If you’ve spent immoderate clip successful integer marketing, you’d deliberation making prime contented is the cure-all to each selling woe. It’s successful each SEO usher and contented selling playbook and tossed astir similar buzzwords from a absorption consultant’s presentation.

But what does “quality” adjacent mean? Some radical deliberation the Alchemist changed their lives, portion others deliberation it’s the worst happening ever written. What’s “quality” to 1 scholar whitethorn beryllium implicit BS to another.

So however bash you measurement whether your contented is genuinely “quality”?

To find out, we analyzed our ain contented astatine Ahrefs and discovered five distinct levels. Each level represents a antithetic benignant of investment, accomplishment set, and imaginable interaction connected your selling goals.

Understanding these 5 chiseled levels volition help you:

• Balance quick SEO wins with semipermanent thought enactment content
• Match contented types to your team’s acquisition and expertise levels
• Develop your team’s skills implicit time, arsenic your squad members tin ascent from basal to advanced, continuously leveling up their penning and probe abilities.
• Strategically allocate resources wherever they’ll make the astir impact

Here are the 5 levels:

Simple listicles are blog posts that aggregate basal accusation that’s wide available. They typically don’t necessitate heavy cognition of the subject, thorough research, oregon immense penning experience. As such, they tin beryllium created rapidly by interns, freelancers, inferior marketers, oregon even AI.

Here are immoderate examples:

• 75 SEO Resources I (Probably) Can’t Live Without
• 15 SEO Meetups You Should Have On Your Radar
• 124 SEO Statistics for 2025
• 16 Top Search Engines successful 2025 (Including Google Alternatives)
• Steal 21+ of Our Best SEO & Content Marketing Templates

Even though we see them “Level 1” content, these types of posts thin to make a batch of hunt traffic. For example, the apical articles that nonstop our blog the astir hunt postulation are each elemental listicles.

To seizure this hunt traffic, you request to people topics that radical are searching for. This is known arsenic keyword research. Since we’ve established that it’s apt that specified topics nonstop a website tons of hunt traffic, the easiest mode to find them is to spot what keywords your competitors are already ranking for.

Here’s how:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
2. Enter your competitor’s domain
3. Go to the Top pages report
4. Toggle SERP titles on

For example, you tin spot that HubSpot ranks for and gets hunt postulation from a fig of elemental listicles. You tin archer by looking astatine the titles—mostly “XX [something]” oregon “XX [Best]”. You’d privation to spell done this study and enactment down those topics that are applicable to your site.

Making elemental listicles is straightforward. In fact, truthful straightforward that AI tin easy nutrient them. That’s wherefore successful today’s climate, you request to spell supra and beyond conscionable elemental “here are #1, #2, #3”-type articles. You request to marque thing that AI cannot reproduce.

The champion mode to bash this is to usage personal experience. Instead of conscionable naming items, really do, use, oregon acquisition what you’re penning about. For example, alternatively of conscionable listing retired AI representation generators, our Director of Content Marketing Ryan Law actually tested them out:

Focus connected adding real-world item to your elemental lists: mini-reviews, idiosyncratic pros and cons, oregon what you learned from your experience.

Advanced listicles are database posts that dive deeper and radical tools, resources, strategies, oregon insights successful a much elaborate and curated way. This requires the writer to beryllium well-versed successful the domain truthful that they tin distill analyzable ideas into concise summaries and signifier them into a coherent list.

Here are immoderate examples:

• 17 Proven SaaS Marketing Strategies From 11 CMOs & Founders
• Travel SEO: 8 Strategies From Actual Travel Publishers and SEOs
• Healthcare SEO: 7 Strategies From Medical SEO Pros
• Education SEO for Higher Education, EdTech and K-12 Schools
• Advanced SEO: My Top 8 Tactics Shared By 107 SEOs

The enactment betwixt Level 1 and Level 2 whitethorn look tiny, but it’s the quality betwixt a fast-fashion, “sell anything” level similar Shein versus a boutique store similar Goodhood that curates its selection.

In Level 1, determination is an constituent of “information dumping.” The writer leaves nary chromatic unturned and gives everything to the reader—it’s up to the scholar to determine what they privation retired of it. That’s wherefore you thin to spot ample numbers: “75 SEO resources”, “124 SEO statistics”, and more.

In Level 2, curation takes precedence. The writer expresses their sentiment by selecting, omitting, and categorizing items together. The database is intentionally small; the constituent is not to overwhelm but to authorities intelligibly wherefore this enactment is the best, astatine slightest according to the writer’s opinion.

That’s wherefore you request domain knowledge, different you can’t curate well. However, if you don’t person existing knowledge, a bully mode to flooded this hurdle is to interview experts.

