10x Content

What is 10x Content?

The term ‘10x content’ was coined by SEO guru Rand Fishkin, and the idea behind it is simple: if you want to outrank the best page currently sitting at the top of Google for your target keyword, your page needs to be ten times better than theirs.

This is because incremental improvements rarely drive measurable results because Google already has a page that satisfies queries well enough. As a result, to displace the page at the top of the pile, you’ll need to create something that’s far more useful so that linking to it is a no-brainer.

However, it’s worth taking a moment to actually explore what’s meant by ‘ten times better,’ because some marketers can easily misinterpret it as referring to creating something ten times longer.

Instead, a 10x page should be better in ways that the reader values most. This means that it answers their questions more completely, is easier to read and navigate, focuses on using original data or examples that other pages lack, loads faster, and looks like something that’s been created by experts. While this can sometimes mean longer copy, it’s the quality that shapes 10x content.

Why 10x is Important

Why does 10x content matter? Exceptional content has the power to earn those all-important links on its own. When you publish something that’s clearly the best resource on a topic, other people in your field will reference it without being asked.

Creating pages that have the power to link on their own is a marketer’s dream, especially given that those links are editorial, relevant, and free. It’s also why we tend to pair a content campaign with outreach, because we can create the 10x asset first and then work to make sure the right people know it exists.

Despite this, 10x content is expensive and takes extremely high levels of expertise, research, data work, and often custom design.

Taking a Qualitative Approach

The higher levels of work that are required to create this type of content mean that it’s impossible to create 10x content at volume. Alternatively, more teams are finding success in reserving their effort for a smaller number of pages that justify the attention. For example, commercial pages that you want to rank or link-magnet assets that are designed to pull in coverage.

To summarise, 10x content is more of a standard rather than a word count, and before you hit publish on anything that you want to rank high, always take a look at the competition and ask yourself if your page is significantly better. If you’re unsure it is, you’ll probably have more work to do.