11x Content: Reimagining 10x Content in the Post-HCU Era
By Ethan Lazuk
Last updated:
You’re enjoying the new third edition!
This is now the third major version of this post, which has had 100+ revisions and counting.
You might be thinking, “What’s different about it?”
Well, it’s not the ideas in here that’ve changed. It’s the proof of their value.
It’s grown.
This post introduces a different take on 10x content, what I call “11x content.”
It was at first an experimental post, written in a stream-of-consciousness style, an homage to Jack Kerouac, if you will.
“And this was really the way that my whole road experience began, and the things that were to come are too fantastic not to tell.”
– On the Road
It ranked well for “10x” queries. It does better now.
Maybe that’s even how you got here. 🙂
But I also realized, for this post to have maximum value, it needs not only to rank well, but also be presented in the most helpful format for the reader, for you.
It needs to be worth your time.
We’ve all heard stories of HCU casualties, websites with authentic content hit by stray-round classifiers.
Some ranking losses were even doubled down on during the March 2024 core update.
I’ve evaluated HCU-impacted sites owned by acquaintances and looked at other examples for different people.
I’m not saying I have all the answers.
But I will say this: I’ve been following the lesson I learned with this post (and the 11x framework, in general) — April was my best month on Google Search, ever.
Comparing the two weeks before and after the last core update, my clicks in Search Console are up 67%.
Perhaps more importantly, my users’ active engagement time in GA4 increased 36%.
My intuition says HCU-impacted sites — like all websites — can benefit from the same lesson I learned, which arguably gets at what “helpful content” actually means.
In short, it isn’t about the quality of your content; it’s about whether it’s worth someone’s time.
And to be worth someone’s time, your content must be different.
It must stand out.
Otherwise, why create it?
Now, this doesn’t mean flash.
It doesn’t even mean substance, nor cleverness or originality.
It literally means just that — is your content worth someone’s time the most?
To give you examples, let me pose a few hypothetical questions — or are these rhetorical? Was that?
Feel free to share your answer — these are mine:
Q: All dictionary definitions are the same, right?
A: Well, unless yours explains the term clearer, uses more relatable examples, or has more entertaining facts.
Q: Human-written content is better than AI-generated content, right?
A: Well, unless it’s not easier for an audience to understand or more enjoyable to read.
Q: Reviews based on experience are better than generic product summaries, right?
A: Well, unless the reader gains the same information either way.
It’s not about merit.
Maybe you are more authentic, know SEO better, or agonized over every word because the topic is personal, while someone else used Claude or ChatGPT.
It’s what the user perceives that counts. And they see the world in terms of their limited time.
New angles, better formatting, a more authoritative voice, a new voice even, these are ways your content could stand out.
Or it could be arbitrary, like when one source is deemed more worthwhile because of name recognition.
Content ultimately stands out when it delivers the most value in exchange for someone’s time, and that value is determined subjectively.
Readers don’t care if you spent 5 minutes opining on Reddit or 10 weeks creating an “Ultimate Guide.”
They don’t care if you consulted an expert, took your own photos, or tested a product.
They certainly don’t care about your high entity salience score, good internal linking, or alignment with E-E-A-T and QRG criteria, let alone passing Core Web Vitals.
At least, they don’t care about these things directly.
What they do care about is whether your content delivers the most value for their time, and are they thankful for it?
The value-to-time ratio, that’s what counts as helpful content:
Helpful Content = Value / Time
And that’s the equation 11x content solves for.
If ads obstruct it.
If SGE can summarize it.
If someone else can say essentially the same thing — or demonstrate it — with equal weight of authority, only in a faster, smarter, or more compelling manner.
Then your content won’t stand out.
I learned that lesson with this post.
In my case, I wandered too far into experimental territory.
While I could pinpoint every valuable fact, takeaway, or firsthand anecdote in my content, for the average reader, it wasn’t worth their time to find out.
They had other options deemed more worthwhile.
So I had to reign it in.
But for HCU casualties — I’m speaking about the ones I’ve personally evaluated — my opinion is that many strayed too far in the other direction, creating predictable, convoluted, or almost templated “SEO content” that didn’t meet the threshold of, “Is it worth my time?”
Rather than standing out, these sites blended in (and then got caught up).
If users don’t know (or aren’t spending the time to understand) why your content is special, then Google likely won’t know either.
Guilty by lack of differentiation — that was my general view on the problem when I audited sites that felt like HCU casualties.
- Maybe they targeted keywords with extra content, rather than slimming pages down to the essential facts needed to solve a problem.
- Maybe they tried to increase ad revenue with decisions counter to a user’s interests, like trading off on page experience or overreaching into obscure topics.
- Maybe their information gain was miles above the rest, but the content fell short, needing input from real editors and users — not YouTube influencers.
These HCU casualties had unique value, but for one reason or another, it wasn’t differentiated — their content didn’t stand out as worth a user’s time, relative to other options — and justly or wrongly, Google’s machine-learning models noticed those patterns.
Note: On this topic, I’d also suggest following Ryan Jones on X (Twitter). He has well-informed and straightforward takes, which I agree with:
But why is this happening? Why now?
You’re right. Google’s guidance on people-first content isn’t new. It goes back to 2002.
What’s changed in the post-HCU world are the systems and methods for determining content quality.
When search engines used more human-coded, or less sophisticated, ranking algorithms, pseudo-SEO tactics to appear relevant — like targeting keywords with re-spun content, using templated outlines based on competitors’ pages, and then accumulating gray-hat backlinks — were largely effective.
