The Bar for High Quality Content has Changed
Quality content exists on a spectrum. It’s grounded in your products or services’ context, your target audience, and your business goals.
What once was considered “high-quality content” in the 2010s by industry-standard marketing playbooks looks different in the 2020s, after the content farms era, 5 Google updates, and AI copywriting tools.
The spotlight of good content pieces now goes to original research and POVs, authenticity + relatability, and content multifunctionality.
What is high-quality content?
High-quality content typically refers to content attributes that align with both a specific target audience, and a set of organization’s goals. Regardless of what you and I may perceive as valuable.
The subjective and relative nature of this term in marketing has different meanings, depending on who you ask and what you do.
Pretty much the opposite of low-quality content that cares nothing about company purposes at all, let alone the reader’s experience.
For me, content quality is the stuff you act on, whether in the short or the long term. From the content you engage with right away, and the newsletter you share, to the demo you sign up for in 3-6 months.
The New Bar for Shipping High Quality Content
Here’s what high-quality content now means:
Contextualized Original POVs and Research
As John Bonini, founder of the consulting program Content Brands, put it, “The only defensible content marketing strategy for 2023 and beyond is investing in both original thinking and original research.”
Original thinking through authentic personal lived experiences, observations, perspectives, and analyses of trends. And original research through audience surveys, interviewing, reporting, and insights across your own mediums (i.e. social, newsletter, etc.)
To create irreplaceable value that most algorithms can’t replicate, John’s approach recommends framing content around you or in collaboration with people your target audience finds interesting.
Relatable, Authentic, and Sometimes Creative
“Make people feel seen.” This takeaway from Microsoft’s Head of Content Heike Young captures the essence of today’s most effective content. “If you can make somebody feel like ‘Oh, you just articulated a thing I’ve been feeling but I didn’t quite put it into words.’ That’s such a powerful thing to be able to do for someone.”
Content that resonates requires creators to embrace vulnerability over corporate polish. When writing reflects human experiences (yeah, including challenges) it encourages a deeper engagement.
Creative ways amplify content relatability by presenting familiar concepts through unexpected frameworks. Even technical content benefits from human touches that acknowledge the reader’s reality.
Cross-team Multifunctionality Done Right
Different departments collaborating toward shared goals naturally produce better original content. The more inputs from subject matter experts with diverse backgrounds contributing with unique perspectives, the more fresh the resulting content output will be.
I’ve seen this work wonders at companies with articles, reports, case studies—you name it—packed with insider knowledge that only comes from people who work directly with the product every day.
Instead of an isolated marketer guessing, this collaborative approach merges everyone’s insights, as long as it makes sense to get an final product that’s relevant, resonating, and impactful.
Why is high-quality content important?
There’s 3 main reasons why high-quality content matters:
1. It builds trust and authority for your brand
Wynter’s research of 300 C-suite execs from $50M+ B2B SaaS companies reported why branding matters in the buying process.
The study found 75% of buyers consult peers first when creating vendor shortlists—not just Google. And being top of mind determines if you make the initial consideration set (5-8 vendors).
Buyers then narrow shortlists to 3 vendors before any contact, primarily based on your website content, brand reputation, official social channels, and your blog. Differentiation turns into a must.
2. It makes you visible and discoverable in the SERPs
Content that answers people’s questions and solves problems earns valuable ranking signals. Like backlinks, social shares, and positive engagement metrics (longer time on page, lower bounce rates).
These indicators tell search engines your content responds with value to a specific keyword intent—navigational, informational, transactional, or commercial—influencing future user decisions.
3. It supports multiple functions within your company
In practice this may look like a thorough buying guide that educates customers, builds brand authority, and reduces support inquiries.
For example, product comparisons can drive conversions while gathering customer preference data. Care instructions can support marketing campaigns, and also boost customer retention rates.
This multifunctionality component sets the stage for stronger content pieces that help more than one department at once.
What makes high-quality content?
Here’s the attributes I’ve seen making content high-quality:
- Reads in a coherent, cohesive yet engaging way
- Delivers original insights you can’t find elsewhere
- Solves a specific pain point someone’s dealing with
- Explains the what, why, how behind an addressed idea
- Backs claims with sources and subject matter expertise
- Aligns with org objectives (e.g. buyer conversion rates…)
- It’s either strategic, tactical or conceptual when it should be
But, the best content can live in search engine rankings, too.
What does Google consider high-quality content?
