The days of using cheap content are coming to a close. If you want good content, you’re going to need to pay for it. Which means forget about the $10 per hour copywriter.

I just finished reading a wonderful article at Duct Tape Marketing by a guest writer, Chris Warden, and he absolutely nails it with his observations about SEO content writing. ([themecolor]SEO Consulting in 2013: What the Pros Know that You Don’t[/themecolor])

The game-changer has been Google’s increasingly discriminating algorithm, which weeds out websites that have “junk content.” Instead, Google is recognizing “authoritative content,” which is content that is getting mentioned on social media and on other websites.

In other words, cheap content (the type that is stuffed full of keywords and phrases but really doesn’t provide any value), is dead.

I’ll emphasize it in another way: No one cares to read cheap content. No one talks about it and no one shares it. It gets zapped into cyberspace and gets sucked into a black hole. You want content that will orbit.

You don’t get these results overnight. It’s only by consistently (and that’s the key word) producing content that you’ll start to show up in search results and start to see your traffic needle move upward.

You also have to have some goals. Do you want your content to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your site and boost lead generation? Grow your email list?

Once you set your goals, then you can focus on providing helpful and relevant content for your target audience. If you don’t have the time or skills to create persuasive copy that will get a response, then find a good copywriter who can.

Readers of this blog know I’ve hammered on this issue. You can’t expect to have your target market see your business as remarkable with unremarkable, cheap content. Period.

Find what makes your business unique and why anyone should care. Then set your goals and go for it content-wise.

The world is starving for your originality.