Readers would click on and engage with the content, likely out of habit or necessity, reinforcing signals of relevance.
So it became a standard playbook.
But it was still SEO for its own sake, not the user’s.
Times then changed, standards and behaviors changed, awareness changed, and ranking systems that once felt gamable aren’t so much anymore.
Against today’s neural network architectures and deep learning models, search engine-first content (intentionally made that way or not) gets drowned out.
It’s lost in a cacophony of turning dials, adjusting machine-learning parameters with backpropagation algorithms, based on data from user signals and search quality rater judgments.
These dials minimize the gradients of error (and expectations) between what SEOs thought would make good content (meaning rank well) and what readers actually wanted, or could get elsewhere.
In a way, Google’ systems changed their tune from highlighting FM radio’s chart-toppers to more personalized playlists made by AI disc jockeys.
The old-time sheet music for templated SEO content no longer pleased the ear of someone wanting experimental jazz.
The change was precipitous.
The Beach Boys are out. Pink Floyd is in. And many site owners are singing the blues.
Not all hope is lost, though.
If you can play classical piano, you can record with a drum machine. It’s all percussion.
But to cut through the noise in this dynamic environment, our content must adopt a louder tone.
We need to put our brand’s center stage and crank up the volume on creativity, shattering the slow-dance sound barriers of the 10-blue-links-era.
In short, we need to turn our content dials up to 11, or should I say, “11x.”
11x content is a solution for websites to stand out creatively in a way readers will appreciate and search engines will reward — it increases the value-to-time ratio.
Fundamentally, 11x content is people-first “SEO content” that delivers the most value in exchange for a user’s time because it’s more helpful, original, or memorable than any other content in search — it’s also more future-proofed against Google’s dynamic AI-driven systems.
Worthwhile content requires topical expertise, and so the 11x framework is a collaborative process — involving an SEO strategist, content specialist, and subject matter expert (SME).
That sounds like any helpful content, so far.
I call this “11x” for a few reasons.
The most literal one is that it’s based on a reimagining of the popular 10x approach.
But where it differs is also the most critical aspect of 11x content — we don’t look at top-ranking competitors for insights.
Instead, we adopt a beginner’s mind and follow our intuition — our third eye 😉 — putting ourselves in a searcher’s position to create the most valuable net-new content for their time.
We’ll explore all of this in detail. I’ve worked hard to make this post worth your time.
That includes having jumplinks for you to visit sections of interest:
- Defining (and reimagining) 10x content
- Why I’m proposing the 11x framework
- Why rehashed content has become more problematic
- Example of 10x content
- Alternative views on 10x content
- What’s different about 11x content?
- Activating the third eye, the magic behind 11x content
- Why does 11x content require a collaborative process?
- Examples of 11x content, found in the wild
- The outro
It also includes adding a thoughtful soundtrack to complement your journey.
Enjoy the vibes, and the road ahead:
“To the quickened dissolution“
– Descending
Defining (and reimagining) 10x content
10x content has been an influential SEO concept for nearly a decade, and for good reason — it can be an effective way to rank website content for target keywords or phrases.
The 10x approach says to look at top results and outdo them by focusing on:
- User experience (UX) and page layout (UI)
- Information quality, trustworthiness, and scope
- Eliciting an emotional response from readers
- Solving a problem in a comprehensive and satisfying way
I encourage you to watch the original Moz Whiteboard Friday episode with Rand Fishkin (now of SparkToro) from 2015 for context:
Let me start by saying this: I admire everything about 10x content as presented in that video.
It’s a brilliant idea to me.
I also believe we need to reimagine it.
This has nothing to do with 10x as a concept, and everything to do with how it’s generally applied.
Or should I say, misapplied.
According to that video, the 10x approach would create helpful, reliable, and people-first content — what readers want, and what Google wants to rank, today, tomorrow, and always.
The challenge is that making your content 10 times better than the current best for a keyword or phrase demands great effort, expertise, and (arguably) restraint.
These don’t always align with the incentive structure of for-profit content operations.
I worked at digital marketing agencies from 2015 to 2024, where I heard terms like “10x content” and “skyscraper technique.” I was also pitched services or tools that followed these principles.
In practice, what I saw most often was content made by re-spinning what already existed — pages designed more to rank for keywords than help people. There was usually no specialized expertise of the topic or new insights involved. It was recycled information, basically.
Things got even worse after ChatGPT.
AI chatbots make it easy to plug in competitors’ pages and rehash them into new outlines, all while further detaching human judgment and creativity from the content process.
Even still, it’s the misapplication of generative-AI tools, not the technology itself, that’s at fault.
The same is true for 10x.
The aspect of 10x content that needs reforming, in my view, is where it instructs content creators to improve on top-ranking results.
That’s a logical recommendation.
It’s also where a disconnect occurs between theory and practice.
Take this quote from the 10x video:
“We can’t just say, ‘Hey, I want to be as good as the top ten people in the search results for this particular keyword term or phrase.’ We have to say, ‘How can I create something 10 times better than what any of these folks are currently doing?’” [Highlights added.]
– Moz Whiteboard Friday on 10x Content (YouTube Transcript)
The top results serve as reference, but later on, the video suggests we pursue a new angle on the topic.
Standing out was always the intent of 10x content.
We also see this in the original blog post, “Why Good Unique Content Needs to Die“:
“I might search for something like Costa Rica ecolodges … I look at these top ranking results, probably the whole top 10 as well as the most shared content on social media.
Then I’m going to ask myself these questions:
- What questions are being asked and answered by these search results?
