We often talk of “Quality Content” every now and then but no one has bother to ask “what is quality content”. With all the Google updates especially the Hummingbird update now in full swing, there has been more mention of quality contents around the web.
In this article I will explain what quality content is all about and how to create quality contents regularly. But before then we have to understand what Google and other search engines consider a quality content.
What do search engines consider a quality content?
Search engine is all about providing the best results for a search. Over time searches are becoming conversational and direct and search engines are expected to return only results with useful and related content explaining the searchers query.
When you use the search engines to look up something, you expect to get only results that will solve the problems you are searching for; you expect to get only results to best answers your question. Google and other search engines see search as a product and have thus poised to improve it and have refined their ability to find the best and most useful contents online.
In the past search engines used keywords to find contents but when SEO companies and content creators began to abuse this, stuffing keywords into low-quality contents to get them to rank well, strategically using keywords to deceive search engines into thinking their content is the best fit for a search when it is indeed nothing, has lead to a change in the main ranking factors today.
Google and other search engines have improved their knowledge graph to consider a lot of other ranking factors especially the value of content you provide and how it addresses your users’ problems. Google is only interested in contents that provide searchers with the information they are searching for, contents that people want to engage with and talk about.
So what is quality content?
By my definition quality contents are contents that meet the following criteria;
1. Solves people’s problems
2. Provides enough information to a query
3. Addresses issues without requiring more resources elsewhere
4. Worth sharing and engaging with
5. Easily understandable and well organized
6. Timely and relevant
7. Easy to find when searched with the right keywords
8. Well written in appropriate style and voice
9. Well formatted and properly structured and
10. Long enough to contain every necessary point.
How to consistently write quality contents:
Know what people are searching for: To consistently write quality contents, you must understand what people are searching for. When you know what people are searching for and how they are searching for it, you can tailor your contents to meet their needs.
You must find what your users are interested in, what questions they are asking, the keywords they are using for their searches, their problems and most importantly the answers they are looking for.
You can use your analytics tool to analyze and discover these things. Tailor your contents to meet these needs and always write contents that answers such questions.
Write for your audience: Instead of using keywords tool to look for high ranking keywords, listen to your audience. Connect with your audience, ask them what they are interested in, look at the comments on your site and the questions they always ask and create contents to address their issues.
What words are they using to talk about your products? How do they ask questions on your site? Then write for your audience using these words.
Write for humans, optimize for search engines: Always bear in mind that the contents you produce are read by humans not search engines. Write in a manner that people will love to read, think like your audience and write to address their issues.
Optimize your posts properly with the right SEO methods so as to be easily found on search engines. You can’t be writing about cars and optimizing for food. Make sure your content is based on the keyword in focus and that way you can produce good contents.
Write Original Contents: The days when copied contents used to rank on search engines are gone. Google and other search engines have modified their algorithms to discover and punish such sites.
Explore the internet and read other sites, discover topics you can comfortably write about without having to copy anyone, gather enough resources and write from your head, don’t be scared of sharing your ideas and views – that’s what makes your posts unique and original.
Make notes always: To consistently produce good quality contents, you must ensure to makes notes of ideas as they come into your head always. Nothing frustrates a writer or could make you produce low-quality contents than sitting down and not knowing what to write about.
So keeping notes will help you stack good ideas up your sleeve and can help you produce quality contents consistently.
Invest time in writing: Invest time when you write, don’t just rush to write up a topic in few minutes. The main aspect of blogging is in writing the contents, take your time to consider all the points you want to write about, research for fresh ideas and resources such as photos and links.
Gather all you will need before you set out to write and you will see that when it’s time to write, you’ll feel like the post is already half done. Having all the resources you need before writing will help you get into a good writing mood and the ideas and words will naturally flow with your writing.
Always stay updated: As a writer, your main challenge is to stay updated on the latest events and happenings in your niche. Staying updated will provide you with useful information to produce quality contents consistently.
