This post originally appeared on Growth Everywhere, a marketing and business growth blog.
In today’s world, all companies need to become media companies. And being a media company means creating content. But if everyone is playing the content creation game, how do you stand out?
The answer is 10x content.
For a primer on what that means exactly, watch this video from Rand Fishkin:
Creating 10x content isn’t easy, but it’s rewarding. Just take a look at a study of the first page results of Google:
In short, 10x content:
- Is well-researched
- Is typically longer
- Stands out
- Has additional effort put into it
- Will protect you from Google Panda
In this post, you’re going to see exceptional examples of 10x content to help give you ideas on how to replicate their success. Bookmark this in case you ever need help coming up with ideas on 10x content!
Written Content
1. Brian Dean analyzed over 1 million Google search results and shares his learnings
Brian Dean started his SEO blog at a time where it wasn’t cool to start an SEO blog anymore. And yet, he found a way to stand out from the rest of the SEO blogs in the industry because he brought practical, easy-to-digest posts that were loaded with research.
In this specific post, he analyzed over 1 million results to help guide people towards gaining more organic traffic. The page is peppered with helpful statistics and graphs to make it simple and to the point:
SEO is one of those subjects that isn’t black or white. The only thing people can depend on to continue to get an edge on their competitors is to test on their own and learn from the research of others. Research can often be flawed when it’s done in a haphazard way.
Thankfully,every once in awhile people like Brian Dean will come around and make SEO easier for everyone.
Content Length: 3,013 words
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Statistically significant data set (over 1 million results analyzed)
- Long-form post
- Easy-to-understand graphs
- Practical examples
- Well-formatted with bullets, subheads, and short paragraphs
2. A Beginner’s Guide to Website Speed Optimization by Kinsta
Page Speed is an important topic that every web company should focus on optimizing. This epic guide isn’t just a blog post, it’s a series of 6 chapters that explains topics such as: what page speed is, how it impacts business success, and how to improve it.
When you first land on the page, you see a custom-designed image above the fold:
As you continue to scroll through the post, you’ll see other designs that complement the content:
Content Length: 10,708 words
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Long-form post/resource guide
- Well-researched
- Good use of complementary graphs
- It’s clear that a lot of effort went into it
3. The Shape of Things To Come – How An Industrial Designer Became Apple’s Greatest Product by Ian Parker
In this truly epic piece, The New Yorker has an in-depth piece on lead Apple designer Johnny Ive. This is a powerhouse biography on the life of Johnny Ive and how he helped create some of the best designs we’ve ever seen. If you’re an Apple fan, this is an article that you’ll gobble up.
Content Length: 16,389 words
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Long-form (super long form)
- Shares interesting anecdotes about the live of Johnny Ive
- Feels like the reader is getting an inside look into the world of Apple (takes the reader on a journey)
4. What if we wanted to get the whole world on clean energy? by Shane Snow
Shane Snow is the founder of Contently and knows content marketing like the back of his hand. The clean energy movement is clearly gaining momentum but the world still needs more education around it, so this long-form article does a good job of breaking down the key concepts into simple-to-understand terms.
The cartoony illustrations also do a good job of adding more perspective to each scenario:
Content Length: 2,585 words
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Long-form
- Complex topic simplified for easy reading
- Unique illustrations
- Well-organized
- Statistics broken down into easy-to-read graphs
5. What Is Conversion Rate Optimization by Qualaroo
Insights company Qualaroo occupies the first and second spots of organic results for ‘conversion rate optimization’ with two in-depth posts:
Upon clicking through, you’ll find that the page isn’t just an article, it’s a collection of resources. 12 chapters, to be exact:
Each chapter is well-designed and explains conversion rate optimization terminology in a simple way. This is a great example of how you can combine multiple resources to create a mini-series. And bonus points for linking them all together! If you compare this to the third result (Wikipedia), it’s much more comprehensive.
Why This Is 10x Content:
- 12x content (12 chapters)
- Well-designed
- Easy to navigate
- In-depth
6. The Beginner’s Guide to Online Marketing by Neil Patel
Similar to Qualaroo, Neil Patel has built an epic resource for those looking to get into online marketing. If we do a Google search for ‘online marketing’, we’ll find that he occupies the top organic result:
This is an exceptionally well-designed guide with 14 pages of in-depth content.
Here’s a sneak peak:
These are the types of guides that Neil Patel pays $30,000 for and gives away for free. The result? A top organic search ranking for a heavily trafficked keyword.
