11 Criteria We Use to Evaluate Great Content
One of our not-so-secret weapons is the content auditing tool our friend Ian created. It’s a wonder – you can quickly upload a spreadsheet of URLs and your content criteria codebook, and get to assessing hundreds of pieces of content immediately, all within one browser window.
Auditing content is a fun Saturday for us, so if your eyes are rolling to the back of your head, you may want to stop reading and just hire us to do it.
But if you’re an auditor at heart, we have our core “quality” criteria below that helps us (and will help you!) identify if your content is truly audience-ready.
Our criteria:
Original: Does it provide original information, reporting, research or analysis?
Insightful: Does it provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
Additive: If the content draws on other sources, does it build on the work? Does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources and instead provide substantial additional value and originality?
Navigable: Does the headline and/or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content, and does the headline and/or page title avoid exaggerating or shocking?
Recommendable: Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
Authoritative: Would you expect to see this content in or referenced by a magazine, encyclopedia or book? If you researched the site producing the content, would you come away with an impression that it is well-trusted or widely-recognized as an authority on its topic?
Unique: Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
Trustworthy: Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author (be it an expert or an enthusiast) or the site that publishes it?
Impeccable: Is the content free from spelling, grammatical, or stylistic issues? Was it produced well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
Serves Your Brand: Is this content aligned with your brand mission, your voice, your tone, your goals? Does it support or (dare we hope) elevate your brand with its existence?
Serves Your Audience(s): And this, my friends, is the biggie. Does this piece of content serve your audiences? Do you know what your audiences even need? If you have defined personas, then you can map content to their mindsets and goals.