- What sort of user experience is provided? …
- What’s the detail and thoroughness of the information that’s actually provided? …
- What about use of visuals? …
- The quality of the writing.
- I’m going to look at information and data elements. … What types of information is there? What types of information is missing?
In fact, I like to ask, ‘What’s missing?’ a lot.
From this, I can determine like, hey, here are the strengths and weaknesses of who’s getting all of the social shares and who’s ranking well, and here’s the delta between me and them today. This is the way that I can be 10 times better than the best results in there.” [Highlights added.]
– Rand Fishkin, Why Good Unique Content Needs to Die (Moz)
The early step is to look at top-ranking results, but the larger purpose is to ask, “What’s missing?”
Again, how can we be different and stand out?
The problem is that most people heard “top results,” not “new angle.”
10x content is a logical method in theory and explanation.
It solves for the value-to-time equation.
Yet, in my observations, when 10x gets translated into general practice, that incremental step of looking at top results for a “particular keyword term or phrase” becomes the launch pad for rehashing more of the same.
That’s not by design, yet it’s still the net result because the instruction’s nuance gets lost.
That’s why I’m proposing the 11x framework
11x content incorporates many details of 10x content but reimagines one critical aspect — it instructs content creators not to focus on being better than top search results.
Certainly, it can make sense to look at top results for a query or phrase to understand search intents or do research, but that’s where it ends.
In fact, 11x content says it’s better to ignore competitors completely to avoid all copy-cat temptations.
In place of competitive SERP analysis, we use our intuition based on expertise of the topic and audience to determine what’s relevant for a user’s intent.
In 11x, you envision yourself as the searcher of a topic, and starting fresh, imagine what content you’d find most valuable — helpful, memorable, and authoritative — for your time.
We aren’t trying to create something better. We’re creating something new.
Creating new content starts with having a beginner’s mind.
This is a term from Buddhism and mindfulness practice that means to adopt an attitude of openness with a lack of preconceptions, even if you already have knowledge of a subject — see the world through a beginner’s eyes.
Approaching SEO content with a beginner’s mind is essential if we’re to be uninfluenced by current search results but still provide the most relevant answer to a user’s intent.
To that end, 11x content requires us to have expertise or experience in the topic at hand.
In practice, this means we need a collaborative process involving a subject matter expert, SEO strategist, and content specialist.
Each person envisions themselves in the shoes of the searcher, and from their point of view, decides what would be the most helpful content.
The end result is a trifecta of perspectives — a logarithmic function increasing value for time.
Another essential aspect of 11x content is that it’s created with unbounded creativity.
When we don’t focus on outranking competitors, we prevent bias for search engine-first strategies.
Eliminating competitive instincts frees us from conventional wisdom tied to rankings, letting us explore new creative terrain on behalf of users.
In that spirit, 11x content is an extension of people-first SEO, a modern (but arguably timeless) philosophy where optimizations happen in a user-centric manner.
SEO skills and knowledge are still essential — they’re what make content discoverable, helpful and reliable, and have a great page experience.
They’re just not the end goal.
Improving the value-to-time ratio is.
In short, we could say the 11x framework creates 10x content through a different methodology — or 10x content reimagined.
We’re now living in a post-HCU world, where AI-driven ranking systems largely call the shots, and generative AI summaries provide their own answers.
To stay relevant (in more ways than one), SEOs need to reexamine content through a different lens.
It’s not about rankings. It’s not even about quality. It’s about being worth someone’s time — the value-to-time ratio.
I’ve noticed more people writing about not paying attention to top-ranking results to avoid search engine-first content.
Maybe the spirit of 11x content is catching on, or like-minded thinking was always prevalent, and I’m just noticing it more now.
Either way, I’m pleased to see it. 🙂
This is just my take.
Why rehashed content has become more problematic
Searchers are purportedly tired of “SEO spam,” or content that feels like it’s not created for them.
And so are search engines:
Danny Sullivan: “For an ordinary person to say that they see the SEO, I don’t think they are necessarily seeing the SEO as much as they’re using that for a euphemism of, ‘This content really wasn’t designed for me, it was designed just to rank in a search engine.‘ And then, and of course, that’s not what we want people to do.” [Highlights added.]
– Search Off the Record, Episode 63 (Transcript)
In response, Google has emphasized surfacing “hidden gems” (like forums and social media) and more helpful, people-first content, generally.
They’ve also penalized unhelpful content.
The acronym HCU, short for “helpful content update,” is common nomenclature in the SEO profession today.
That wasn’t always the case.
This Google Trends graph shows interest in “HCU” as a search term over the last 5 years:
HCU can mean different things, but from this data, we see a few trends:
- From August to September of 2022, interest went from the 20s to the 30s. This coincides with the first helpful content update.
- Between December of 2022 and January of 2023, interest rose from the 30s to the 40s. This coincides with the second helpful content update.
- Then between August and September of 2023, interest went from the 40s to a peak of 100. This coincides with the third helpful content update.
That third update was by far the largest, hence it’s commonly called “the HCU.”
The HCU stopped rolling out after 13 days and 11 hours early in the morning of September 28th, 2023:
It caused a paradigm shift for many sites.
There were many screenshots shared on social media of traffic getting hammered, particularly from niche site owners:
Google described the helpful content system as an “automated” classifier process using a “machine-learning model.” (Think back to our earlier reference to AI-driven ranking systems calling the shots.)
The old helpful content system has since been absolved into Google’s core ranking systems, a change announced during the recent March core update.
