My checklist for outstanding content
My checklist for great content
Most content never gets a single share
From: BuzzSumo Traffic Report 2018
50% of traffic comes from Google
From: Parse.ly data
Most pages on the web get 0 links and 0 traffic
From: Ahrefs study from 2018
Outstanding content is the type of content that gets lots of links and traffic. You know, the 10x content, great content type of stuff.
It’s important because only outstanding content is seen, heard, linked to, and receives traffic.
However, outstanding content is really hard to create. That's why it's outstanding! To increase my chances of creating really high-quality stuff, I use a checklist. This checklist is now yours, either as Google Doc or plain text version (below). I continuously update it, so make sure to stop by from time to time!
Get the checklist
Generic content
Covers:
- The most relevant questions
- Tool: alsoasked.com
- Relevant entities
- Tool: Google NLP API, Clearscope, Marketmuse, Ryte, or Searchmetrics
- Keyword/topic in title
- Unique images/visuals/graphs
- Tools: Gliffy, Chartblocks, Flourish, Canva
- An audio version of the article
- Tool: Descript
- At least one video
- Tool: Lumen5, Promo, Kapwing, Biteable
- Unique data
- US data, Dataset search, Google Scholar, Kaggle, Census,
- Table of contents
- Tools/widgets
- Tool: Outgrow
- Structured data
- Tool: Rich Results Tester
- Important subtopics
- Tool: Google Suggest, Keywordtool, Answer the public,
- Compelling heading
- Tool: Sharethrough
- Citations/sources
- Links to other internal pages
- Good writing style
- Tool: Hemingway
- Definitions and explanations for Featured Snippets
- Lists and/or tables
- A clear CTA
- Click-to-tweets
- Quotes
Meets:
- User intent (check first 10 results)
Is:
- As long as possible while keeping the fluff degree at 0
- Free of spelling errors
- Tool: Grammarly
- Optimized for mobile devices
- Tool: Google’s mobile-friendliness checker
- Not interrupted by pop-ups or annoying ads
- Easy to skim
Thought Leadership
Has
- Compelling heading
- Tool: Sharethrough
- A strong hook to start with:
- Expert statements
- First-person narrations
- Provocative questions
- Quotes
- Thought experiments
- Observations
- A beat by varying between long (hypotaxis) and short sentences (parataxis)
- A story with an arch (“what’s your angle?”)
- A point or an opinion
- Unique images/visuals/graphs
- Tools: Gliffy, Chartblocks, Flourish, Canva
- An audio version of the article
- Tool: Descript
- Citations/sources
Is:
- As short as possible, as long as necessary
- Written by an expert or someone with unique information
- Shareable