Editor’s Note
Hello from SiteVisibility!
We are a full service digital marketing agency based on the sunny shores of Brighton, with expertise in SEO, Content Marketing, Analytics and Paid Media.
We love nothing more than studying the digital marketing tactics and strategies being employed by the sectors that matter most to us.
In this post, our Content & Creative team have identified their favourite examples of content created by furniture brands they admire.
But, whilst we think these examples of content are great, we don’t think ‘great’ is good enough. We’ve gone one step further and proposed ideas for elevating their content to 10X brilliance.
Will your furniture company feature in our post? Either way, we’d love to hear from you to discuss how we can help your business. If there’s anyone who knows their stuff, it’s us. We’ve helped the likes of Dunelm and The French Bedroom Company to create unique, optimised content that attracts new customers, builds brand awareness, and gets people talking. If you’d like to chat, leave us a message via our contact form.
Happy reading & let’s chat soon!
What is 10X Content?
When it comes to content, and the solution to its success, the terms ‘unique’ and ‘engaging’ get thrown around endlessly.
Of course, most of us are aware that for content to be deemed ‘good quality’ it should, at the very least, be super swift to load, contain unique insights and be well presented.
After all, that’s lesson 101 of content marketing.
But here’s the thing – ‘good’ just isn’t quite cutting the mustard anymore.
These days, web users’ expectations are nothing short of exceptional.
Throw into the mix an increasingly saturated and competitive content marketing landscape, and the bar for quality content continues to get higher and higher.
This is where 10X content comes in…
First coined by Rand Fishkin, the founding father of Moz and all-round SEO hero (and recent guest on our Internet Marketing Podcast), 10x content is what separates average, run-of-the-mill content, from truly next-level, all singing, all dancing, stand-out content.
In essence, it refers to content that is 10 times better than the best result currently found in the SERPs for a given keyword phrase or topic.
Not 3 times better, not even 6 times better BUT 10 times better.
We know what you’re thinking. ‘Better’ sounds pretty vague and subjective, right? So, what precisely does that entail and how can you achieve it?
10x Content Criteria:
Well, here are some concrete, qualitative criteria that 10X content should follow:
- It should offer great UI (user interface) and UX (user experience). I.e. page speed, mobile-friendliness, layout and design.
- It should incorporate a combination of high quality, trustworthy, useful, interesting and remarkable content – although note it doesn’t always have to be all of them!
- It should be different in scope and detail from other works that are serving the same visitor or user intent.
- It should elicit an emotional response. Does it shock, scare, excite, inspire or propel someone into action?
- It must utilise comprehensive, accurate and unique information, data or resources to answer a question or solve a problem.
- It’s got to deliver content in a unique, remarkable, typically unexpectedly pleasurable style or medium.
As Cersei famously said in Game of Thrones “When you play the Game of Thrones 10X content, you either win or you die”.
Ok, maybe they weren’t her precise words, but you catch my drift. You simply can’t be complacent with simply creating ‘good content’ if you want to dethrone the first result on the SERP and continue to reign.
10x content involves plenty of practice, experimentation and investment before you master this approach. Those who have perfected it tend to have developed a sixth sense about how to present content in an extraordinary way, and how to make it way more brilliant than its counterparts.
One common myth is that 10x content correlates with the length of an article, but this is simply not true.
While long form content does indeed have the tendency to perform better on the SERPs, 10X content does not necessarily mean ten times as long, or even ten times as much information.
Instead, it’s all about making your content, be it a product page or a blog post, ten times more valuable than anything else in the SERPs and better serving the searchers intent.
So, now that we know what 10x content is, let’s take a look at some examples of content being created by some of the biggest players (and some lesser-known but equally magnificent contenders) in the furniture industry.
Join us as we explore how they can promote their content from ‘good’ to 10X.
Dreams 10x Content Opportunity
Dreams Blog Post: Six Things Successful People Do Before Bed
Let’s start by stating that there’s plenty we enjoy about Dreams’ blog post: Six Things Successful People Do Before Bed. It provides an interesting slant on the topic of a bedtime routine by relating it to the habits of successful celebrtities and businessmen. The content is presented in a visually impressive manner, using colours consistent with the Dreams brand, and features high quality illustrations and images. We also like the fact it answers the question of how much sleep to get, and what to do before bed, in a detailed and fun way. In addition to this, it references scientific sources and data and provides useful, relevant links to meditation apps and The National Sleep Foundation.