Google’s mission shapes what the SERPs see as content quality. That’s why I wanted to bring this statement back as a core concept.
With the most recent 2022 update, Helpful, Reliable, People-first Content, Google targeted web content created for search engines only, not humans. This system introduced the signal of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).
Which is exactly what the Google algorithm considers high-quality.
- “Are all claims properly supported?”
- “What unique value does this offer?”
- “Is my (or the SME) expertise evident?”
- “Would I find this helpful as a searcher?”
- “Does this fully answer the user’s question?”
3 High Quality Content Examples in the Wild
The worst-case scenario in content creation is producing content to impress industry peers who aren’t your buyers. Or creating content detached from your customers’ pain points. Or crafting siloed content that fails to support other teams within your organization.
Let’s see what good content may look like in the top stage (ToFu), middle stage (MoFu), and bottom stage (BoFu) of the funnel.
ToFu Blog Post / Awareness Building / Shopify Setup
The piece targets first-time/aspiring eCommerce entrepreneurs. Readers who need foundational knowledge before making decisions, and who haven’t yet chosen a platform. It covers the basics while introducing Shopify as the go-to online store option.
MoFu Guide / Consideration Driver / Salesforce CRM
Salesforce strategically positions itself here during the consideration stage with a problem-solution guide. It targets decision-makers researching implementation processes, comparing services, and needing detailed information to make better, educated decisions.
BoFu Comparison / Decision Enabler / Zendesk Alternative
What makes this Zendesk comparison article effective is the control of the evaluation narrative for decision-stage potential paid users. It compares customer service features with a primary alternative but acknowledging the competitor’s strengths to avoid sounding salesy.
“High-quality content” That Misses the Mark
There’s a reason we often see the term “high-quality content” in quotation marks. Rand Fishkin nailed in his rant “High Quality Content” is the Most Useless Marketing Phrase. The definition became basically meaningless through overuse and ambiguity.
In fact, I think Google’s Helpful Content Guidelines, while super useful for self-assessment, had an unintended consequence: Sketchy marketers forcing helpfulness inauthentically.
“Fake it until you make it” has clear limitations when it comes to writing content. The result ends up being an internet flooded with:
- Regurgitated information
- Undifferentiated messaging
- Boring, unoriginal perspectives
- Content disconnected from functions
- Material that fails to serve your audience
Ironic that r/SEO debates what “high-quality content” is.
I think we got here because of the volume era
Remember content 5-7 years ago? Teams pumped out tons of content under the philosophy of “growth-at-all-costs.” The principle was simple: more content equals more traffic equals more leads.
For years, many companies followed the same playbook.
Identify high-volume keywords. Create content targeting those keywords. Optimize for search engines. And repeat at scale.
Of course this approach worked. Until it didn’t. We can’t pretend we live in the 2010s anymore. The future demanded something else.
How AI Impacts High Quality Content
Generative AI software exacerbated this problem for digital marketers in charge of conversion rate optimization (CRO) tasks.
The perceived capability to churn out content faster and cheaper unfortunately led to a sameness across the internet. When everyone uses the same tools with the same prompts, originality disappears.
Even with advanced reasoning models, AI struggles to come up with the substance of lived experiences, and critical/creative thinking.
Smart audiences can sniff the lack of authenticity miles away.
Audiences Expect High Content Quality by Default
What has been widely considered “high-quality content” all this time by marketing folks is actually just meeting the bare minimum.
Google’s own AI summary defines quality content as “valuable, engaging, tailored to an audience…” it continues “understandable, well-written, well-researched, and well-designed.” I partially agree.
Think about it for a minute. These written content traits aren’t markers of high quality really. They’re expected baseline quality.
How to Write High Quality Content and Stand Out
The goal isn’t to artificially meet arbitrary content quality standards but to produce content that achieves works for your business goals: web visitor’s engagement, brand exploration, and conversion rates.
To do that, we have to go back to basics—telling authentic stories, using the data you have, having interesting conversations with your team, partners, and more importantly, your ideal customers/users.
These principles apply across all content formats: landing pages, case studies, white papers, social, reports, newsletters, and articles.
Opportunity for creating good content
The bar isn’t a monolith. Definitions evolve but high-quality content standards remain the same around the fundamentals. Meaning, strategic goals, audience’s needs, content context, and user intent.
Instead of following rules online (even on this blog), obsess yourself on serving your audience. Because the only unchanging standard is putting your customer at the center of every content decision.
