Creating Great Content
We’re building Qwell, a better way to book medical appointments online. If you have any thoughts or feedback please send us a note at “hello at qwell.com”.
This post is a copy of an internal document shared here at Qwell. One of the responsibilities of our engineering team is providing techncial guidance to the rest of the organization.
One of the best things we can do for the business is to create content. Content serves many purposes: informs our users, expands the reach of the brand, provides more opportunities to get people back to our site, increases our authority to search engines. For us, any content is always better than no content. There are some best practices you can follow to turn your content from good to great but don’t let anything in this document dissuade you from creating.
TLDR
Do: Write really good content that is helpful/informative/fun
Don’t: Write content for the sake of writing content
Do: Include links back to Qwell where it makes sense
Don’t: Add a link for every word
Do: Include links to non-Qwell reputable sources
Don’t: Add a link for every word
Do: Include tracking when adding link to Qwell
Don’t: Overdue the tracking
Content
Above anything else great content starts with your words/images/ideas/etc. If you only have time for one thing spend it here.
Do: Write really good content that is /informative/fun
Don’t: Write content for the sake of writing content
Inbound Links
Great content will include links back to Qwell. Inbound links direct people back to our website, which helps us drive traffic, and links give our domain more “authority”. Google and other search engines will rank domains with more authority higher than those with less. Only include links where it makes sense! Obnoxious linking is worse than no linking.
Do: Include links back to Qwell where it makes sense
Don’t: Add a link for every word
Outbound Links
Great content will include links to other (non-Qwell) reputable sources. Outbound links to reputable sources makes our content more credible in the eyes of the reader and search engines. Google and other search engines give more authority to domains that link to reputable sources.
Do: Include links to non-Qwell reputable sources
Don’t: Add a link for every word
Link Tracking
It’s helpful for us to know where our traffic is coming from. For content created explicitly for marketing purposes it’s helpful to know if it’s resonating with users in a way that drives traffic. It’s less important for other types of content (like tweets or posts on instagram) but the option still exists if you need those types of insights. One important thing to note here is that too much information can become difficult to parse through. If we add unique tracking to every link ever the data becomes too difficult to drive insights from. To avoid this use the same tracking code for similar links, use the same campaign or medium variables for similar campaigns, etc.
Adding link tracking is as easy as appending some text to the end of links.
www.qwell.com
becomes…
www.qwell.com?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=edition-2&utm_medium=email
If someone clicks on the second link, our analytics platform will know they are coming from the second edition of our newsletter which they received in their email.
Note: You can’t use spaces in links, replace spaces with dashes (“edition-2” not “edition 2”).
Do: Include tracking code when adding links back to Qwell
Don’t: Overdue the tracking
FAQ
Q: What does “utm” mean in link tracking?
A: That prefix is given to us by Google analytics and is required.