Currently, it’s ranking #1 for the following search terms:
- ‘things to do before bed’ (montly search volume of 110)
- ‘what to do before you go to bed’ (montly search volume of 70)
- ‘best things to do before going to sleep’ (monthly search volume of 50)
So far, so good right?
It certainly appears to tick some of the boxes required for 10X content. However, the key word here is some.
So, How Could Dreams’ Content Be 10X’d?
Remember what we were saying about 10X content providing a great user experience?
Well check out the page speed insights below, on mobile and desktop:
A score of 15/100 on Mobile and 36/100 on Desktop. Yikes.
To improve these scores and the content itself, Dreams may want to look at some of the following:
- Compressing CSS, HTML and JavaScript files that are larger than 150 bytes
- Optimising code: removing unessecary characters, code comments, formatting and unusused code
- Reducing the number of redirects
- Leveraging browser caching
- Improving server response time
Is your site performing as it should? Do you need help with improving your page speed? We can help. Get in touch with us here.
What’s more, whilst the infographic on this page uses quality images, the same cannot be said of the blurry header image below. Also notice that the strapline says ‘By’ but omits the author’s name.
This doesn’t exactly create the best first impression does it?
There are also some minor amendments we would consider making to the content in terms of making it more accessible.
For instance, some users might have trouble reading the small, light grey font at the bottom of the page.
This section also fails to provide the user with links to the books mentioned. Linking out is a great way to make content trustworthy (a criteria for 10X content).
High quality and easily navigatable content is also key for content to be considered 10X. Something that struck us about this blog post was the call-to-action at the end of the post. A small, barely visible, link prompts the user to ‘learn more about ‘People’. What ‘People’ are Dreams talking of? And what will you learn about them? Seems pretty vague if you ask us. More context should be provided to encourage and compel the user to click through.
The infographic on this page is no doubt genuinely shareable and likely to create debate on social channels. Yet, when the user reaches the end of the infographic, they aren’t encouraged to share it – either in words or in the form of social sharing links.
Finally, lets talk about originality. Whilst the take on this blog post topic is interesting, many of the facts and figures featured can easily be obtained elsewhere.
To promote this page to 10X level, it would be awesome if some truly unknown and unique facts were thrown into the mix. One way this could be achieved is for Dreams to reach out to famous businessmen who’ve achieved success fairly recently and are unlikely to have content already written about them. Fresh data and figures = fantastic.
Our 10x Rating: 3/10
Slow page speed, blurry images, barely visible text/links and a lack of truly unique facts mean it wouldn’t take much for a competitor to come along and knock Dreams of the #1 spot for ‘things to do before bed’.
Furniture Village 10x Content Opportunity
Furniture Village Guide: How To Move A Sofa
We love this guide from Furniture Village on How To Move A Sofa.
Not only does it take the user step-by step through the process of moving a sofa, but it provides some alternative opinions and advice. Indeed, in a slightly different approach to any other results on the SERPs, they offer the perspective of a Furniture Delivery Operative at Furniture Village, a maths expert and, wait for it, a psychologist that specialises in couples counselling!
In addition to that, there’s a lot about this page that does technically meet 10X criteria; it’s well written, detailed, comprehensive, utilises good design and visuals, is mobile friendly and uses data to back up any claims. Finally, there’s an interactive quiz at the end for users to understand how they will fare when it comes to moving a sofa.
Currently, it’s ranking for the below search terms:
- #1 for ‘moving armchair’ (monthly search volume of 70)
- #2 for ‘how to move a sofa’ (monthly search volume of 50)
How Could Furniture Villages Content Be 10X’d?
We were pretty shocked to discover this page is not the number 1 result for ‘how to move a sofa’. As we said previously, it appears to tick a lot of 10X boxes.
However, the first result is actually a featured snippet for this article from moving.com, titled ‘How to Move a Couch By Yourself’.
So, what is it about this article that is better and what could Furniture Village do to knock them off the number one spot? Firstly, content that appears in a featured snippet does so for the simple reason that it specifically answers a question. But doesn’t the Furniture Village content do that too?
Well, here’s the thing. This Furniture Village guide is severely lacking in any sprinkling of SEO magic.
Whilst the user is aware it’s called ‘How to Move a Sofa’ – for search engines, this is a little more difficult to decipher (and thus rank it for this term). Take the heading itself. ‘How to move a sofa’ is actually an image rather than a H1. An optimised H1 is crucial for Google to understand what a page is about. Even the image is not optimised for this term.
There are additional subheadings littered throughout this guide that could be better optimised too. Take the below byline, which has zero search volume associated with it.
