by Michael O'Neill | Sep 8, 2013 | Flow, Writing
I measure content quality by performance metrics over opinion metrics:
- Are people reading it?
- Is it there for them when they need it?
- Are they sharing it?
- Do they tell you they’ve fallen in love with it?
- Do readers spend time reading it?
- Are they clicking on the calls to action?
- Are they subscribing to the RSS feed?
- Are they commenting on it?
- Are they coming back to read more?
Notice that one thing I don’t use to measure quality content is weather or not you like it.
There’s a reason for that.
by Michael O'Neill | Sep 8, 2013 | Flow, SEO
I’ve seen mediocre content underperform because of poor SEO. I’ve even seen poor content peform middling-well because of proper SEO. But one thing I’ve never seen is truly great content fail to perfrom because of inattention to SEO.
SEO is not magic. It’s just one set of many content quality signals search engines consider. If you’re not investing in quality content, it makes little sense to invest in SEO to try to compensate for that.
by Michael O'Neill | Sep 6, 2013 | Advice, Flow
Never sacrifice Useful upon the altar of Brevity.
by Michael O'Neill | Aug 29, 2013 | Agile, Flow
The trouble with being on two teams is that you wind up being on none.
by Michael O'Neill | Aug 28, 2013 | Advice, Flow, Writing
From Amahl Majack’s,
5 Ways to Liven Up Your Boring Business Blog
Screw Sexy, Be Useful
Not all web content needs to be sexy. The key to making boring industry content interesting is education. Creating helpful and useful content to serve the people who are actively looking for answers is often more important than trying to go “viral.” As business bloggers, our role is to be industry educators and to help solve problems.
