Quality Content Lasts Forever

Thanks to Greg for writing this great article about quality content for online poker affiliates, and why it’s so important. Check out Greg’s website about Texas Holdem Rakeback to see what quality content is all about.

Well, maybe not forever, but quality certainly outlasts non-quality work by a significant margin. So anyway, let’s just agree for now that quality lasts forever so that I can have my moderately catchy article title.

This article is going to be about why it’s far more profitable to produce quality content (and websites) as opposed to low quality content, surprise surprise. You don’t need me to remind you that quality articles and websites reap greater rewards for the umpteenth time, but I’m going to do it anyway as we all need motivation to continue to make genuinely useful websites every now and then.

But first…

What is quality content?

I feel sorry for the word “quality” these days. It’s been abused and overused in the affiliate marketplace no end. Does anyone actually remember what “quality” means any more?

* Quality articles are genuinely useful and contain bountiful amounts of information, not just the bare minimum.
* Quality content provides more accurate and educational information on one topic than anyone else. No seriously, they provide way more information than you will find elsewhere.

To put it simply – quality is authority. Quality is a word other people should use to describe your work, not what you should say about it. Remind yourself of that the next time you evaluate your efforts.

Is your article unique in the sense that there is no information out there on the Internet like it? Does your article provide more information than any other article you can find? Have you written your article to the absolute best of your ability?

If you can’t definitely answer “yes” to any of those questions, then you guessed it, your article isn’t quality.

Why write quality content?

You and I could sit here writing an extensive list of reasons why quality work is beneficial to your business, but we would be sat here for a lengthy session. Instead, I’m going to expand on one particular reason as referred to in the title of this article:

Quality lasts forever.

A quick 10 minute, 350 word article will rank well if you manage to build enough links to it, but it will be hard work and its rankings will always have an egg timer above its head. Sub-standard information will always find a way of sinking to the bottom with the rest of it no matter how hard you try.

On the other hand a genuinely awesome and dare I say it, quality article will work for itself. A great piece of work will remain as a great piece of work today, tomorrow, next month and next year. If you’ve paid for the hosting and domain name in advance it will remain as a great article 10 years from now.

As I touched upon, quality will work for itself. It might be a slower process, but a great article will gain links and referrals for years to come. Rankings will improve with age and you won’t have to lift a finger to make that happen. As soon as the article has been published the ball will start rolling. Time is your friend after publishing great work on your website.

Just as useless information finds a way to sink, truly great information always finds a way to make it to the top.

What about small poker affiliate sites?

Is it worth writing good content for small bonus-type websites?

Well, let me ask you a few counter-questions; Are real people actually going to read your content? Why not give visitors something truly enjoyable to read? Why cut corners and put your site at risk of missing out on conversions?

I’ll admit, my small Full Tilt Poker referral code website is far from the cream of the crop when it comes to groundbreaking content, but I like to think that visitors will appreciate the effort of me writing useful and legible pages as opposed to outsourcing random assortments of words and text to fill the page. As a result, I’m confident that I am rewarded with conversions because of this.

Poor content will never do you any favors, but good quality content will regardless of the size of the site or niche. Quality articles are difficult to write and are time consuming, which is awesome.

Every affiliate and their dog has an article about “bluffing” on one of their poker websites. I can’t argue that that’s not a hell of a lot of competition for anyone thinking about writing an article about “Bluffing in Poker”.

In spite of this, I can count the number of impressively awesome articles about “bluffing” that show up in Google without even having to take my socks off. So, whereas there are near enough 1,000,000 results and competitors for this [bluffing] search, if you write an exceptional all-encompassing article about bluffing you’re only competing with less than 10 other pages. I like those odds a lot more.

The best thing about quality content is that very, very few website owners produce it. You put yourself so far ahead of the competition from the outset it makes you wonder why everyone else isn’t writing some extraordinary stuff to get some one-in-a-million articles on their websites. Thankfully, most affiliates have an aversion to hard work when it comes to content, which can make our lives so much easier.

If you’re settling for 2nd best with your articles you’re resigning yourself to creating a middle-ground website at best. Sure, you could spent 20 minutes writing and 100 minutes or more chasing temporary links, but I’d personally prefer to spend 120 minutes writing and a lifetime building permanent links whilst I sleep.

Working hard to create quality content that earns money may seem like a difficult and slow process, but you’ll thank me in 2 years time whilst your pages are ranking for popular terms and gaining links and authority all the time.

Trust me when I say it’s pretty damn sweet to see sites bringing in more traffic from one month to the next without you having to pay for or chase up link sales. Make your content work for you, don’t force it to be the other way around.