Preferably, this subheading could be changed to one of the following:
- ‘how to get a sofa through a door’ (monthly search volume of 260)
- ‘getting sofa through door’ (monthly search volume of 110)
Again, the same could be said for the following subheading. This could be altered to read ‘how to get a sofa up stairs’ (this has a monthly search volume of 20).
Need help with optimising your content? We can help. Get in touch with our team here.
Find out how we’ve helped improve organic traffic and search visibility for Dunelm and a Global Skincare Brand through onsite optimisation.
Additional improvements that could be made to this page, in order to 10X it, is the page speed. Whilst its speed on desktop is in the top percentile, this page is extremely slow on mobile with a score of 48/100.
According to GTmetrix, a high priority for this page is to leverage it’s browser caching and minimise redirects.
Remember how we said 10X content should elicit some form of emotional response too? Well, your meta description on the SERPs is essentially your first opportunity to trigger a reaction from your audience. It’s effectively the window that will draw customers into your online shop. Below is the meta description for this guide – hardly inspiring stuff is it?
We also noticed that whilst this guide does appear to use unique data, it’s not entirely clear where this has originated from.
The content starts by simply plucking the below statistic out of the air – is this research Furniture Village has undertaken themselves? How comprehensive was the research/who was involved?
For the reader, this is vague. We would consider adding in information as to where this statistic has come from.
Finally, video content on this page could also prove useful for users who prefer to digest their content visually.
Our 10X Rating: 9/10
So near yet so far. Compared to similar content on the SERPs, Furniture Village’s approach to the topic of moving a sofa is different in scope and detail. However, it is not ranking #1 for ‘how to move a sofa’. A few SEO tweaks of headings, images and meta descriptions, plus fixing any page speed issues, and this page could genuinely qualify as 10X.
Ikea 10x Content Opportunity
IKEA Research Project: Life At Home
When it comes to content marketing and creativity, IKEA has a well-deserved reputation for thinking outside the box.
Just last year, its UAE counterpart came up with a fantastic campaign which we absolutely loved here at SiteVisibility. It saw the furniture giant recreate iconic tv living rooms from popular culture, such as the Simpsons, Friends and Stranger Things. More recently, they made a smart move by releasing the recipe for their infamous meatballs during the height of Coronavirus lockdowns. Better yet, the recipe came in the form of a flat-pack assembly manual. Inspired stuff!
Back to ikea.com and the furniture brand has produced some equally valuable and interesting content. In particular, as far as we can see, their Life at Home Research is far superior and different in scope to anything else being created by their competitors. In fact, the entire project sits on a separate subdomain and entails a blog and downloadable annual reports, all related to the topic of home, including:
- What makes a home
- What frustrates us about home
- How does home feel
- Where does home begin and end
- How important privacy is at home
Focusing in particular on their research page, there’s plenty that we admire about this content.
It contains some exceptional, high-quality, trustworthy and useful information whilst comprehensive and unique data is also used. In essence, there’s an overwhelming amount about this page, and the project in general, that meets 10X criteria.
Not only does this content help to position IKEA as an expert on the home, it also preys on readers’ fears and concerns about themes such as privacy, security, comfort, belonging and ownership. Again, 10X content should, ideally, elicit an emotional response. There’s no doubt that many readers will relate to the topics covered by this research project.
But is this piece of content from IKEA a prime example of 10X content? Perhaps surprisingly, there’s still work to be done.
How Could This Ikea Content Be 10X’d?
So, we’ve thrown a little spanner in the works with this IKEA content example.
How? Well, as it stands, their research page is not even ranking for ANY relevant search terms in the top 30 SERP results.
As you know by now, the whole premise of 10X is to produce content that’s 10 times better than the 1st result on a SERP for a given search term.
That said, the homepage for the Life at Home project, seen below, is currently ranking for the following term:
- #1 for ‘life at home’ (monthly search volume of 70)
In our opinion, this homepage serves little purpose. Whilst it is certainly useful to introduce what the project is about, this copy could easily be lifted from the homepage and added, above the fold, to the research page. Otherwise, the homepage simply acts as an added, unnecessary step in the user journey, forcing the user to click before they can enter the site.
Plus, compared to the research page, the content on this homepage is limited in both length and value. It would be easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy for a competitor to come along and overtake IKEA in the no.1 spot for ‘life at home’.
With this in mind, we believe it would be preferable for IKEA to scrap the homepage and optimise/10X the research page for ‘life at home’.
