It is common knowledge that in order to have a good website that attracts traffic, you need to have good quality content. In fact, this is likely one of the very few things that almost nobody in the digital marketing industry will disagree about. Despite this general consensus, however, only 31% of websites are getting a ‘passing’ grade when their content is evaluated for quality. That means about 70% of sites, including many major business sites, are completely failing in this area.
These numbers were determined by a recent analysis from Acrolinx, which operates a linguistics engine that scanned through about 150,000 pages of websites run by 340 companies generating at least $250 million in annual revenue. These should, in theory, be some of the highest quality sites on the net, yet the majority of them are producing content that couldn’t even get a ‘B’ in high school English class.
The study looked at a wide range of different points to evaluate the overall quality of the content. Included in this were spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes and others. Some of the most common errors that were identified were subject/verb agreement, double negatives and the proper use of pronouns. These are all fairly simple things that any professional should have learned long ago.
Readability
Remember too that even sites that ranked above the passing grade (which was 72 out of 100 by the way) may not have had what most would consider good quality content. It was just passable in terms of how it was written. Many people write grammatically correct content, yet it is not interesting or engaging. This means that the actual percentage of websites that have well-written content that people will want to read is likely well under 30%.
Why Quality Content Matters
Some people may be wondering if it really matters how good the grammar, spelling and overall readability of the content really is. The fact is, according to a 2013 study from Global Lingo, 74% of eCommerce customers report that they notice when there are errors in content. 59% of those said that they may not make a purchase from a company based on the quality of their content.
On top of that, Google has confirmed that the quality of content is one of many factors that go into ranking websites. Of course, when people do find your site, they are going to be much less likely to share it on their social media pages or link to it on their own sites if it is poorly written. All of this combines to a significantly reduced number of people seeing your content, and of those that do see it, fewer will make a purchase.
Quality is Essential in Content Marketing
As you can see, when it comes to content marketing, quality should be the #1 factor. While there is no doubt that publishing content frequently can be helpful, it is far better to publish new content less often, but with higher quality. This will help to ensure the people that read and share your content will always come back to you. Whether this means you spend more time producing content yourself, or you hire a professional writer to help you, quality should always come first.
You can read more about the full study HERE.
