Hey, fellow content enthusiasts!

We’re in the final stretch of the year, and things don’t seem to be slowing down.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about 2024 and where we go in terms of content. If the past few months have told us anything, predicting anything with SEO and content is tough.

Looking back at 2023, yes, we’ve seen a lot of changes this year. Chat-GPT turned one, and there are more AI tools for content creation than I have time to test!

Many publishers like us are looking ahead to 2024 from a different lens. After the Helpful Content Update and numerous other Google updates, AI advancements, and the larger ecommerce landscape, 2023 was a year of shakeups.

And, yet, I still believe there is plenty of room for us who want to serve our audiences with quality content.

It just might not look like what we’re used to.

If you want to scale your content efforts this year, which I know many of you are, great! While it might be easier than ever to scale content (I mean, almost anyone can publish thousands of articles at a click of a button, right?), there are some parts of our content that we want to dig in and spend time on. No shortcuts here!

But first, an ad from our sponsor. If you’ve been struggling to find the right writer or editor for your content scaling projects, you might want to try Content Teams. We’ve hired hundreds of content people and know how to find the right people who can deliver.

The Anatomy of a Great Article

While I won’t get into EVERYTHING a great article needs today, there are a few non-negotiables if you want to create authentic, best-in-class articles.

If you are going to spend time on content creation this year, this is where you want to go slow to grow fast, as we say. Spend time on these things, and your content will already be better than most of what we have on the internet.

Here are four things I feel that every article needs to have:

A Strong Point of View

Before writing an article, we must ask ourselves, “Do we have a strong point of view on this topic?” If not, it’s okay to skip it.

This is probably the toughest quality to implement at scale as well. Many writers don’t want to push themselves to think about how they stand on a topic, but the ones that do are worth their weight in gold.

As we have scaled our content, this has been something I’ve pushed back on our writers in so many ways. It’s also something I see lacking with a ton of ‘affiliate’ and niche types of content.

There is a big difference between having a point of view and being biased; for me, that difference is where the expertise and experiences come in—our unique experiences and expertise back up a great point of view. We’ll get into that a bit more later here.

A great article needs to not only have a strong point of view, but that point of view has to make sense for YOUR audience. For example, if you had a site on sports heroes, you would never have the point of view that sports are a waste of time.

Okay, this might seem obvious, but I read a lot of content where I question the author's point of view (if there is any) for this particular site. When you read a hiking blog and wonder, does this person even enjoy hiking?

The writers with a strong point of view and know how to put their money where their mouth is are worth their weight in gold. This is the content that is not just informative or answers queries but is shareable, bookmarkable, and, dare I say, enjoyable.

A great example from one of our brilliant editors/writers, Callum, in this piece on “Cozy Games are Becoming a Problem,” which has a strong point of view (he backs it up!). At the end of this article, it’s clear what he believes, how he came to this point of view, and why.

While we may not all be fans of Reddit these days, I believe this may be one of the reasons why Reddit is getting so much Google love these days. At least these Redditors have opinions — it’s the land of opinions.

While I do think Reddit is missing the expertise and experience factors to make me ‘trust’ these opinions, at the very least, they are trying to ‘say something’ instead of just giving us the wishy-washy content (which so many blogs, unfortunately, find themselves doing).

Experiences

I believe every single piece of content deserves experiences, and I think readers want this as well. This week, on a Market Muse webinar, Jeff Coyle used the example of a recipe blog and shared why he believes that even recipes need to share unique experiences. Tell us why your chocolate chip recipe is THE recipe out of the thousands we could be baking.

Don’t rely on the author bio or About Us page to showcase your experiences. Use every article as an opportunity to show us that you’re out there doing the thing. Anything other than this is a waste of time for the reader.

Readers can see when someone is faking experiences. My husband is a part-time winemaker and mead maker. He has about 4 or 5 batches of mead or wine on the go and is always looking for new recipes or tips on making homemade mead and wine. (I am a part-time homemade wine and mead drinker, so it’s a match made in heaven.)

I’ve sent him tons of videos and articles on this (like we should try this recipe some time), and he instantly tells me whether he thinks the writer or content creator is the real deal. He’ll say things like, “That recipe would never work because…” or “You shouldn’t add the fruit at that stage.”

There’s a BIG difference between those who do and those who say they do, and readers always know!

Expertise

The level of expertise needed will vary depending on the niche you’re writing on, but the more experts you can bring in and use, the better your content will be.

A few years ago, we drew a line in the sand on who we hire for our writing teams. Since then, we’ve upped the ante on the expertise needed for all our writers.

Not everyone can find or even afford to have real-deal experts writing their articles. I get that. And not every expert is a writer. These are real concerns, but the fact remains — expertise needs to be there!

Pull in the experts. There are many ways to find experts who can contribute to your articles. There are places like HARO, Help a B2B Writer, and Featured where you can pose questions and get expert responses. I like using these occasionally, but the real magic happens in the follow-up.

This past weekend, I wrote a guest article on SEO and marketing teams for a friend and a great publication I love. I used Help a B2B Writer to ask some initial questions but followed up to ask additional questions to help improve my article. Now, I have a relationship with a Founder in SaaS that I can easily reach out to when I’m writing on these topics.

This is where I’ll spend my time in the writing process.

Yes, I can ask AI to create a table, review for sentiment, and give me some additional title ideas, but it cannot build relationships and bring in the expertise that does not exist online right now.

Authenticity

We got into authenticity last week, but I’m mentioning this again today because I believe every article deserves this. Authenticity at the article level can help us build trust overall and help us connect with our readers.

I see the chatter all the time about E-E-A-T signals. Many SEOs want to know exactly what these signals look like in an article ( I’ve seen writers try to fake authenticity before, but this is when a great editor who can see through the bullshit comes in.

A few years ago, we had a writer trying to plug in some experience and literally ‘made up’ experiences, talking about how he was planning a road trip and packing up the vehicle. It sounded ‘okay,’ but a closer look at the writer's life and experiences told our editor that something didn’t feel right. And, you got it.. it wasn’t.

This writer plagiarized experience from other blogs, trying to pawn it as his own. Nothing is okay about this, and as soon as a reader figures this out (and they will), you’ve lost all trust.

We now expect writers to back up their experiences with video, screenshots, and images — show us, don’t tell us. That alone helps hit the authenticity factor. We also spend a lot more time getting to know the writer. Are they traveling around in an RV, or do they tell us that? The devil is in the details for this one. If I don’t see details, I push back.

So, that’s it. I know these four things are not easy to do, especially at scale. It’s tough to produce quality content these days. Sure, we can continue to put our blinkers on and pretend that these things don’t matter, but they do.

Things to Read, Watch, and Ponder

Are podcasts worth it? This article looks into the world of podcasting, where we see growth and where it’s just not worth it. It's a great read if you’re curious.

Conductor has just released the State of SEO Report; you can download this report here and get some clues on the state of SEO for 2024. I just downloaded it, but I will be going through this soon!

There’s a lot of SEO chatter on parasitic SEO right now, and Google has jumped in to comment. You can follow the discussions on Twitter here:

I’m excited about the new year, but first, we must get through this one!

As I plan my 2024, I would love to know from all of you what topics or questions you have that I could cover in this newsletter.

Please ‘hit reply’ and send me a note. I read every single reply.

Have a great week. Keep going!

Cheers! Amy

Some Bonus Newsletters You’ll Love

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