Take the H1 below, which is currently the non-descript term ‘Our Research’. This could be changed to ‘Our Life At Home Research’. Similarly, the meta descriptions, title and images on this page could all be tweaked to include ‘life at home’ or similar related terms.
Wondering how you can improve your organic performance or search visibility? Talk to one of our team about your SEO strategy, we ‘d love to help! Contact us here.
Finally, whilst scoring higher than previous examples, an additional improvement that could be made to this page is the page speed on both mobile and desktop.
Currently, it scores 56/100 on mobile and 78/100 on desktop and according to GTmetrix, priorities for this page are to leverage browser caching and optimise images to reduce their size.
Our 10X Rating: 3/10
Whilst this research page contains content of exceptional quality, and unique data, it is not appearing in the SERPs for the search term ‘life at home’ AT ALL. The SEO changes recommended above need to be implemented in order for it to do so. Once this is in place, this page is in a healthy position to be elevated to 10X brilliance.
Loaf 10x Content Opportunity
Loaf Listing Page: Extra Large Sofas
What is awesome about Loaf is that their personality never fails to shine through in their copy.
This product listing page for extra-large sofas refers to their ‘scrummy sofas’ as being the ‘comfiest, snuggliest in town’.
Currently, it’s ranking #1 for multiple search terms including:
- ‘extra large sofa’ (monthly search volume of 880)
- ‘huge sofa’ (monthly search volume of 260)
- ‘oversized sofa’ (monthly search volume of 260)
- ‘large comfy sofa’ (monthly search volume of 170)
We love the images used on the page too. They’re vibrant, crisp and clear.
Plus, the user experience and navigation are excellent. The user can instantly filter what large sofa they want to see by ‘type’, ‘size’, ‘dimensions’, ‘seat’, ‘fabric’ and more.
How Could This Content From Loaf Be 10X’d?
At this stage, you’re probably not surprised anymore when we bring up page speed are you? Well, this page is lacking in both desktop and mobile – but mobile in particular, scoring a measly 18/100.
If Loaf want this page to remain #1 for ‘extra large sofa’ then, as a minimum, they’ll need to sort their page speed out (remember, page speed is a crucial 10X criteria) According to GTmetrix, addressing the following will help resolve this issue:
- Leveraging browser caching
- Defering parsing of JavaScript
- Optimising images
- Minimising redirects
It’s also best practice for a product listing page to have a breadcrumb URL, so as to display what category the list of products belongs to.
This offers an easy way for users to navigate back and forth between different product listing pages. Navigation, remember, is a key criterion for 10X content.
Loaf might also consider adding additional text beneath the listing products. At present, it simply features the name of the sofa and presents as a pretty standard PLP page. Other elements they might consider adding include colours available, features and price. They could also add customer review ratings to entice people to click through.
Something we also noticed was the same content is duplicated across many PLP pages. I.e., the ‘tall legs’, ‘orange chaise sofas’ and ‘striped sofas’ all feature the same written content below the fold (see screenshot below).
Ideally, the content on each of these pages should be unique and relevant to the products in question.
Our 10X Rating: 5/10
Despite the personality in their copy, the crisp images and the excellent user experience, improving their page speed score, creating unique copy for their PLP pages and products and improving their SEO through breadcrumb URLs and additional text beneath their listing products would each play a part in helping this content to become 10x.
Stressless 10x Content Opportunity
Stressless Ekornes Product Page: Wing Recliner Chair
The entire website for Norwegian company Stressless Ekornes has a simple and classic feel, much like their products.
Take this product page for a stressless wing recliner. What we particularly like is the ability to immediately change the seat colour of the chair in the photo. The same can be achieved in terms of changing the base of the chair and the wood colour.
What particularly makes Stressless stand out from the crowd with this page is that, when viewed in the US site, it features an interactive quiz the user can take to understand which chair is best for them.
Once the user answers questions based on why their shopping for a new recliner, what feature is most important in a chair (e.g. complete body comfort, automated leg control, ergonomic back support), who will be using the chair (e.g. whole family, kids or pets, me and my visitors, just me), what look they prefer (e.g. modern, classic), when they are looking to buy (now, within 2 weeks/month/90 days) and whether or not they’ve purchased with Stressless before, the result is emailed to the user alongside a special offer.
How Could This Stressless Content Be 10X’d?
The only non-branded term that this page is ranking for is ‘wing recliner’ – in position #10 (this has a monthly search volume of 90), but at no point, does the content on this page mention this term.