Nevertheless, the term HCU is still frequently mentioned, either to reference the third update, as shorthand for the old system, or to describe the aspects of Google’s core systems that now apply it.
To that point, talk of last year’s HCU persisted well into early 2024, but it was re-invigorated during the latest core update, when many HCU-impacted sites, as well as others, were manually or algorithmically affected:
There’s still no compelling evidence of HCU recoveries, either.
This contributes to why interest in “HCU” on Google Trends still hovers above the 60s, despite being a reference to a past iteration of Google’s ranking system makeup.
One argument I’ve made in my blog — including in posts about creating helpful content and choosing content topics — is that many traditional approaches didn’t inherently focus on the user.
Content was good by SEO standards if it ranked.
Optimization involved making (educated) guesses about which levers to pull to get it above the competition, grab a featured snippet, or improve CTR.
Standing out for other reasons, like satisfying a user, was an afterthought, or a happy accident.
That’s the difference between content that ranks and content that satisfies.
We’ll see later in the examples of 11x content that clever people like Wil Reynolds are trying to change this paradigm, much as Rand did with 10x content in 2015.
Based on trends other experienced SEOs have observed in the post-HCU world, that change isn’t a theoretical luxury, either. It’s a necessity.
As Lily Ray pointed out here:
And Marie Haynes pointed out here:
“Seeing more and more evidence of Google elevating content that is borne from expertise rather than content that looks relevant to search engine algorithms.”
– X post below
In my opinion, what makes “good” content by SEO standards can’t be judged from rankings or other search performance metrics alone.
The context is always business goals.
But the main criterion is user satisfaction — the value-to-time ratio.
We more firmly learned last year with information about Navboost and related insights from Pandu Nayak’s anti-trust trial testimony that user engagement influences how Google Search assesses content relevance and quality for rankings.
Users have more options than ever before, not only from Google, but outside of it.
If users don’t find your content rewarding, Google’s systems won’t either, no matter how semantically relevant or authoritative it appeared at first.
At the same time, pulling the levers of optimizations requires new types of educated guesses.
Google’s post-trial debrief highlighted the growing role of natural language processing and machine learning as compensating for user interaction data.
Relatedly, Gary Illyes has hinted links are less important for rankings, mentioning they weren’t a top three factor in 2023 and then saying Google needs “very few links to rank pages” in April of 2024.
This gets to the nuance of what helpful content actually means, and how that’s determined.
Google Search Central’s updated SEO starter guide, for example, highlights the principle importance of “compelling and useful content“:
“Creating content that people find compelling and useful will likely influence your website’s presence in search results more than any of the other suggestions in this guide. While ‘compelling and useful content’ can mean different things to different people, content like this generally shares some common attributes, such as:
– Make your site interesting and useful, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide, Google Search Central
- The text is easy-to-read and well organized …
- The content is unique …
- The content is up-to-date …
- The content is helpful, reliable, and people-first …” [Highlights added.]
But what I find most fascinating is this exchange between John Mueller and Danny Sullivan from August of 2023, in a podcast episode Google released at the same time as a core update and one month before “the HCU”:
John Mueller: “… what I notice is SEOs try to pick everything apart into individual factors and look at it like that. But I think for a lot of the guidance that we have, it’s a lot more now about the bigger picture, because it feels like from a technical point of view, things are often pretty reasonable. And now you really need to get that bigger picture into the right shape, so that when users come, they’re like, ‘Oh, this is actually a helpful site.’”
Danny Sullivan: “And that bigger picture really is, more than anything else, just put yourself in the shoes of someone who arrives at that content and what they’re going to be thinking about.” [Highlights added.]
– Search Off the Record, Episode 63 (Transcript)
What I read between the lines of that conversation is that AI-driven ranking systems call the shots.
For instance, to Danny’s point about putting yourself in the user’s shoes, that’s what neural networks effectively do — they’re spotting patterns of human preferences from data that the human eye likely can’t see, and maybe the mind can’t even comprehend.
Envision this scenario:
One webpage starts with a target keyword, follows an outline built on competitor research, and undergoes on-page optimizations — it appears flawless from an SEO perspective.
Another webpage uses text a business owner cobbled together in Microsoft Word and pasted into their CMS’s page editor several years ago with zero SEO knowledge.
Either page can outrank the other. It comes down to which is more worth someone’s time.
By the way, that’s a real story.
Traditional SEO logic doesn’t always lend itself to this type of thinking — “My SEO is better! I have proper headings, more thorough information, and earned links. Why don’t I outrank them?!”
Helpful content isn’t about content quality or good SEO; it’s about the value-to-time ratio.
You may not see the patterns behind the logic. Neural networks do.
11x content solves for this.
It starts with the same principles as the business owner using Microsoft World — with no SEO knowledge, but who has expertise of the topic and their user’s needs — but then it optimizes the content in the ways most worthwhile for a user’s time (discoverability, usability, and relevance).
There’s a line in the 10x content video that mentions “get into this person’s brain and try and answer the core of their question.”
It was onto this logic from the start.
The issue is that it’s easy to lose the plot if we’re also focused on besting the competition.
11x content asks, “Why try to balance SEO metrics and user-first considerations in the first place?”
If we:
- Remove the emphasis on competitive SERP analysis.
- Focus only on meeting the user’s search intent.
- View it through the lens of a beginner’s mind.
- Let our intrinsic topical expertise in what they’re actually looking for guide us.
- Combine that with a collaborative process.
We’ll end up creating helpful, people-first content that Google’s systems will aim to surface, not because it has great SEO, but because it’s got a high value-to-time ratio — it’s worth a searcher’s time.