Keep it simple: Keeping your writing simple will help you stay in line with the topic you are writing about. Too often writers let posts ramble on too long or wander off into multiple trails and tangents and end up losing focus and wander away into unrelated topics.
Quality over Quantity: If you can’t consistently write quality contents every day, then reduce your posts. I’ll rather publish few times in a week than compromise my blog quality with low-quality contents.
Now over to you…
I guess I have used a lot of the word “quality” on this post. I hope I have explained what “quality content” is all about and how you can consistently produce high quality contents on your site. I have also tried to keep it simple.
What are your challenges in creating quality contents? What is your view and understanding of quality content? Share your opinions and ideas in the comments.
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yes. truely. but since you’d like to know about my opinion. my major answer is the no 1. which talks about solving problem. but one thing i noticed about bloggers is that they always write for search engines instead of human beings while optimisation is the best food to give search engines. How to Find and Fix apps that Crashes and Reboot Android Phones.
Yes quality contents are those type of contents that can solve people’s problems as described in the article. Humans are the consumers of the contents we produce so we must have them in mind always while writing but can optiimize for search engines so our contents can be found and read by humans.
Thanks Nwosu,
This has reminded me of a certain I was busy and in need of some content and Google gave me websites which had empty words. It was very annoying to find some ranking pages which do not have quality content as required. Bloggers and all online writers should put more effors and ensure taht they post quality contents that can help a person who is targeted to.
Laura
Thanks Laura for your great contribution and yes Google and other search engines are working hard to return only posts with quality ontent that addresses the issue you searched correctly.
You are spot on Desmond. Quality content is timely and relevant. It should be written for humans and optimized for the search engines.
Every content provider should always ensure that his/her content is somewhat VALUABLE to the end user.
This is a very helpful post!
In kingged.com, this post is shared and “kingged” for its value to content marketers.
Sunday – kingged.com contributor
http://kingged.com/quality-content/
This good article reveals some great ideas to write a good content. Most of us are usually write for the search engines rather than for our customers. That is the most widely believed story about search engine optimized articles. Your post is full of positive ideas to create a meaningful content. Thanks for publishing this friendly and useful post.
Thanks Sunday for your awesome contribution. Glad you found it helpful.
Hello Nwosu,
There is really nothing to add to your list; though very succinct, you have covered the basics and nothing reasonably remains to be added.
However, the only challenge I have creating excellent content is time…In that wise, I have decided to update my blog once every week henceforth…that way, I would be in a position to pursue my other passions too and never compromise my quality!
Always,
Terungwa
Hi Nwosu,
A well written post it is! You have very well described the key traits of quality content. And like a bonus for your readers, you have also mentioned some timeless tips to master the art of writing quality content, on a consistent basis.
Talking about the traits if quality content, I wholeheartedly agree that it should be capable of ‘solving problems’ of the reader and should share useful, unique information. Those are the key traits, if you ask me. Next comes the ‘completeness’ of that article. Just like you mentioned in the article, it should cover that topic inside out. The article should be like a ‘one stop shop’. That’s the term I’d prefer :)
The article should be so informative and detailed that a visitor son’t have to make use of another source. He/she should be forced to bookmark and share that post on social media sites!
Talking about the structure and writing style of a quality content, it should be well written, keeping readers in mind, not Search Engines. The data should be well structured, giving readability a boost. Even if the quality of the content is good, but readability is compromised, it won’t be of much use!
One crucial part is that the quality content should have good SERP visibility. Like you said, it should be readily available, when searched using the right keywords. Thus, quality content should ultimately address the basics of SEO, without overdoing it.
Coming to the tips you shared to write such quality content, I agree wholeheartedly with the ‘quality’ part. I guess quantity can take the back seat :)
Knowing what people are looking for actually makes the process quite simple. That will help us churn out quality content on a consistent basis.
At the end of the day, I’d say that writing up ‘quality content’ is an art, where many factors come into play. One has to satisfy many criteria to create such an article.
I guess that this post is an example of a quality post! :) Will definitely King it on Kingged!
