HIGH QUALITY CONTENT

Quality content is original, purposeful, and correctly optimized information that people and serch engines are driven to read, view and share. Quality content helps you rank better for search engines and delight your customers.

1) RELEVANCE AND CONTEXT

• The search engine understands the meaning of words and how  they are related to each other.
• According  to search Metrics, Google’s algorithm recognizes high quality. Relevant content and rewards it with higher rankings.

 

2)CONTENT LENGTH

• Top ranking sites have 900+ words of content per page
• Focus on developing longer content
• Ideal blog post length from SEO perspective is between 2,000 – 2,450+ words long.
• Site with more words in the copyocupy higher ranking positions.
• Ideal blog post length from reader’s perspective is 1,600 words long.

 

3) IMAGES & VIDEO

• An image must be at least 32 x 32  px in size to counted as such.
• Blog post with images and videos are more engaging for visitors.
• Web pages with more images rank better (according to search Metrics).
• Web pages in top rankings have an average of 7 images.

 

4) GRAMMER & SPELLING

• Grammar and spelling mistakes make you look bsd in the eyes of your customer.
• Google yahoo and Bing might penalize you for grammar and spelling mistakes.
• Flawless copy makes you look  professional.

 

5) READABILITY

• Readability is the ease in which text can be read and understood.
• Use the Flesch reading ease formula to determine the readability of your text.
• High ranking text are easier to read.

 

6) FORMATTING

• High quality contents easier to read, and suitable for scanning and skimming.
• Google can detect page layout and you might get penalized for poor formatting.
• Visitors are less likely to read a post with poor formatting.

 

7) EXPERTISE

• High quality pages and websites need enough expertise to be authoritative and trustworthy on the topic.
• The expertise of the author is a critical factor for any content to be considered high quality.
• People want to read posts from experts that can dig into a topic and explain it.

 

8) SOCIAL MEDIA SHARES

• Content that has been extensively tweeted about can cut indexation time by 50%.
• High quality content tends to be shared more.
• High quality websites have social media buttons present on the pages.
• More social media shares correlate to higher search engine ranking.

 

9) GOOGLE INTERNAL & EXTERNAL LINKS

• Page that rank better generally have a better internal link structure with more links.
• The URL that you link to and the anchor text need to be relevant to your content.
• Link to valuable external resources delights your readers.

 

10) QUALITY OF COMMENTS

• Web content with a high number of comments is perceived as high quality.
• Quality thoughtful comments help you rank better and engages your readers with the content.

The Basic But Essential Elements Of High-Quality Content

It’s what all marketers strive for, and what Google and people look for. It’s what separates the winners from the losers online; it’s what will help your site rank well in the search engines, what will naturally attract high-quality inbound links, and what will help you build trust, authority with your audience. And yet, many business owners still aren’t aware of what “high-quality content” actually means.

While the definition of “quality” changes depending on your niche, industry, type, or target audience, there are many common elements that are reliable indicators of quality. Following is a checklist you can use to determine whether your content is ‘quality’ or not.

You can use this checklist to determine how Google and your visitors perceive and evaluate your content, or to determine how reliable and authoritative someone else’s content is.

Sources used for this post include Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, Google’s leaked Quality Rating Guide, and various other sources as cited below.

 

1. Are You Using the Appropriate Length of Content?

We’re currently living in tricky times when it comes to determining the ideal word count for content. On the one hand, we know that Google certainly shows a preference for long form, ‘meaty’ content that covers all aspects of a topic. On the other hand, our mobile users are showing a preference for shorter, more succinct content they can read on the go. With mobile having now overtaken desktop for going online, (60% of mobile web users use their phone as their primary or exclusive means of going online), this struggle is only going to continue.

When creating content, focus on your goals and on the intent of your audience: If you want the content to rank highly in the search engines and to attract links, go for longer, 1000+ word content. If you want your content to be easily accessible to mobile users, cut out anything unnecessary and format your content so mobile users can get the information they need, fast. Some ways to do this include using a lower word count, focusing on long-tail keywords that mobile users would be more likely to search for, the proper use of headings, bullet points, lists, and linking to other mobile-friendly content.

 

2. Are You Supplementing with Images, Video Embeds, Infographics or Other Media?

It’s possible to have high-quality content without using images or other forms of media, but we know that visual content outperforms text-only content in terms of attracting inbound links, social media shares, time spent on page, and engagement. In fact, we know that 40% of people will respond better to visual information than to plain text. It’s likely that Google factors in the use of multimedia when scoring pages for its ranking algorithm. Even if that’s not the case, it’s a fact that Google considers inbound links to a page as one of the heaviest factors in its ranking algorithm, and multimedia-based content has been shown to be shared up to 12X more than text content.

 

3. Are You Using Proper Grammar and Spelling, and is Your Content Easy To Read?

Google has placed a huge emphasis on the trustworthiness of pages and sites, and a page with poor spelling, grammar or typos is much less likely to be seen as trustworthy. Even if Google were irrelevant (which, of course, it isn’t), your website visitors are far less likely to trust and rely on information that isn’t written professionally.
4. Are You Using Proper Page and Text Formatting?

High quality content is aesthetically attractive, easy to read, and suitable for scanning and skimming (which is how the majority of your website visitors will consume your content). Google’s algorithm has become sophisticated enough that it can detect page and content layout, and you may be penalized in the rankings for poor content formatting. Again, even if Google doesn’t penalize you for it, your human readers will.