Example of 10x content
Although I think the 10x approach should be reimagined, I also believe in the merits of 10x content itself, when done as intended.
As this Ahrefs definition of 10x content reminds us:
“The 10x content concept is important because it encourages creators to focus on quality and reader experience rather than just SEO. Google’s algorithms have evolved over the years to focus on the page’s value rather than just keywords and backlinking strategies.
When you use the 10x content strategy, your goal goes beyond just ranking and focuses on creating content that’s truly better than what’s already out there on the internet. This way, you’re providing better quality for your readers, which creates a positive impression of your business and encourages them to return to your site in the future.” [Highlights added.]
– Ahrefs, 10x Content
It’s for that reason that there’s timeless value in looking at real examples of 10x content.
Fortunately, we have a prolific list.
Two years before the helpful content system rolled out, a SparkToro article was published called “121 Examples of 10X Content (by Rand Fishkin).”
The first example was “9 basic principles of responsive web design” from 2014.
Here are some stats from the Ahrefs Chrome extension for the article:
We see it was modified at least once, is just shy of 800 words, and uses H3 headings, a quirk Google keeps telling us matters less. (After all, how much would a user care?)
It’s a helpful article overall, and straight to the point.
For our time, it’s got a lot of value.
After all, let’s remember part of what makes content “helpful” is a great page experience, including main content that’s easy to locate.
Each of the responsive web design principles is a short paragraph with an illustrative image or GIF.
Here’s an example:
Why is this 10x content?
Let’s compare it against criteria from the SparkToro article, which was published 5 years after the original video:
“Criteria for 10X Content:
- Provides a uniquely positive user experience through the user interface, visuals, layout, fonts, patterns, etc.
- Delivers content that is some substantive combination of high-quality, trustworthy, useful, interesting, and remarkable
- Is considerably different in scope and detail from other works on similar topics
- Loads quickly and is usable on any device or browser
- Creates an emotional response of awe, surprise, joy, anticipation, and/or admiration
- Has achieved an impressive quantity of amplification (through shares on social networks and/or links)
- Solves a problem or answers a question by providing comprehensive, accurate, exceptional information or resources.
Not all of these are required, but a minimum of 3-4 should be present in each of the pieces that fall under this label.” [Highlights added.]
– 121 Examples of 10X Content (by Rand Fishkin)
Based on that, the responsive web design article would be 10x because:
- It has a nice interface and visual layout.
- The content is trustworthy from a user’s point of view, listing the author with a bio.
- It also has 103 reader comments with substantive debate, likely indicating the post was well amplified, shared, or received organic traffic from its target audience and stimulated their engagement.
I can’t say whether it’s different in scope than other articles from its era, but it certainly solves the problem outlined in its title.
Overall, it satisfies at least 3-4 of the 10x criteria.
Said another way, in exchange for the time we spent, we got a lot of value.
Alternative views on 10x content
There have been other views on 10x content.
In 2016, Keith Goode wrote “Is the ’10X Content’ Movement Killing Your Creativity?”
Here’s an excerpt from his article, where he recognizes “the spirit of the 10X Content movement,” but raises a point about balancing user needs with business objectives:
“In short, if your content brings the needs of the user together with the business’s objectives, what does it matter if it’s not flashy or revolutionary? Your job is to meet the needs of the consumer and prove your value to company shareholders, not win a popularity contest. …
Don’t get me wrong. I believe that the spirit of the 10X Content movement is spot on. …
Rather than focusing your efforts on creating the most content in your industry, 10X Content encourages you to create the best content possible. As we’ve seen, ‘best’ is not a stale measurement. It is a moving target that is unique to each industry, each type of customer, each type of product or service, and even each point in time.
Rather than being discouraged by the 10X Content movement, use it to liberate your content strategy and meet your clients right where they are.” [Highlights added.]
– Keith Goode, Is the “10X Content” Movement Killing Your Creativity?
He later raises a point about limitations for content in certain industries:
“I always feel bad for content producers in industries that aren’t, shall we say, exciting. … But the fact is that the number of mundane (but absolutely necessary) industries far exceeds the number of super exciting industries. … So, what is a content producer to do when they’re tasked with creating content that wows around a product or service that doesn’t wow?” [Highlights added.]
I have a similar clarification to make about 11x content.
Its qualities, like using “unbounded creativity,” fall on a spectrum of what’s appropriate for each audience.
Creativity could be a Monet painting, or it could be a different shade of blue house paint.
Context is everything.
What counts is when creativity — or any other quality of 11x content — makes the end result more worth someone’s time.
To give you an example, I’ve been breaking down AI research papers in Hamsterdam Research, a project in my blog.
Many technical papers are summarized by other publications.
These articles typically enhance their value-to-time ratio over the papers’ with elements like bullet points or analogies.
Another take on 10x content comes from Roger Montti’s article, “Google On Topical Authority: Don’t Worry About It,” from November of 2023, where he ties 10x content to the skyscraper technique:
“A few years later came the Skyscraper content building tactic that was similar but worse. The Skyscraper tactic advised newbie SEOs to make content that is longer, as if making the content longer was a way to make content better. The Skyscraper content also said out loud what the 10x strategy did not: It advised SEOs to copy what the competitors are doing but rewrite it better and then to poach the competitor’s links.” [Highlights added.]
– Roger Montti, Search Engine Journal: Google On Topical Authority: Don’t Worry About It
A few articles have discussed reimagining the skyscraper technique, or an evolution beyond it.