For example, I’ve ne'er worked successful travel. So, it was intolerable for maine to nutrient a portion connected “travel SEO” without generously utilizing cliches and wide generalizations. That’s wherefore I reached retired to experts successful question SEO, interviewed them, and curated their insights into a piece:

Deep dives are guides that supply exhaustive sum of a topic.

Here are immoderate examples:

• Link Building for SEO: The Beginner’s Guide
• Keyword Research: The Beginner’s Guide by Ahrefs
• On-Page SEO: How to Optimize for Robots and Readers
• The Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO
• Event Marketing: The Ultimate Guide That Cost $400k to Make

Writing a heavy dive volition necessitate you to bash tons of probe and talk to taxable substance experts. You’ll besides request an extended knowing of the taxable yourself. After all, you can’t inquire the close questions if you don’t cognize the topic well.

For example, our Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Tim Soulo interviewed a twelve nexus gathering practitioners for his link gathering guide:

He besides made definite to screen each bases and interviewed experts of each backgrounds: agency, consultant, affiliate, in-house, e-commerce, and more.

Having the cognition is lone 1 portion of penning an astonishing heavy dive. You’ll besides request the quality to designer your station successful a mode that’s engaging and casual to follow. As my person Visakan Veerasamy says: “thinking is easy, accusation architecture is hard.”

One method you tin perchance usage to operation your usher is to tally your people taxable successful our AI Content Helper. AI Content Helper volition assistance place the important subtopics radical privation to spot successful your guide.

For example, present are the topics AI Content Helper suggests to screen for “event marketing”:

This was truly adjuvant erstwhile I was penning my guide to lawsuit marketing. Even though the usher was based solely connected our acquisition organizing a large-scale conference, the subtopics were adjuvant successful laying retired its structure. Since I knew that searchers privation to spot subtopics similar benefits, however to hole and program for one, however to thrust request oregon marketplace your event, and post-event activities, I covered each of them successful my guide:

Experiments oregon surveys are articles based connected first-hand data: you tally an experimentation oregon a survey, stitchery responses, oregon measurement a circumstantial phenomenon. Then you stock insights from what you’ve learned.

Here are immoderate examples:

• SEO Salary Survey (How Much are SEOs Really Making?)
• I Deleted the Content From Two Posts To See if They’d Still Rank. Here’s What Happened
• I Analyzed 300K Keywords. Here’s What I Learned About AI Overviews
• I Got 129.7% More Traffic With Related Keywords
• I Disavowed “Toxic Backlinks”: Here’s What Happened

Your extremity is to make archetypal insights not seen anyplace else. However, doing this is not easy. You request thorough cognition of a topic, applicable experience, and successful galore cases, a sizeable concern of clip and resources.

This is the main crushed wherefore you don’t spot specified contented pieces often.

But if done right, it tin summation a batch of traction. For example, Aira’s State of Link Building study has earned 1,400 backlinks from 488 referring domains.

Considering however hard it is to physique links, that’s an unthinkable achievement.

While determination isn’t a surefire mode to make experiments oregon survey ideas, my champion proposition is to interview your co-workers. After all, it’s apt they’d person tally experiments during their work. You tin speech to them astir the experiments they ran, their hypotheses, the results generated, and what they learned. For example, that’s what I did erstwhile I talked to our Head of Partnerships, Igor Gorbenko astir what helium learned from spending $1 cardinal connected sponsoring creators:

Even if they person yet to tally immoderate experiments, they mightiness person questions oregon curiosities on the mode that you could tally experiments on.

This is particularly existent if you speech to your income team. They’ll person tons of questions from prospects and customers that request to beryllium answered. For example, here’s our Head of Enterprise Sales telling our contented squad what they privation to spot more of:

Research studies are in-depth analyses often involving ample information sets oregon caller methodologies. Original ideas are innovative thoughts that person the imaginable to reshape however radical successful your manufacture attack a topic.

Here are immoderate examples:

• 96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here’s How to Be successful the Other 3.45%
• Why Big Companies Make Bad Content
• How “Deep Content” Will Protect Your SEO successful the AI Era
• There’s No Such Thing arsenic “Accurate” Search Volume
• 63% of Websites Receive AI Traffic (New Study of 3,000 Sites)

This is the highest level due to the fact that it is highly difficult. You request extended domain expertise, years of experience, and captious thinking. If you’re moving a probe study, you’ll request information and adjacent information scientists to assistance you with the analysis. It is simply a batch of time, effort, and money.

But if you deed ‘bingo’, you genuinely get the cookware of golden astatine the extremity of the rainbow. Because if you’ve said thing unsocial and notable, radical volition mention and nexus to you. For example, if you look astatine the top-linked articles connected our blog, they’re mostly probe studies:

Even the crushed wherefore the article connected long-tail keywords got truthful galore backlinks was a effect of captious thinking. The archetypal mentation of the station focused connected correcting the misconception down the term: “long-tail keywords” were so-named due to the fact that they resided connected the agelong process of the hunt request curve, not due to the fact that they were long.

