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Your Guide to Creating 10x Content

To get found online, creating good content is not enough. You have to create something better than what is already ranking in SERPs.

According to a recent survey, 84.5% of US companies with at least 100 employees will use digital marketing strategies. This means the competition is fiercer than ever. Your “good” blog posts will get swallowed up in the deluge of content.

So, how do you stand out? What strategies do you need to make sure you get found by potential clients?

In this blog post, we will discuss 10x strategies you can implement along with useful tools. Apply these strategies after reading this blog post, and supercharge your content creation process.

Let’s get started.

What is 10x content?

Rand Fishkin, the founder of Moz, first coined the term 10x content. He used it to refer to content that’s ten times better than top search engine results.

When you’re interested in something, your first impulse is to do a Google search. As you sift through the search results, you’ll notice that some of them stand head and shoulders above the rest.

You will find plenty of “good” content, but it is the truly excellent content you will spend time reading and share on social media.

That is the concept behind 10x content. According to WordPress, over 70 million blog posts are published every month. Most of the blog posts might be good which is why yours has to be even better.

Saying a blog post is ten times better than others in the same niche is hard to quantify. We can take factors like word count and data into account, but the results will still be subjective.

If you are having difficulty identifying if a piece of content can be considered 10x or not, keep the following traits in mind:

• It needs to be presented in a visually appealing manner. Creating 10x content goes beyond great writing or valuable information. You need to think about fonts, images and the overall layout of your post.
• It needs to be viewable on all devices. Whether a user is using a laptop, tablet or mobile phone, your content needs to be readable.
• It needs to load quickly. Google recommends that your website should take 5 seconds or less to load.
• It needs to evoke emotion. No matter your topic, your content should inspire, educate or entertain users.
• It needs to contain unique information. You can write about topics others have covered before, but make sure to add something new. It can be data from a test you ran or other useful advice you’ve encountered.

Decide who you’re writing for.

If you create content for everyone, you will end up catering to no one. The tone, information you need to include and other factors will differ based on who you’re trying to reach.

Let us say you want to write a blog post full of local SEO tips.

If you are writing it for beginner bloggers who would like to collaborate with local businesses, you can tell them to feature products and events in their area.

If you are writing for a business who’d like to find more customers, you can tell them to create a Google My Business listing.

Your entire blog post should depend on your target audience.

If you are unsure how to do this, you can start by creating an ideal customer profile. Create a new Word document or jot down ideas in your notepad. Jot down all your ideas about who this person might be.

You can flesh out your ideal customer profile by asking the following questions:

• How old is he?
• Where is he located?
• What are his interests?
• Where does he spend time online and offline?
• What are his main pain points?
• How can your content help resolve those pain points?

Do keyword research.

After completing the step above, start your keyword research. If you have gotten to know your ideal customer, you will have a general idea of the keywords they will use.

Walk around in your ideal customer’s shoes. Jot down some ideas in a notepad or a Word document. How will he or she phrase things? Are there certain words that will surely be used?

Once you’ve created a list, transfer everything to an Excel file or a Google sheet. It’s time to check how difficult it would be to rank for your chosen keywords.

Based on information from the tools we are about to discuss, you might decide to discard or replace keywords from your original list.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a tool by Neil Patel that lets you see how easy it would be to rank for a keyword.

There are plenty of tools that perform the same function, but Ubersuggest is the only free one I’ve encountered.

All you have to do is enter your chosen keyword in Ubersuggest and hit enter. It will then generate how much monthly traffic the keyword is getting. It will also show you if the competition difficulty for the keyword is easy, medium or difficult.

Ubersuggest even comes in handy when trying to learn more about the competition. We’ll discuss that feature in another section later.

Answer the Public

If you’re struggling to think of more keywords, Answer the Public is here to help.

Ignore the man frowning at you on the website’s main page and type your keyword. Hit enter and wait for Answer the Public to generate related keywords.

It organises results based on questions that start with what, when, where, why and so forth. You can then download the results in an image or CVS file.

After seeing the results, make sure to list down possible keywords to add to your list.

Rinse and repeat this process for all your potential keywords. You’ll soon discover a host of possibilities that might have never occurred to you with Answer the Public.

Research the competition.

Once you have your final keyword list, you need to see who you are up against. If you want to create 10x content, researching the competition is only second to writing the blog post.

If you want to rank in search engine results, you need to create something better than what is already out there. Everybody is creating “good” content so you need to work harder and smarter to stand out. This is the entire thought process behind creating 10x content.

Create a Google Sheet or an Excel file. Start conducting Google searches using the keywords in your list.

Carefully examine at least the top five results for each keyword. There is a reason those results are at the top, and you need to discover what it is.

Take note of the following factors:

• The word count
• The images, videos and audio used
• The blog post’s overall structure
• The data used to support the post’s thesis

Let’s say you notice that the top-ranking blog posts have an average word count of 2,500 words. Write something with a word count of at least 3,000 words or more.

Quality is more important than quantity. However, you can’t deny that a longer blog post allows you to include more information. You can expand on details the competition may have failed to cover.

Write an excellent blog post.

Saying you should write an excellent blog post sounds like generic advice. You might even be thinking that you cannot compete, because you are not a “professional writer.”

That kind of thinking is wrong.

If you followed all the steps before this one, you will be armed with the tools to create 10x content. You know who you are trying to reach, and you have done research on the competition.

It is important to keep in mind that online writing is vastly different from writing for print.

When writing fiction, you have the ability to use detailed descriptions and flowery words.

In the online space, people’s attention spans are much shorter. You need to present information in a way that can easily be scanned. As much as possible, make sure your blog post has a lot of white space.

Useful Writing Tools

Grammarly

Grammarly is a helpful tool if you’re worried about grammar. You can create a free account, and copy and post what you’ve written. It will then spot grammatical errors and typos you might have missed.

Hemingway Editor

Hemingway Editor is another free tool that can do wonders for your writing. It grades how easy to read your content is and even offers improvement suggestions.

Like Grammarly, all you have to do is copy and paste what you’ve written in Hemingway’s editor. It will then highlight complicated sentences that need to be rewritten and show you replacements for difficult words.

Conclusion

If you want to rank higher in search engines, creating 10x content is vital.

Everyone is creating “good” content now. Stand out from the pack. Create something wonderful that users can’t help but read and share.

Start by getting to know your target audience. Identify their pain points, and help resolve them through content that is informative, educational or inspiring.

Identify your competition. Find out what makes their content great, and attempt to create something better.

Need help managing your website content? Contact Cornerstone Digital at (02) 8211 0668 or email us at info@cornerstone-digital.com.au.

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Darlyn Herradura

A self-professed book and digital marketing nerd, Darlyn Herradura focuses on building trust between customers and businesses with the written word. She understands that creating valuable content is the best way to get found online and happily spends her time doing that.