to the local area because it allows you to easily find trends by location. Definitely a keeper for the hashtag hunter.

Hashtags.org

This is perhaps the most well known Twitter hashtag directory. It also one of the best. Hashtags.org serves up a user-friendly interface that makes searching for the latest trends a breeze. What we like about this particular site is how it drills down into the performance of the topic at hand. For example, if you’re searching for “#nytechconference”, you can find out the actual times throughout the day, and days during the week that particular hashtag was at its peak popularity. Another valuable tool to have in your arsenal, for sure.

Harnessing the power of hashtags can give your content the type of flair audience members just can’t resist. It can also give you access to a much larger audience. Find the right ones, and you’ll be in good shape with your content marketing program.

Image by Cassidy at OtherThings