How to make good online content? This is the question Anatolii Ulitovskyi asked when he interviewed me on August 19, 2022. His podcast UNmiss is about SEO and marketing, and has hosted the likes of Neil Patel, Rand Fishkin, and Craig Campbell.
During the interview, I talked about the best practices for creating good online content that can get organic traffic from Google and offer a good and satisfying user experience. I started with practical examples and case histories derived from my experience at large national publishers and companies with good stories to tell.
You can find the video interview on Anatolii Ulitovskyi’s website and on UNmiss’ Youtube channel. You can also listen to it in podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts , and Apple Podcasts.
Journalists and copywriters
With Anatolii we discussed a recurring theme among those who have to organize a content plan: who is better to write content, copywriters or journalists? Having worked with both categories and having been both a journalist and an SEO editor myself, I tried to analyze pros and cons of both.
An SEO copywriter pays close attention to keywords and text structure. His articles will be super optimized for Google and, as a result, pleasing to readers, but poor in first-hand experience. In fact, the SEO copywriter often works from desk and is not always a specialist in the subject topic.
The journalist , on the other hand, writes more freely: even if he follows SEO guidelines, he starts from newsworthiness and instinct, rather than keyword research. The added value is the direct experience of the professional and his in-depth knowledge of the sector, an aspect that also affects authority parameters. This makes content truly unique and valuable.
Interests of the public
We have dwelt a lot on the topic content quality, which must be created for the audience rather than Google. We can use several tools, including free ones, that allow us to explore what our readers’ interests and questions are.
One is Google Analytics, used by everyone to monitor traffic, but with very useful and still little-known functions. In fact, we can analyze in detail how our audience is composed and what their interests are, in order to make our content closer to their needs.
Content Translations and Localizations
If we have to write for our audience, we also have to pay attention to language and translations. This does not mean limiting yourself to Italian for Italy and English for abroad. English, for example, is different in the UK and the US. In Italy, there are many dialects and traditions that affect the way people from different regions and cities speak and think. In other countries, some products and services are used more than others (for example, in Russia Yandex is the search engine, not Google).
For this reason, we don’t talk about translation but localization. Our quality content must be aimed at the audience, meeting their language and knowledge.
Frequency of new content and re-editing of old ones
In the end, Anatolii asked me a very frequent question among those who work in publishing for large and content-rich online magazines. How much new content should you write and when is it better to re-edit old content? The answer is the most common one among SEO experts: it depends.
The frequency of publishing new content is determined by the type of publication, the resources, and most importantly the initial strategy. The important thing is not to reduce the quality.
Re-editing old content is useful for updating information that may have become outdated over time and thus giving new life to articles that are already indexed. To make a good re-editing, it is not enough to update the information, but it is important to revise the structure of the article based on a new keyword research.
