Excellent Content Accuracy Needed For Google’s New Ranking Factor

What makes you click more? “The Worst Ways You Can Fail at Marketing,” or “10 Of the Best Marketing Practices You Should Be Using Today”.
Ah, the psychology behind good web content.
Basically, content can be either positively or negatively aligned, and each of these has their own impacts on the audience. You can think about it from the perspective of someone who deals with motivating people. Such a person knows that when you’re trying to get your listeners to take themselves seriously, you can either provoke them into action or encourage them to do something positive.
With your content production, your content can either drive your reader to action or give them an element of fear in order to do what you tell them to do.

You know that you need to write excellent, engaging content to help bring in more clients and clicks, but did you know that accurate content is just as important, if not more so?
It is incredibly vital to your site, and can help set you up as a great, trustworthy source within your industry. It is also going to be part of a new Google algorithm, and you need to make sure you are already creating accurate content before it hits. I am going to look at why you need it, as well as how you can achieve excellent, accurate content.
Why is it Important to be Accurate in Your Content?
When you write your content, you always want to make sure you write something that is accurate to help set your company up as a trusted source. Accurate content is a great way to create something that reflects your company in a great light while also helping you create engaging content. However, there is something new coming down from Google, which means that accurate content won’t just be something you want to create for your clients when it comes to engagement; you’ll want to be trustworthy for Google, as well.
It hasn’t happened yet, but it is being reported that Google is aiming to create an algorithm to judge the trustworthiness of a website by how accurate the content is. Their goal is to match content to others around the web to see if the subject is truthful. You should always create accurate content no matter what, but if you do think about fudging the details every now and then, this should stop you in your tracks. You want to start or continue creating accurate content to be well ahead of the Google game before the new algorithm is implemented.
Top Nine Ways to Make Sure Your Content is Accurate
Since you now know why it is important to create accurate content, I am going to take a look at a few ways you can achieve this. These tips are great to help you start creating accurate content or they can help you rest assured that your content is definitely truthful. Let’s take a look at these tips to see which ones can benefit you and your site.
1. Always Verify Your Research. Verifying research is something that can take quite a bit of time, but is well worth it in the end. This helps you make sure you are reporting on something that is factual, instead of something that sounds right, but didn’t happen. You can see this regularly in the media when reporters will discuss something they overheard and it later turns out to be false, putting the reporter and news source in the Spotlight of Shame. While major news sources can easily get out of it through various methods, a small business will have a harder time, and you might have a permanent mark of being untrustworthy, which is something you don’t want. A great way to verify is to find out if the source you are using is reputable, and to follow their research links to see if their resources are high quality and reputable, as well. Just take time, and cross-reference everything to help you verify your research.
2. Make Sure to Confirm the Claims You’ve Read or Heard Before Writing. Did you hear a claim about something in your industry? Does it sound likely, but you don’t have any research to back it up yet? Then you need to make sure you confirm before writing and publishing it. The best way to do this is to follow step one and verify your claim and cross-reference it with other research. Make sure you not only confirm it for your blog and web content, but that you don’t send it out on your social media profiles either! Just be patient, research, and then state what you’ve learned if there is enough to back it up. 
3. Back Up Your Claims With Legitimate Resources. Earlier, I mentioned that, along with confirming your claims, you need to make sure you back them up with legitimate resources. This will help set your site up as trustworthy, and those legitimate resources are what Google will look at to compare your statements to deem if they are factual or not. Some examples of legitimate resources are Moz, Huffington Post, Hubspot, and Buffer. It is also a good idea to look at the domain authority of a website to know if it is high quality or not. I love suggesting the MozBar because it really does help me find great resources to share with you!
4. Write Naturally, Avoiding Sales-Speech. Writing naturally is another great way to create accurate content. How is it great? Because, when you write on a topic you truly know about, with excellent resources to back you up, you start to write your content naturally. If you don’t know much about a topic, it comes out stilted and forced, and it can even come out sounding sales-like. I’ve read a few blogs where people try to write on a specific topic, but in the end it just comes out sounding way too sales-dominated with little to no information on the topic. Write naturally, and you will not only create accurate content but you will also help bump your site up on the SERPs.
5. Have Someone Read Over Your Content. Another set of eyes never hurt anyone when it comes to writing accurate content. First of all, another reader can spot simple errors you may have missed. Second, if you have an expert in your field read over the material, he or she will be able to tell you if they think you need more resources or if your claim isn’t valid. Be prepared to take the criticism you need to know if your content is accurate or not. A great way to have someone look over your content for basic errors as well as to check for accuracy is to hire a copyeditor to go over you work.