As such, we would consider optimising the content on this page for that term with the view of improving it’s ranking. The URL could also be changed too to help Google identify what the page is about. Similarly, some alt tags for the images on this page are either missing or could be better optimised for the term ‘wing recliner’.
As previously mentioned, great UI and UX are indicators of 10X Content, yet along with many of the other examples, this page has poor page speed on mobile and desktop.
In order to be a 10X page for ‘wing recliner’, Stressless Ekornes will first need to tackle this page speed issue. According to GTmetrix, the following should be resolved in order to rectify this:
- Leverage browser caching
- Optimise images
- Serve resources from a consistent URL
- Enable compression
- Specify a cache validator
The content of this page is not particularly remarkable either. Most of Ekornes product pages for recliner chairs share exactly the same content and images, which isn’t great.
In addition to this, some of the content on the page is written in a very light text. This could make the content on this page inaccessible for those with sight issues.
The solution? Well, looking at the brands ‘Our story’ page tell us a lot about what makes the brand unique and enticing and could easily be weaved into the copy on this wing recliner page.
Examples include:
- The location of the product: Hails from the ‘heart of Norwegian furniture manufacturing’. It’s also the largest manufacturer in the Nordic region
- Experience & Established: They created the ultimate comfort experience, which has taken ‘decades to perfect’
- Care for the environment: They reuse and recycle materials,
- Distinctive USP from competitor: Their distinctive Plus™ system – a functional skeleton of springs which interprets your body’s movements as you change positions. The Stressless Glide system reads your body’s weight and shape to adjust making reclining natural and adaptive. The Comfort Zones technology. It also utilises 360 degree rotation.
By adding additional information, Stressless can help to inform and persuade the user about their chairs, whilst at the same time, helping it towards becoming 10x content.
Our 10X Rating: 5/10
Despite it’s sleek and classic feel and the interactive quiz to help their users, there are a lot of SEO opportunities for Stressless to improve this content and help it to become 10x.
John Lewis 10x Content Opportunity
John Lewis Article: How To Dress A Sofa
We all know and love John Lewis for their genius Christmas TV advertising campaigns, which gets everybody talking, but can the same be said of their content marketing? For this report, we reviewed an article titled The Subtle Art Of Dressing A Sofa.
There’s certainly a lot we like about this post, including the fact it utilises an interior design expert. This adds an element of authority and credibility to the advice being offered (EAT). It also employs lots of bold, high-quality imagery which showcases John Lewis products extremely well.
Currently, it’s ranking #1 for the below search terms:
- ‘how to dress a sofa’ (monthly search volume of 170)
- ‘how to dress a sofa with throws and cushions’ (monthly search volume of 110)
- ‘sofa dressing’ (monthly search volume of 90)
- ‘how to dress up a sofa’ (monthly search volume of 70)
So, it’s already doing well, but would it take much for a competitor to come along and produce something 10x better than this? We fear not. Read on to discover how we would 10X this blog post.
How Could This Content From John Lewis Be 10X’d?
Firstly, before we even consider how to make a page 10 times better than the rest, it’s important to get the fundamentals right. What we noticed about this article is that alt tags on all the images are missing. Not only does that make this article less accessible to people with sight issues, optimised images can also have a small SEO impact – often bringing traffic through to the page from image search results. This is something that John Lewis would need to rectify.
Slow page speed, a theme that runs through this report, once again rears its ugly head. In particular, this page is slow to load on mobile.
According to GTmetrix, the following needs to be addressed in order for this pages speed to improve:
- Leverage browser caching
- Serve resources from a consistent URL
- Defer parsing of JavaScript
- Minify JavaScript
Ideally, this page would also include a photo of the interior design expert in question to add more clout to the page in terms of making it trustworthy – a 10X feature.
In terms of making this page different in scope and detail from other content serving the same intent, there might be one or two things John Lewis could do to make this article more unique.
For instance, perhaps they could show how a member of each department at John Lewis dresses their sofa. Alternatively, they could show what can be achieved on different budgets or dressing your sofa for certain occasions.
As 10X content can often contain comprehensive data, John Lewis may also consider doing a survey amongst their customers about dressing their sofa.
Our 10X Rating: 7/10
This article from John Lewis is performing well, ranking #1 for a number of terms, there is still work to be done for it to be considered 10x and to fend off those pesky competitors.
Discuss these insights with our Content & Creative team
Our Content & Creative team are a dab hand at transforming ordinary, tired text into sleek and seductive sales copy that your audience will lap up. Whether they’re creating new content or optimising existing content, they are ready to sculpt and deliver your message in an exciting way that’s 10 X better than your competitors.
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