Why User Expectations For Content Quality Will Soar In 2016
2016 is now properly upon us, and as we enter the second month, discussions about the trends that are likely to show up over in marketing are ongoing. Much of the focus of businesses in terms of online marketing over the past few years has been around content, and the message has been the same for some time now – quality is essential if you want your content to help you achieve your marketing goals.
Rising Expectations
Most businesses now know that poor quality content doesn’t just serve as ineffective marketing, it can actually damage both search engine rankings, and the real perception of your business in the eyes of those who read it. Nonetheless, many experts are predicting that user expectations in terms of web content quality are going to get even higher in 2016. But why would their already lofty standards be even higher?
Tailoring
Quality is no longer just a case of ‘is this article grammatically correct’, or ‘is this content unique’. Search engines have long been sophisticated enough to keep users from seeing things that are of bad quality in the traditional sense. Now, what search engines look to do is find the content that is genuinely most relevant – not just to the keyword, but to the user. Content that is promoted via paid advertising also exists in a framework where it is supposed to be shown to relevant people, not just people who search for relevant words.
If you search for restaurants in Birmingham, and you are in the UK, Google knows it’s better not to show you restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama, or their paid ads. As users become more used to tailored responses, they no longer expect to have their own time wasted wading through irrelevant material or refining their searches to avoid it. When the wrong content shows up, this may not be bad quality content, but the user can see it that way as it is a bad experience for them.
Search Engines And Tools
On both the content creators’ end, and the user’s, the tools are there to help make the content seen by any individual better. Thanks to strong content management solutions, whether it’s the simple tools used to manage smaller blogs like Blogger and WordPress or larger, enterprise SAP CMS solutions like those by Weaveability.com, content publishers, creators and owners can do more to make sure their content is up to date, and well organized with attribution like tags.
Search engines and even browsers help make sure the user sees content that is organized based on their language, preferences, location and other identified factors. People are simply no longer used to being presented with content that is not of any value to them due to being out of date or aimed at a different locale, and so we expect that just about everything on the first page of a Google search will be of some use to us.
The reality is that content no longer just has to check all the boxes for being original, interesting and technically well made. It also needs to be well organized and managed so that the people who see it are the right people.
