Contents
Simple listicles
Advanced listicles
Deep dives
Experiments and surveys
If you’ve spent some time in digital marketing, you’d think making quality content is the cure-all to every marketing woe. It’s in every SEO guide and content marketing playbook and tossed around like buzzwords from a management consultant’s presentation.
But what does “quality” even mean? Some people think the Alchemist changed their lives, while others think it’s the worst thing ever written. What’s “quality” to one reader may be complete BS to another.
So how do you measure whether your content is truly “quality”?
To find out, we analyzed our own content at Ahrefs and discovered five distinct levels. Each level represents a different kind of investment, skill set, and potential impact on your marketing goals.
Understanding these five distinct levels will help you:
- Balance quick SEO wins with long-term thought leadership content
- Match content types to your team’s experience and expertise levels
- Develop your team’s skills over time, as your team members can climb from basic to advanced, continuously leveling up their writing and research abilities.
- Strategically allocate resources where they’ll generate the most impact
Here are the five levels:
1. Simple listicles
Simple listicles are blog posts that aggregate basic information that’s widely available. They typically don’t require deep knowledge of the subject, thorough research, or vast writing experience. As such, they can be created quickly by interns, freelancers, junior marketers, or even AI.
Here are some 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 in 2025 (Including Google Alternatives)
- Steal 21+ of Our Best SEO & Content Marketing Templates
Even though we consider them “Level 1” content, these types of posts tend to generate a lot of search traffic. For example, the top articles that send our blog the most search traffic are all simple listicles.
2. Advanced listicles
Advanced listicles are list posts that dive deeper and group tools, resources, strategies, or insights in a more detailed and curated way. This requires the writer to be well-versed in the domain so that they can distill complex ideas into concise summaries and organize them into a coherent list.
Here are some 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 line between Level 1 and Level 2 may seem tiny, but it’s the difference between a fast-fashion, “sell anything” platform like Shein versus a boutique shop like Goodhood that curates its selection.
In Level 1, there is an element of “information dumping.” The writer leaves no stone unturned and gives everything to the reader—it’s up to the reader to decide what they want out of it. That’s why you tend to see large numbers: “75 SEO resources”, “124 SEO statistics”, and more.
In Level 2, curation takes precedence. The writer expresses their opinion by selecting, omitting, and categorizing items together. The list is intentionally small; the point is not to overwhelm but to state clearly why this selection is the best, at least according to the writer’s opinion.
That’s why you need domain knowledge, otherwise you can’t curate well. However, if you don’t have existing knowledge, a good way to overcome this hurdle is to interview experts.
For example, I’ve never worked in travel. So, it was impossible for me to produce a piece on “travel SEO” without generously using cliches and broad generalizations. That’s why I reached out to experts in travel SEO, interviewed them, and curated their insights into a piece:
3. Deep dives
Deep dives are guides that provide exhaustive coverage of a topic.
Here are some 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 deep dive will require you to do tons of research and speak to subject matter experts. You’ll also need an extensive understanding of the topic yourself. After all, you can’t ask the right questions if you don’t know the topic well.
For example, our Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Tim Soulo interviewed a dozen link building practitioners for his link building guide:
4. Experiments and surveys
Experiments or surveys are articles based on first-hand data: you run an experiment or a survey, gather responses, or measure a specific phenomenon. Then you share insights from what you’ve learned.
Here are some 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 goal is to generate original insights not seen anywhere else. However, doing this is not easy. You need thorough knowledge of a topic, practical experience, and in many cases, a sizeable investment of time and resources.
This is the main reason why you don’t see such content pieces often.
But if done right, it can gain a lot of traction. For example, Aira’s State of Link Building report has earned 1,400 backlinks from 488 referring domains.
Final thoughts
If you want to become a great content marketer or a company known for its high-quality content, you need to climb the content quality ladder.
After all, the higher the level, the harder it is for AI to keep up. You can’t shortcut the process to expertise. You have to learn, put in the work, experience reality, and do it over and over again. That’s how you can come up with innovative ideas to write about.
You may argue that it’s simply a matter of prompting, but without deep expertise, it’s also difficult to write a good, detailed prompt that can get LLMs to generate original ideas. And without expertise, you also can’t tell if the generated output is truly innovative or just regurgitation.
But as I’ve said, treat the levels as a portfolio. You should be creating Level 5 content, but that doesn’t mean you should neglect the Level 1s. There’s a time and place for all of them—and all of them are helpful to readers at different skill levels.
Even better: repurpose your content. Invest the time and effort into a piece of Level 5 content, then splinter them into multiple Level 1s, 2s, and 3s.
That’s how you can make your content go a long way.