Arun
Hi Nwosu,
I like that you wrote a post about “What is quality content”. I can’t tell you how many articles I have read that have used that phrase. Some posts were very short and others were quite long. But it didn’t matter, people like to use that phrase.
Sometime I would read a post and the author would say “you need to have quality content”. I would think “Do they even know how vague they are being?”. It’s like saying “it’s good to be good”. What does that mean?
So, I like you wrote a post and actually put down your thoughts on what make a post have quality content.
I agree with most of your points. We can debate one or two later:) But I do agree with most of the points. I especially like #1: solving a problem.
Hey, I like to read different posts, but at the end I want to walk away with “something”: something to think about, something I learned that will benefit me, something to put on my “to do” list that will make my website better . . . just “something”.
I also like #5: understandable and organized. I am such a believer in this … I guess that’s why I named my blog SimplifyTechnology :)
I want to read a post where I know where it’s going. I don’t want there to be so many twists and turn that I am left wondering what the point was. I love organization. I think it helps people if they can scan the article if they want to and then also slow down on certain areas if they want to.
Thanks for writing a post that I think really needed to be written.
Barb
I read this on kingged.com
Well quality content is really important to get our posts lot of traffic and search engines also love to index out posts.
Thanks for share.
Hi Nwosu,
Now a days its important to write for your targeted audience instead of “Google”/Search Engine. You should use your own writing style to write your article and don’t just copy and paste someone’s content.
That is great but i will advise if you can make it atleast 3 times in a week, find when you have enough time to come up with contents then schedule them and you won’t have to write again for the whole week. Once a week may affect your site because if i am a regular visitor and i visit all through the week to see nothing is changed i may be discouraged to come back the next week.
Thanks Arun for such a detailed contribution. If there is anything as quality comment then this is it. Touching every aspect of the article and giving your insight. I am glad you agreed with me that a quality content should be a “one stop shop” as you described it. A quality content should be able to address all the aspects of a topic except you are writing a series where other aspects will come on a later post, then you should as well mention and link to it when it is available for people to continue to it.
Brady just like you i always wondered what quality content was and decided to take some time out to brainstorm on the concept and arrived at this post. If a post does not have any value or information/solution to offer then its totally worthless. A post could be entertaining or informative, but if the value of the information is nothing to solve the problem of its readers or offer them value in knowledge then such post is totally worthless.
Search engines like Google have been fighting low-quality contents from coming up on their search engine results for long and we can see how successful they have been and in the future of search engines a time will come when search engine will give a direct answer instead of giving links to read from. So any writer who understands where search technology is going should prepare for such change.
Present the points you have to share in your article in a manner it can easily be fetched even without having to read the whole article. Some people do not have all the time in the world to read, they simply skim and move on, so providing them with the information they are looking for in a manner they can easily find it can go along way in encouraging them to return and Google considers returning visitors as a sign of your sites’s quality and this can improve search engine ranking.
A point i totally agree with you. Thanks for your contribution.
Spot on! I like how you emphasize the topic here.
My take is that, make sure you know all the answers that arise when talking about:
Usefulness & relevance
Clarity & accuracy
Influence & engagement
Completeness
Voice & style
Usability & findability
Like asking yourself “Does the content use the appropriate techniques to influence or engage customers?” “Does the content meet user needs, goals, and interests?” and “Is the content correct?”
I found this post shared on Kingged.com, the Internet marketing social news site, and I “kingged” it and left this comment.
Thanks Metz for your awesome contribution, glad you found it resourceful.
This article has a very good explanation about Quality Content in search engines because it is most common thing that every person uses search engines to get to the solution for their problem and even they expect the most effective way. So this article would help them to know what actually an quality content would be.
Thankyyou
Very nice post. Thanks for it. Now I have understood what does it mean by quality content.
Really what a quality content..you explain many aspects regarding quality..and truly said “Quality over quantity”.
Wow It was awesome, you nailed it. It was the best article i have read about quality content. One of its reason was your own point writing for humans. Most of the bloggers fail to do so. Thanks for sharing this.