In April of 2024, for example, Bernard Huang published “Why Ranch-Style SEO Is Your Future-Proof SEO Strategy,” where he got at a point Roger also made — longer content isn’t necessarily more helpful:
“Ranch-Style SEO flips the traditional Skyscraper Technique on its head.
Rather than aggregating content into one massive pillar page, this method emphasizes the disaggregation of content into precise, digestible pieces that strategically align with the user’s search journey.”
– Bernard Huang, Why Ranch-Style SEO Is Your Future-Proof Content Strategy
Considering a user’s time, content should only be as long as what’s needed to deliver the value they need, as Google even says.
Another key point from Roger’s article is the reference to content that copies what competitors are doing but rewrites it better.
That supports the reason why I’m reimagining 10x content.
The original 10x video focuses on new angles for content topics, but in general practice, the nuance of referencing top results gets lost, leading creators to rehash more of the same.
Speaking of more of the same …
What’s different about 11x content?
By this point, you might be wondering if 11x content is an original idea.
I certainly did.
After all, writing content while not fixating on top-ranking competitors isn’t revolutionary, is it?
Well, yes and no.
What made me ask myself this question was another section of Roger’s article called “Everything Old Is New Again (And Again)”:
“There’s a trend with relatively newbie SEO gurus where they rename something that already existed then put it out there as if it’s new. …
For example, the 10x content building tactic from 2015 was about creating content that is ten times better than existing content in order to make it better positioned to obtain links (because it’s ten times better than what’s currently ranking).
A few years later came the Skyscraper content building tactic that was similar but worse. …
Both tactics are silly because the underlying advice in 10x and Skyscraper is to create content that’s better than your competitor’s.
Duh… right? It’s like giving breathing a trendy name and calling it a strategy for extending your life.
Does slapping a name on an activity that’s common sense even qualify as a tactic?” [Highlights added.]
– Roger Montti, Search Engine Journal: Google On Topical Authority: Don’t Worry About It
In all honesty, I do think 11x content is common sense.
But one takeaway I had from seeing SEO content get created over the years is common sense isn’t all that common.
It surely makes sense to put yourself in the user’s shoes, avoid copying existing results, and collaborate with a subject matter expert.
Still, I never saw content created in that manner.
There was always an emphasis on outranking competitors, and thus referencing them.
The only times I saw differently was when no competitors or keyword research existed, like for new sites in niche or B2B industries.
In those situations, the 11x framework was followed organically — a subject matter expert worked with a content specialist based on an SEO strategist’s guidance.
The sole motivation was to satisfy a user’s needs in alignment with business goals.
What makes 11x content different is that we take this approach every time, including for high-volume and competitive topics.
Of course, if we’re not analyzing top results, how can we know a user’s search intent?
This is where we enter the philosophical portion of our presentation.
Activating the third eye, the magic behind 11x content
To create SEO content with a beginner’s mind and our intuition about what a searcher wants, we must activate the third eye.
If the concept of a “third eye” sounds bewildering, especially in the context of SEO content, stay with me for a moment while we explore its meaning in this context.
Here’s a general explanation of the third eye from Wikipedia:
“The third eye (also called the mind’s eye or inner eye) is a mystical invisible eye, usually depicted as located on the forehead, which provides perception beyond ordinary sight. … In both Hinduism and Buddhism, the third eye is said to be located around the middle of the forehead, slightly above the junction of the eyebrows, representing the enlightenment one achieves through meditation.
Especially in Eastern spiritual practices, the third eye refers to the gate that leads to the inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness, and often symbolizes a state of enlightenment. The third eye is often associated with religious visions, clairvoyance, the ability to observe chakras and auras, precognition, and out-of-body experiences.” [Highlights added.]
– Wikipedia, “Third eye”
That explains the spiritual context of the third eye, as well as its practical association with meditation.
As Healthline also explains, it isn’t so much a scientific phenomenon:
“When open, the third eye chakra may provide wisdom and insight and deepen your spiritual connection. While there’s no scientific evidence to support this, many traditions value the third eye chakra.” [Highlights added.]
– Healthline, How to Open Your Third Eye Chakra for Spiritual Awakening
As I define it, the third eye is a metaphorical example of deeper wisdom and insight.
What we’re doing with 11x content by not looking at top results is freeing ourselves from conventional thinking, competitive instincts, and search engine-first incentives.
We’re focusing more deeply on the user’s goals, putting ourselves in their position, above even our own performance metrics.
This is how we activate the third eye and harness higher levels of intuition.
As the Healthline article further mentions:
“The third eye chakra is believed to be related to:
- clarity
- concentration
- imagination
- intuition
- spiritual perception
- universal connection”
Clarity of the content’s purpose, concentration on the user’s goals, imagination of creative solutions, intuition about search intent, these are just a few applicable qualities.
Universal connection and the out-of-body experience mentioned earlier could also refer to how we put ourselves in the searcher’s role.
Rather than creating content for a user based on a distant perspective, we’re imagining what we’d find most worth our own time in their position.
That’s how we stand out.
As Rick Rubin says in this video clip related to music, it’s not about catering to your audience, but pleasing yourself. The audience’s satisfaction will follow:
This is the post-HCU world order.
Forget TRL and Top of the Pops.
This is experimental jazz in Treme.
Let’s tune our instruments accordingly.
“I opened my eye and there we were.”
– Third Eye
Why does 11x content require a collaborative process?
It doesn’t, not always.
I can create it. You can create it.