6. If You State an Opinion, Make Sure Your Readers Know. Opinion pieces are a great form of content, but these can sometimes come across as being inaccurate because they might not fit with research. When you are writing an opinion piece, make sure you first state what it is you are writing about, any research involved with it, and then make sure your audience knows you are now writing your opinion. A basic example is writing a book review – you want people to know what the book is about, so you give them a brief overview. Once that is complete, you want to tell them what you think. If you thought the book was boring and way too easy to read, others might not agree, and it isn’t a fact, just your opinion. Make sure you always state “in my opinion” to help clear the air so people know you aren’t about to say something they might deem as factual. 
7. Learn How to Search Google Well to Find Excellent Resources. Regardless of all of their changes, I do still love Google, and I am sure you do, too. We love Google because we can work to get our sites noticed, and it really helps small businesses succeed in the Internet-age. Google is also an excellent resource for you to mine for information and you might not realize just how much you are missing. Take the chance to use Google and learn how to search well for amazing resources. How can you learn to become an expert Google searcher? Well, Hubspot wants to help and they offered an excellent guide; take a look!
8. Hire Industry Copywriters to Create Accurate Content. One of the best ways to ensure your content is completely accurate is to hire an industry copywriter. Industry copywriters can focus on niche markets, and they are skilled in researching and verifying said research. You can also find industry copywriters that know your specific industry that can provide excellent, accurate content for your site, setting you up as a trusted source within your industry. This also helps you get excellent content that is written well and flows naturally, which is definitely something you will want with your content.
9. Get a Content Audit. Writing new, accurate content can be easy, but what about your existing content? Is it accurate? Did you back up your claims and verify your research? A great way to start making sure your old content is accurate and to make any changes is to hire a content auditor to look it over and find what needs to be changed. This will be great because it will not only help check the accuracy of your content, but will help give you more tips and ideas on how to tweak your content and make any changes to improve your ranking on the SERPs. 
Start Creating Excellent, Accurate Content!
Now that you know a few ways to write accurate content, you need to start writing! You can also go through your existing content to ensure it is accurate with research backing up claims throughout the pieces.
If you find that you are having a hard time creating excellent, accurate content, then you should consider hiring an industry or niche copywriter. Industry writers can match your exact business need (for example, real estate writers, a strong technical writer) and write terminology that’s friendly to your readers.
Basically, content can be either positively or negatively aligned, and each of these has their own impacts on the audience. You can think about it from the perspective of someone who deals with motivating people. Such a person knows that when you’re trying to get your listeners to take themselves seriously, you can either provoke them into action or encourage them to do something positive.
With your content production, your content can either drive your reader to action or give them an element of fear in order to do what you tell them to do.
The Science of Motivation
The psychological model of positive reinforcement is one that is well known and has been a major part of developing a curriculum for schools. If you’ve ever heard of the carrot-and-the-stick analogy, then that pretty much sums it up. Basically, what positive reinforcement does is motivate the user by dangling something they want just out of reach so that they will strive to achieve it. It can be quite useful with the correct approach, but doesn’t work well for everyone.
Another psychological model that is associated with negative reinforcement can be illustrated with the analogy of a cattle prod and a cow. The motivating factor is fear of what will happen if something is not done or completed. In many places, parents have adopted this type of model for raising their kids. Again, it does appeal to a certain section of the populous but not to everyone.
We as humans know that the best way to get someone to do something is to offer something in exchange. That’s the premise behind going to work. You spend time in work, doing tasks for your employer and they repay you monetarily. The brain usually works on a task-reward system. A good example of this in action is the video game development industry. In video games, the user is treated to short-term rewards that keep them coming back for more. They are motivated to continue the game by these short-term rewards.
The brain is wired in a way that makes reward the reason for doing something. However, we can bypass the learned behavior and traditional motivation by forcing an individual to do something because of the threat or promise of losing something that they hold dear. In a lot of fiction writing, this is the case for the hero’s journey. Emotion is intricately tied with motivation and by tapping into it we are able to access controls that allow us to motivate our audience effectively, either through positive or negative means.
