We hear it and we say it over and over. The number one thing you can do for SEO is produce high quality content. However, it’s been said so many times that it has become nothing but another useless piece of business jargon. Nevertheless, the need for such content still rings true.
With that in mind, we think it necessary to tackle this issue of quality content. More specifically, we’d like to define it for you and explain how you can begin producing your own (or find someone worthwhile to do it for you).
High Quality Content is Shared Content
Let’s get this one out of the way first. Foremost, Google is going social. This means your content needs to be shared by others. The more it’s shared, and the more often your site produces shared content, the more important the content the more of an authority Google will see you as.
High Quality Content Has a Good Title
Yes titles are important to hook your readers’ attention. But notice we didn’t say that high quality content is merely a “catchy” content. No, a good title requires more than that. It has to be relevant. It has to include words and phrases that make sense in the search. For example, while a title like “You’ll Never Guess What I Just Learned” might intrigue some of your readers, it says little or nothing to Google. So whatever you “just learned” needs to be a bit more clear to make it relevant to your desired search.
High Quality Content is Fresh Content
You know why experts are pushing for onsite blogs now more than ever? It’s because stagnant content is no longer considered high quality. Instead, Google is beginning to view such content as dated and drab. To prove the point, notice when you search now that Google often returns newer articles higher in the search rankings. What does that mean to you? To make sure your site’s content is of the highest quality, you need to produce it on a regular basis—the perfect place being on your business blog.
High Quality Content is Well Researched and Authoritative
How much research do you put into your articles? If you just slop out the first thing off the top of your head in order to fill space, then you aren’t doing enough work on the back end. It’s hard to argue with the fact that the more research you put into an article, the better points you will make. Compare it to a college research paper: what makes a better paper: the one you spat out in 15 minutes or the one you spent a few hours in the library researching?
High Quality Content is Not Redundant
Because we’re so set on creating as many backlinks as possible, we get caught up on generating a large quantity of work. The problem is that when we focus on quality, the quality suffers. As a result, we often end up writing the same thing over and over, just worded a bit differently. So if your site has a blog packed full of such redundancies, you can bet that Google won’t view you as a high quality content producer, this your rankings will suffer.
High Quality Content Approaches and Issue from All Sides
When we’re talking articles, one way to make sure your content is high quality is to make it as complete as possible. So when you address a topic, get creative and try to approach the issue from all sides. Be thinking about what people have failed to mention in regards to the issue, or what insight might you have that allows you to approach it in a way that someone else has not?
High Quality Content is Free of Error
Remember all that stuff you learned in elementary school English class? Yep, it still matters. One thing Google can’t stand is content filled with errors. That means no matter how much care you take when writing, no matter how much research you utilize, if your content is marred by spelling, grammatical, or factual errors, then you stand a good chance of Google saying “nope—that’s low quality.”