But short of creating content about SEO topics we know — and our third eye tells us others would find worthwhile 😉 — when it comes to strategies for businesses, 11x content requires multiple points of view.
We’re defining helpful content by a value-to-time ratio.
And as Google Search Central explains, there are multiple criteria to helpful content’s value:
“Google’s automated ranking systems are designed to present helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings, in the top Search results. …
Evaluating your own content against these questions can help you gauge if the content you’re making is helpful and reliable. …
– Google Search Central, Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
- Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?
- Does the content provide a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic?
- Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious?
- If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources, and instead provide substantial additional value and originality?” [Highlights added.]
It’s helpful to read that excerpt with a beginner’s mind to avoid the conventional thinking that it’s an SEO checklist. It isn’t.
Through a beginner’s eyes, we can see those criteria for what they are: an intuitive, common-sense description of the law of averages.
The criteria of helpful content are the complex patterns of human preferences that neural networks determine from user interaction and similar data.
Meeting those criteria isn’t about hitting ranking signals, but aligning our content with what users generally want, increasing the likelihood it’ll surface in search results.
They describe content that would stand out because it’s worthwhile — a high value-to-time ratio.
Maximizing that value-to-time ratio takes a collaborative process.
As SEOs, we know what makes content discoverable, digestible for search engines, and aligned to search intent.
We understand content types, on-page optimizations, chunks and semantic triples, and enriched context from related entities, links, and structured data.
What we don’t always grasp is how our content is perceived from a customer’s point of view. And the more we rely on SERP analysis, the more we can get in our own way through a subjective emphasis on SEO factors.
I think Ryan Jones says it well here:
That’s one benefit of working with content specialists. They tend to see content less in terms of rankings and more from a perspective of brand voice, structure, and personas.
If the content writer is also a subject matter expert, or has unique reference materials to create information gain, even better.
I’ve worked with in-house writers or freelancers who are like this.
In most circumstances, however, content requires input from someone with outside expertise or experience.
A subject matter expert can provide the information gain necessary to create the most helpful content, whether this comes from facts or insights in the content itself or a wiser perspective on how a user would find it most worth their time.
There may be times where information gain from an SME isn’t necessary, but if we’re talking about a general framework for 11x content, it includes a trifecta of expertise.
I can’t tell you how many times I saw content be created for months on end before the client said, “You know, this isn’t correct.” Or, “Our audience would prefer it said this way.”
When a collaborative process is used from the start, the risk of unhelpful content is basically eliminated.
How this works in practice is that each participant asks themselves the same fundamental question.
In the 10x approach, that question would be, “What’s missing?” based on top-ranking results.
In the 11x approach, the question gets reimagined as, “What does my intuition tell me is the best content to answer my need if I’m the searcher?”
There are many ways to find content topics. A user’s need can be obvious, or it might be a latent question, a “need beneath” or implied by the query.
Once the need is determined, the SEO strategist, content specialist, and SME arrive at the best answer, together.
The role of the SEO is then to monitor the content’s performance.
Not only gathering data for the average position or CTR of relevant queries, but also metrics like time on page and engagement rate, as well as direct insights from the audience, such as user tests or reviews.
11x content is refreshed as often as necessary to achieve or maintain the highest value-to-time ratio.
Each time, the collaboration starts anew.
Examples of 11x content, found in the wild
You’ll know 11x content when you see it.
You can scroll through my blog and see attempts, such as:
- “Hello, World”: Exploring the History of Microsoft’s Search Engines, from MSN to Bing Sources in Today’s AI Chats
- Google’s Search Quality: Blog Scrapers & Content Farms in 2011 vs. AI Spam in 2024
- Why SEOs “Still” Shouldn’t Fixate on Keyword Rankings
- All Blurring Into One: How to Choose Content Topics to Meet Business Goals With Your SEO Strategy
- You’ve Got Questions About Google Search’s Ranking Systems? That’s Understandable
Of course, I’m biased, and still reigning it in experimentally. 😉
So, let’s look at examples from people who’ve got it down.
These were all mentioned in Hamsterdam (weekly SEO recaps), but they stood out for special mention here.
Mordy Oberstein’s analysis of Google’s August 2023 core update
Mordy is a clever SEO and writer whose been creating unique content for years.
I saw an article of his last year that partly inspired this idea of 11x content, hence he gets first mention here.
His article analyzed the impacts of Google’s August 2023 core update with Semrush data.
What made it great content was that the information was original and insightful.
What made it 11x content was how he used a narrative format that broke the 4th wall.
If you missed reading “The Unique Rank Volatility Patterns of the August 2023 Core Update” when it first came out, I promise, it’s still worth your time. 😉
The article also supports a business goal for Semrush.
After reading it, a user might be interested in exploring the topic of ranking volatility more deeply.
This could lead them to find Semrush’s solution:
The post also highlights how a searcher’s journey can extend to alternate organic surfaces, like People also view, where I saw the article again:
If sustained organic visibility along customer journeys is the target, that article hits a bullseye.
It stands out.
AJ Kohn’s evaluation of Google’s search results and ranking systems
The next two examples of 11x content come from AJ Kohn.
On November 8th of last year, he published “It’s Goog Enough!“:
I’m attuned to SEO chatter on X, where I saw lots of people praising the article.
I’m slightly embarrassed to say I didn’t know much about AJ’s work prior to that.
Maybe I hadn’t yet reached the higher levels of SEO consciousness needed to find it. 😉
I read the article while pacing around the basement of an Airbnb in San Diego, where I was for BrightonSEO last year.
The fact that I remember the experience vividly speaks to the impression the article left on me.