Why This Is 10x Content:
- 14x content (14 chapters)
- Excellent design
- Easy to navigate
- Well-organized
7. Elon Musk: The World’s Raddest Man by Wait But Why
This is a 4-part series of EPIC articles by Wait But Why. If you combined these four, this could basically be a book.
The mini-series is a short biography on Elon’s life and how he plans to tackle seemingly impossible problems. Now, you might be thinking that downloading the audio biography of ‘Elon Musk’ is enough, but actually reading through this might be worth your time.
For one, the writer has a humorous style and it’s easy to read. The illustrations are cute and add to the casual tone of the article.
Content Length of Part 1: 6,504 words
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Ultra long-form
- Funny custom cartoons
- Great storytelling
- Easy to understand
- Includes a content upgrade for later consumption (since it’s so long)
8. Internet trends KPCB
The Kleiner Perkins Internet Trends report is an annual presentation that is shared widely around the Internet. The venture capital firm reveals an abundance of information on where we’re going in terms of technology.
All the data is organized into simple-to-understand graphs and charts. Interesting points are littered throughout the slides.
Content Length: 196 slides
Why This Is 10x Content
- Very long presentation (196 slides)
- Concise and to the point
- Organized graphs and charts
- Practical information
9. Microcopy: Tiny Words That Make A Huge Impact On Conversions by ConversionXL
ConversionXL is a blog focused on conversion rate optimization, which can be a dense topic that’s difficult to understand for many. Overall, the blog does a great job of generously linking to every claim or statistic that it cites and is well formatted. The benefit to linking out generously is twofold: a) the reader gets more value/insights, and b) you get a chance to build a relationship with the site that you are linking out to by mentioning that you included them in your content.
This post in particular gives the reader an opportunity to think about how they should be approaching wordsmithing for marketing campaigns. If you Google ‘microcopy’, this post ranks #4 organically.
Content Length: 2,184 words
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Helpful images layered throughout the post
- Abundance of reference links
- Sprinkled with data throughout the post
- Practical and actionable
10. The Management Framework that Propelled LinkedIn to a $20 Billion Company by First Round Capital
Who would’ve thought that a venture capital firm would spend so much time and effort on content marketing? First Round is a VC blog that stands head and shoulders above the rest. Management isn’t a particularly sexy topic because it can seem a bit dense at times, but this post gives an actionable framework broken down into sections so the reader can hone in on what they need to work on and act immediately.
People often like to look for templates or frameworks to impact their lives quickly and this post is a fantastic example. If you Google ‘management framework’, you’ll see that this post sits around the #5 organic ranking.
Content Length: 2,221
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Captivating header image
- Long-form
- Takes a dense topic and simplifies it
- Actionable framework for readers to swipe and deploy for immediate use
11. Slightly More Than 100 Fantastic Pieces of Journalism by The Atlantic
Here’s an epic curated list of exceptional non-fiction from 2013. It’s literally a list of 100 pieces of 10x content.
Content Length: 7,427
Why This Is 10x Content:
- The length
- Each link is accompanied by a simple but powerful point
- It takes a lot of time (over a year to curate the best of the best AND remember important details of each piece)
12. 2015 Really Was The Bizarro Peyton Manning Season by FiveThirtyEight
FiveThirtyEight is a statistics blog that shares interesting numbers around topics such as sports and politics. I particularly liked what they’ve done with sports in the past few years as they always distill insights using raw numbers and break them down in an easy-to-understand manner.
The sports industry often has commentators who share anecdotes, and while they’re interesting, nothing gets more to the point than pure numbers. And FiveThirtyEight stands out because its approach to sportswriting is different from the rest.
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Pure, hard data broken down into a digestible form
- Great design
13. The Ultimate Guide to No-Pain Copywriting (or, Every Copywriting Formula Ever) by Joanna Wiebe of Copy Hackers
You know a piece is EPIC when it has its own table of contents. As a marketer, I see ‘The Ultimate Guide to…’ in headlines quite a bit and most of the time the articles fall short of the headline’s promise. Copywriting is an art that often gets overlooked in the world of marketing (especially in tech).
But if done right, copywriting can be one of the most effective weapons in a company’s arsenal. This is an incredible resource to sharpen your copywriting skills. Who doesn’t like templates that you can implement immediately?
Content Length: 11,888 words
Why This is 10x Content:
- SUPER epic post (close to 12,000 words)
- Well-organized (even with a table of contents!)
- Easy to follow/well-formatted (copywriters excel at this)
Resource Pages
Resource pages are basically ‘libraries’ of helpful content for the user. It’s strange because it seems that the search engines favor these sections (perhaps because they’re all in-depth and interlink with one another).
