What is valuable SEO content marketing, really? 4 types that win.

Google’s updates for E-E-A-T are an attempt define valuable content and surface it for the user. With this update, the search giant essentially told us that experience was the most important thing (literally first in the list), followed by expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

My thought is we’re going to see skyscraper technique content that copycats too much drop in rankings while seeing diverse content with original thought sprinkled in the top search results. I predict Google will continue rewarding diverse types of content as well, such as videos, news, and visual diagrams.

This is a gut instinct, and based on personal experience as a searcher, I would prefer search engines to work more this way. Wouldn’t you?

A caveat.

What this means for AI-generated content that follows outline patterns from already-established content remains to be seen. It’s pretty interesting timing from Google to release the E-E-A-T update within a month of the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its incredible user growth in that short timeframe.

In addition, with OpenAI releasing simple tools to detect AI-generated content, it’s a matter of time — or maybe has already happened — before Google embraces similar technology in its algorithms and quality rater guidelines.

Any way you look at it, AI-generated content can bolster original thought, but it lacks first-hand experience. AI often offers copycat advice and ideas others have already published, and therefore, that experience may be best attributed to the original source.

I think Google is smart enough to figure that out sooner rather than later.

OK, on with the show.

So I’m not calling this a complete list, but when I thought of valuable content, these are the types that stood out most in my mind.

Therefore, these are the types of content that have performed best for us at CoSchedule and/or influenced our own content marketing strategy.

By “performed best”, I mean these are the kinds of content that have attracted 75+ million website visitors from organic search, converting 10+ million email subscribers, and influenced hundreds of thousands of software signups.

Original insight and knowledge sharing.

I like content that interprets complex information and translates it into easy-to-understand best practices.

For example, Google publishes lots of information about its algorithm. I find it valuable when SEO experts read Google’s documentation and publish their suggestions, such as Darrell Mordecai at Rank Ranger.

I also like content written from first-hand experiences such as case studies, tear downs, examples, and ideas.

Think “How I…” and “Why I…” content.

Q&A and problem-solving.

Many years ago, Marcus Sheridan wrote down the questions his prospective customers asked. Then he published content to answer those questions.

This type of content is still valuable for the curious among us.

Google even features its “People also ask” functionality inline with search results to further searcher discovery.

Think “What Is…”, “Why Is…”, and “When Is…” content.

Proprietary datasets and original research.

Publishing proprietary research like The State of Marketing Strategy Report is among the best things I’ve done to build organic backlinks. I tend to see our savvy audience value facts more than anecdotes.

This is a great type of content to stand out in your niche because, by definition, you’re the only source in the world that publishes this information.

CoSchedule’s best times to post on social media is a good example of proprietary datasets.

In addition, I like to publish curated research as well that answers a specific question by compiling research from many other original sources. I call this “compiled research” internally. This piece about best times to send email is an example of compiled research.

Support and guidance.

Some of CoSchedule’s best-performing content ideas came from questions customers wrote in to our customer service team.

For example, customers wanted to know when they should post to social media. So we wrote the best pieces on the internet for the topic.

In addition, we heard customers wanted training materials in a variety of formats for all learning styles. So we published a microsite with guides for use cases available online with PDFs for printing, videos, infographics and screenshots, courses with worksheets, and more.