The Art of Making the Audience Like You
Generally speaking, positive content gets results. People are more likely to be inclined to listen to someone if they like them. Positive reinforcement has always been a major part of teaching kids what works best for them. Adults, too, tend to benefit a lot more from positive reinforcement because it removes blocks to critical thinking and learning and deals more with accessing the audience’s positive emotions. Positive emotions can be a very powerful driver for certain people. One of the most successful school systems in the world (that of Finland) demonstrates the benefits of positive reinforcement in motivating children. Adults aren’t really that different.
Positive content is usually built around the idea of making people like you and what you’re saying. You’re not being offensive and you’re not provoking outrage. You’re appealing to their higher instincts. You’re trying to reason with them and have them consider the logical solution to their problem and then providing them with a viable option. Emotional response also forms part of the positive content marketing scheme, usually dealing with positive feelings such as accomplishment and triumph. All these are tactics that well-written content deals with admirably. However, there is the other side of the coin.
Is Negative Content Ever Good?
Despite the fact that it’s called “negative content” it can have quite a positive effect on your readers. A simple example is my post titled “The Worst Advice I’ve ever heard on Content Marketing.” This particular piece of content managed to garner over six thousand views, traction on social media, replies and messages. That says something about the power of negative content.
Using negatively aligned words such as “Worst”, “Awful” or even “Tragic,” brings to the forefront dirty laundry of one type or another. It’s usually never something that you’d expect to hear from someone who’s setting out to motivate you.
Negative content deals with bypassing the area of higher thought that positive content targets and instead focuses more on the emotional responses that certain types of content engender. It accesses emotions as a means of directing the audience to do something and deals solely with emotions such as fear and shame. These emotions are baser than the ones positive content evokes and they can be quite intense, sometimes driving a user to do something that his or her regular personality would never even consider. Negative content can be even better than positive content under the right circumstances.
Developing Content around Positive and Negative Emotions
We already saw how positive and negative content taps into a reader’s emotions in order to garner a response from them. Which one is more effective? If you’re looking at creating content that is viral, then your best bet is positive content. To that end you’re going to need to build content around the carrot-and-stick analogy. Give the user what you think they would feel good about. Good examples of this kind of content are Human Interest Stories or times when the underdog actually won. This type of content usually goes viral because of the propensity of the human animal to enjoy demonstrating their compassion. Understanding how your audience perceives the world is crucial to figuring out how you can best motivate them.
Does Positive Content’s Ability to Create Audience Interaction Make it Better than Negative Content?
Although you can say this, it’s not strictly true. Because of the way positive content is designed to play on the positive and desirable feelings that human beings have, it gets more of an elicited response. Negative content partially relies on the fact that it isn’t used much. The shock value that a negative content headline can have on a reader can be quite impressive. Combined with deeply evocative feelings that can drive a user to do something, negative content can be as effective (or even more effective) than positive content.
What Sort of Emotions does Positive Content Evoke?
Although there are quite a gamut of emotions that positive content is responsible for causing in readers, the most common ones are:

• Amusement
• Surprise
• Interest
• Pleasure
• Happiness
• Delight
• Affection
• Joy
• Hope
• Excitement

As you can clearly see, these emotions are very powerful ones that positive content can tap into. The power behind positive content is in its ability to make people feel good by sharing. You can benefit from this by using these powerful positive emotions to drive users to get your content out there. The key behind this is selecting the right emotions to tap into. Of the above emotions (the ones that drive viral content) it can be quite easy to see how a positive spin on content production can create interest and inspire shares and readers.
Negative content, too, can tap into these emotions, but in a slightly roundabout way. Take, for example, the emotion of surprise. If there was something negative that shocked and surprised an audience, it would work as a great point from which to build negative content. The content may be negative, but the element of surprise is positive. Although the rest of the top ten list doesn’t generate as much interest from a negative content standpoint it underscores the fact that negative content is most effective in small doses.
Which One Should You Use?
In the long run, your content production should focus on trying to inspire the user in any way possible. Whether this is by giving them goals to aim at or showing them the worst that could happen to drive their passion, both of these content strategies have their niche appeal groups. Negative content should be used far less than positive content. Its power lies in its unpredictability. If you bring out a negative post in every fifteen to twenty total posts, then you catch your audience by surprise and are more likely to get a response out of them. However, nobody likes listening to naysayers of doom, and by consistently creating negative content, people will avoid you because of your focus on the negative.
Keeping your overall content production positive and focused on emotions such as inspiration and awe will get you much further as far as shares and audience interaction. People have always loved feel-good stories. It’s about time you capitalized on that.