For example, if you Google ‘customer acquisition’, you’ll find that Help Scout has the #1 organic ranking:
Similarly, if you Google ‘customer service’, you’ll find that they rank #3:
The key takeaway: think about building some resource pages for your site to see if you can capitalize on organic traffic.
Here are some great examples:
14. HelpScout Customer Resources
As mentioned above, HelpScout has done a fantastic job of curating its top content. Each post has a custom designed image and is flush with long-form content and helpful links.
(Notice the ‘Chapters’ link in the top right corner.)
Total Resources: 12
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Simple UI
- In-depth content
- Curated links to the absolute best subject resources on the web
15. HubSpot knowledge center
HubSpot is known for producing great content time and time again. Although they have a general resource center, they decided to do something similar to what HelpScout did. They compiled their top resources and built out a well-designed section to make it easy to find their best stuff:
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Simple UI
- Many options to help the user improve:
- Certifications
- Videos
- Guides
- Projects
- All in-depth content
- Custom curated
16. How A Car Works
How A Car Works is a complete guide to well…how a car works. From the engine to braking systems to manual gearboxes, it’s all in here in an organized way. If you’re looking for ONE way to put together a resource page, this is the best that I’ve seen thus far.
Upon typing ‘how a car works’, you’ll find that this site occupies the top 2 results. Not too shabby.
On the homepage, I saw 16 sections and I thought to myself ‘each section will probably just be one page of content explaining high-level details’, but that was not the case. After I clicked ‘Transmission’, 14 guides and 127 illustrations popped up!
Talk about epic resource:
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Extremely comprehensive guides for each section
- Well-designed
- Well-organized
17. Startups, this is how design works by Wells Riley
Great design sells itself.
Just look at Apple.
But the meaning of design can be elusive to some (including myself). In this incredibly simple and well-designed resource, Wells Riley explains what exactly design is.
Although the resource is targeted to startups, it might as well be targeted towards the general population. You’ll learn what goes into great design, examples of great design, the different types of design, and much more. I’m not a designer myself but it doesn’t take a great artist to appreciate art.
And that’s what this resource is: a piece of art. It flows well, is unobtrusive, and covers just enough for people to be dangerous when it comes to understanding what design is.
Content Length: 3,483
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Well-designed
- Explains the most important concepts in a simple way (no wasted efforts)
Interactive Content
Interactive content stands out above the rest because of the sheer additional amount of work that it requires in addition to the writing involved.
18. What Percent Are You? by The New York Times
People often like to look at their income as a barometer of where they stand. That’s why The New York Times put together an interactive map where the user can enter in his or her household income and track where they stand in the United States.
Type in ‘what percent am I’ or ‘what percent are you’ into Google and you’ll see this in the top 2 organic results. The NYT is always looking for new subscribers and it’s not a bad play to acquire new financially-minded readers through this piece.
Call it ego bait but hey, it works.
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Simple to use
- Great design
- Does something unique vs. the competition (others are all articles)
19. The 10 Minute AdWords Management Workouts by KlientBoost
Google AdWords is no new subject and to be frank, it’s not talked about much because there hasn’t been any major innovations in recent years (just small tweaks here and there). KlientBoost did a nice job of making a dense subject fun with its gifographics on how to keep your AdWords account up to par.
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Takes a dense subject and simplifies it
- Great design
- Interactive design that “one ups” the competition
20. How Search Engines Work by Google
The #3 organic result in Google for ‘how search engines work’ is by none other than Google. The concept of web crawlers can be a bit overwhelming to understand but Google has done a good job of breaking it down piece by piece.
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Parallax scrolling – no other competitive piece does this
- Succinct
- Well-organized
- AWESOME design
Video Content
21. Squatty Potty video ad
Those of you who are familiar with Shark Tank have probably seen the Squatty Potty. For those who aren’t, the Squatty Potty is a stool to help people poop better by switching you into a squatting position when you’re doing your business.
As you can imagine, it’s not easy to educate the entire world on a new way to #2, but Squatty Potty has done it.
Why This Is 10x Content:
- Humorous
- Remarkable – a unicorn pooping out rainbow ice cream?
- Educational
- High quality
Conclusion
As we continue to glide towards peak content, it’s important to take a step back from our current content marketing efforts and ask ourselves whether we’re truly making an impact or not. If we’re producing content for content’s sake or because ‘someone told us to’, we might be better off doing nothing.
The world doesn’t need more content; the world needs more utility provided to it.
One thing is for sure: the game of content marketing is only going to get harder and harder and the best will continue to reap the benefits. Now it’s your turn to make a decision on which side you want to be on. =)
Good luck!