It stood out.
Specific reasons why I think “It’s Goog Enough!” is 11x content start with its title.
It introduces the original concept “goog enough,” a play on the words “good enough” with respect to what Google Search “has become.”
The article has a discernible voice and attitude. It also breaks the 4th wall early by asking the reader to grab a beverage and get comfortable.
I’ll note that I appreciate jumplinks as a UX component, but agree it’s hard to integrate them smoothly because it takes a bite out of an introduction’s flow.
I found it funny how AJ remarks on adding jumplinks for the user against his own preferences.
Personality counts.
I’ll let you read the article’s full contents, but here’s an early passage that includes several 11x content aspects — which carry on throughout the post:
He mentions “third rail,” a non-SEO term — and actually a political one — creative language for richer context.
He also puts asides in parentheses and incorporates more jumplinks, giving users the opportunity to create their own journeys.
Lastly, he references a past article of his and gives an honest opinion as to why he likes it but how he thinks it could have been better.
All of these elements contribute to a rich experience that fuses expertise with originality and creativity, a decidedly worthwhile read.
Then a little over a week later, he published “What Pandu Nayak Taught Me About SEO.”
This article has been cited in many posts about Google’s ranking systems, including one by Danny Goodwin for SEL.
And don’t overlook the featured image, which has a third eye! 😉
This article is 11x content for all the same reasons as “It’s Goog Enough!”
Two notable elements present in both (but that I thought of when looking at this one), are creative images and user feedback.
The images add worthwhile entertainment value:
While the healthy discussion in the comments section shows the article stood out to its audience in a way that inspired their participation:
George Nguyen’s post on diversifying a brand publication
If you’re a fan of SEO publications, you’ve no doubt seen George’s name around.
I came across a post of his for BrightLocal called “Diversify Your Brand Publication: Why and How to Get Started” that stood out as 11x content.
The article has a nice mix of perspectives from different contributors, making it a worthwhile resource for its variety of information.
But another reason it’s 11x content is the choose-your-own-journey introduction, which I don’t recall having seen before:
I thought that was an innovative and original way to frame the topic and hook readers from the start.
It stands out.
It also inspired me to share how much I enjoyed it:
Hopefully, you’ll take that chance, too.
I promise it’s worth your while.
Wil Reynolds’ takes on the Sea of Sameness Problem
The reason you’re reading a third version of this post is a credit to Wil Reynolds’ article, “The Sea of Sameness Problem in Content Marketing & SEO.”
It inspired me not only to cite his as an example, but also revisit how the entire 11x tale is told:
It stood out.
One reason I find Wil’s article to be 11x content is the mix of formatting.
It uses multiple font sizes and weights, pull quotes and images, creating a rich experience.
Here’s just one example:
I tried to add more of that in this article. It’s not easy …
I also find the people-first SEO insights from his post refreshing, especially the use of examples to illustrate how SEO decisions can be made irrespective of user interests:
The post also mentions involving SMEs with content teams, much like the collaborative process we discussed:
But above all, I find his post to be 11x content because it changes the conversation about what “SEO content” means, challenging us to think more holistically:
The whole time I was reading Wil’s article, I was nodding along, sometimes in agreement, other times saying to myself, “Damn, that’s clever.”
Your time is limited. This article is worth it.
Want more examples? Don’t worry, I’ll add them soon! 🙂
The outro
In the post-HCU world, AI-driven ranking systems largely call the shots.
They’re not fine-tuned to the ways we used to think about SEO content, either.
These neural networks are picking up nuanced patterns from user interaction data the naked eye probably even can’t see — but maybe the third eye can anticipate. 😉
We must approach creating content for Google Search differently than in the past.
In fact, I misspoke just then.
We’re not creating content for Google Search, but for the people who use Google Search.
Not to mention the infinite universe of AI chatbots, answer engines, and assistants surfacing or citing web content.
People-first content isn’t new. Google has advised it since at least 2002.
Maybe that wasn’t always the reality of what it ranked in search …
But we’re strumming along to a different tune now.
To stand out, we must turn our creative gears up, amplifying the value-to-time ratio of our content — it’s time for 11x.
11x content is website content that leaves you impressed, your search intent satisfied, and indelibly etches the experience of reading — or viewing 😉 — it into your brain.
Here’s a video summary of a previous version of this article:
Expect more where that came from.
Because let’s also remember, these AI models are multimodal. Gemini is natively so.
Hidden gems also factor in, a reason I’ve also been lobbying to incorporate social media as SEO content, as well as embracing more video.
But regardless of the medium, the fundamental helpful content equation is:
Helpful Content = Value / Time
I believe 11x content is a framework that solves for the value-to-time ratio.
I’m not saying that if you’re an HCU-casualty — let alone a fully HCU-impacted site — writing more creative content will solve your problem overnight.
But I will say this: users need to understand why your content is worth their time.
As we saw with Wil’s post above, maybe that means reworking the content you have.
Maybe it means adopting a more user-centric mindset toward eliminating content, or cleaning up the apparentness of its value, like reducing the interference of ads.
If users don’t know why your content is worth their time the most — or they’re not willing to take the time to find out — Google likely won’t know either.
But as long as you’re improving the value-to-time ratio, you’ll be marching to the beat of the correct drum machine.
Case in point: I’ve made well over 100 revisions to this article so far. I hope the value was worth your time!
But if not, bet the next version will get even closer. 😉
Until next time, enjoy the vibes:
“One and one are one, eleven”
– Jimmy
Thanks for reading. Happy optimizing! 🙂
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