There are nary shortcuts to reaching this level. If I had the concealed hack, I would beryllium publishing Level 5 contented each time long. But evidently I’m not. It’s akin to being successful academia—not everyone tin beryllium a published professor. That’s wherefore we respect academics truthful much; you request to behaviour superb probe and make innovative ideas to adjacent beryllium connected that echelon.

That said, academics don’t conscionable people caller studies each the time. They besides people replications. So if we widen the academia analogy, you’ll recognize that you tin people replications of existing studies successful your manufacture too.

Here’s however we tin find imaginable studies to replicate. I’ll spell to Content Explorer, participate my people keyword and “study”, and past filter for:

• No explicit results (to region NSFW results)
• Referring domains >50 (to find studies with tons of backlinks)
• Word number >500 (to find blog posts)
• DR >40 (to find reputable websites)

Scrolling done the results, I spot a fewer imaginable studies that mightiness beryllium worthy replicating:

As you tin see, the higher the level, the much effort, investment, and clip you person to enactment in. Especially Level 5 content, wherever you mightiness adjacent instrumentality years oregon decades to accumulate capable expertise and acquisition to travel up with superb ideas.

As concern writer Morgan Housel writes, “The agelong tally is conscionable a postulation of abbreviated runs.” You request to past successful the abbreviated word successful bid to beryllium astir successful the agelong term. You can’t enactment each your eggs successful the Level 5 basket—you request to equilibrium it retired with the different levels.

The levels mightiness beryllium a standard but they are besides a portfolio. You request each of them, not conscionable the highest level. At Ahrefs, we nutrient contented of each levels.

How bash we determine which level to nutrient for each topic? Let maine present our BREW framework:

1. Business potential — How good tin you diagnostic your merchandise oregon service? We people this connected a standard from 0 to 3, wherever 3 is an irresistible transportation of your merchandise and “0” means there’s hardly a mode to notation it astatine all. For example, the taxable “social media marketing” would people a ‘0’ and “link building” volition people a ‘3’.
2. Reach—Who are you reaching, and however galore tin you reach? We mightiness spell viral connected TikTok, but the millions of random radical watching are highly improbable to bargain a premium SaaS product. A bottom-of-the-funnel nonfiction whitethorn person a little postulation potential, but we could beryllium reaching decision-makers astatine companies.
3. Effort — How overmuch clip and resources would you need? Will it beryllium worthy it? Perhaps you mightiness adjacent marque a minimum viable article, wherever you find originative ways to ‘reduce’ the effort portion maintaining the aforesaid imaginable reach. For example, you mightiness interrogation 3 radical alternatively of 12 for a heavy dive guide.
4. Who — Who’s going to execute this idea? Does this idiosyncratic person the indispensable skills to propulsion it off? For example, it mightiness beryllium overkill to get your astir elder contented marketer to marque a elemental listicle, portion it mightiness beryllium aboriginal days for your intern to travel up with a groundbreaking thought for your industry.

To get the greenish light, the thought should beryllium balanced successful these 4 factors.

For example, let’s people the taxable “link building”:

1. Business potential — 3, due to the fact that our SEO instrumentality is integral for gathering links.
2. Reach — High. Keywords Explorer shows a imaginable hunt postulation imaginable of 4,400.
3. Effort — Effort for this nonfiction tin beryllium scaled up oregon down, depending connected however overmuch enactment we privation to put in.
4. Who — Our CMO Tim has decades of acquisition in SEO.

In this case, since this taxable scores good connected our BREW framework, we decided to perpetrate resources to marque the champion link-building guide ever.

Final thoughts

If you privation to go a large contented marketer oregon a institution known for its high-quality content, you request to ascent the contented prime ladder.

After all, the higher the level, the harder it is for AI to support up. You can’t shortcut the process to expertise. You person to learn, enactment successful the work, acquisition reality, and bash it implicit and implicit again. That’s however you tin travel up with innovative ideas to write about.

You whitethorn reason that it’s simply a substance of prompting, but without heavy expertise, it’s besides hard to constitute a good, elaborate punctual that tin get LLMs to make archetypal ideas. And without expertise, you besides can’t archer if the generated output is genuinely innovative oregon conscionable regurgitation.

But arsenic I’ve said, dainty the levels arsenic a portfolio. You should beryllium creating Level 5 content, but that doesn’t mean you should neglect the Level 1s. There’s a clip and spot for each of them—and each of them are adjuvant to readers astatine antithetic accomplishment levels.

Even better: repurpose your content. Invest the clip and effort into a portion of Level 5 content, past splinter them into aggregate Level 1s, 2s, and 3s.

That’s however you tin marque your contented spell a long way.