Google has made it very evident how they value in-depth content. As a matter of fact, the average size of a page that is on the first top 20 listings on Google is around 1890 words. Now, this is a whole lot more than the usual ‘run of the mill’ 300 to 500-word articles that are currently being churned out by many content management and marketing companies.
It was on August 6, 2013, that Google announced the inclusion of various in-depth articles on many broad-based search results on common terms such as investment, cheese, chess, football, terrorism, abortion, and censorship. Furthermore, Google’s various ‘Panda updates’ exonerate just how important it is to curate in-depth content for websites.
However, in order to come up with an SEO focused content marketing strategy, it is very important that we understand the core concept of ‘content depth’ in the first place.
What exactly is in-depth content all about?
Basically, the overall depth of any content is measured by the level of how well the piece covers a wide range of subjects which may be focused around a specific topic. These topics can include any number of content items as well as domains as a whole.
Content depth started evolving into a major ranking factor almost a decade back, in fact since 2010. This was when Google’s ‘May Day’ update essentially started penalizing blogs and articles for being way too thin. After this announcement, Google’s algorithms had started ranking websites higher if they incorporated well researched and in-depth blogs. The reason behind the inception of this ranking factor was to help improve user’s overall experience and rank rich content above all. This is the time when better researched and in-depth blogs, eBooks and articles became increasingly more popular, as Google wanted its users to have a whole lot better experience.
Since Google has started ranking in-depth content an increasingly large number of content creators have started generating in-depth content in order to help boost their search engine rankings. It is imperative to understand that mere article length alone is not the sole criterion for determining the contents actual depth. As a matter of fact, successful depth basically requires a veritable host of subjects which have to be incorporated into the content.
The selection criteria are gauged in terms of relevance as well as user interest. A high bounce rate will automatically degrade the ranking of the site. Conversely, user interest will add a boost to its popularity and will increase the traffic directed towards the website. So simply curating lengthy content is not enough to ensure that your website is ranked high on search engine platforms, this applies to Google and Bing as well.
Moreover, here is a list of factors which your content team should take into perspective when curating information for your website. Taking these factors into consideration will help strengthen the chances of your website ranking high on every search engine platform.
EBooks and in-depth content
A well-written e-book can quite easily become a definitive guide on any particular topic. This is due to the fact that eBooks have far more in-depth content than their blog or article counterparts. If the average article that makes it to the top searches of the search engine contains close to 2000 words, then a short eBook can easily manage 30,000 words of solid in-depth content. This can be ideal for websites such as Learn Academy to showcase their coding expertise and offer value to their visitors, but can also easily be applied to any niche.
However, curating EBook content requires a high degree of expertise and knowledge to captivate the reader for a sustained period of time. This exactly why most businesses have started using an eBook Creator to make sure that their content is perfect from every aspect.
In-depth content vs. keywords
As Google continues to steadily update its algorithms, the concept of using keywords as the single most important ranking factor has been abandoned in favour of the ubiquitous content depth approach. This is in fact, an absolute game-changer in today’s highly competitive rankings landscape.
Previously, content marketers often formulated multiple article and blogs around keywords that were the most relevant to their particular industry. However, this particular approach does not work very well today because it does not take into account the overall broadness and scope of the topic. In fact, the continuous use of the same keywords is generally considered to be far too narrow to be able to provide the highly specific content match that the user is interested in.
Furthermore, such content also usually leads to considerably lower click-through rates as well. This is particularly true when too many keywords are stuffed in the same article. If the content is not in-depth enough, the article would be little better than a glorified keyword patchwork.
For the average reader, the inclusion of the keyword is just a simple indicator of initial interest. This is the part where highly in-depth content comes into the picture. Basically, it is designed to meet the user’s wants by offering him or her, the relevant knowledge on a vast variety of subjects that are focused on the same theme or topic.
Indeed, this is precisely why Google has made so many updates to its core algorithms. The purpose is to reward genuine efforts through the provision of a certain depth of knowledge. Conversely, it has also started to punish multiple editorial attempts at keyword optimization without regard for the reader’s wants and interests.
Article depth vs. article size
From a theoretical perspective, it is true that longer articles just might have higher scores, in terms of ranking in the search engine listings. However, if they do not vector in the ‘readability’ factor and have poor content depth, then they will not be able to efficiently get the message across, and thereby they can actually end up being ranked even worse than their shorter piece counterparts.
Conclusion
In the light of the above, we can safely conclude that the era of in-depth content is here to stay and one of the biggest proponents of such content is the eBook. If you really want to start ranking high on search engine platforms, then consider in-depth content as the solution to all of your problems.
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