Since Google released the Panda update in February last year, the importance of having high-quality content on your site has increased hugely.
In May 2011, Amit Singhal published a post aimed to help people build better quality websites. One of the most important points to take away from it was, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, having good-quality content. Here I’m going to go into detail over some of his points and explain what you really need to do if you want to rank well.
Authority
One of the key issues brought up is that of authority. The questions asked include whether the reader would trust the information being provided in the article, and whether the site is considered to be an authority on the topic being discussed.
In other words, is your website a credible place for this content? Obviously, if you specialise in car sales you’re not going to write about gardens, but this point goes further than this. For example, if you’re selling cars, then are you an appropriate place to post information on engine repairs and maintenance? Although the areas are related, they’re not that closely linked. Therefore, this content isn’t actually very relevant to your site. Content on the reliability of certain cars with certain amounts of mileage or of a certain age would be more appropriate. This is because your site has real knowledge of this area, whereas content on engine repairs would be better suited to a garage or engineering website.
This is backed up by the insistence that your content actually contains helpful specifics, rather than just generalities; that your content is written by an expert, or at least a knowledgeable enthusiast; and provides a comprehensive discussion of the topic it is covering. All of this is of course far easier to achieve if you and your company chose to produce content on subjects which you have real knowledge of.
To summarise: write about topics you and your company really know about and you should be able to hit all of these objectives with ease.
Set quality standards
Next, Google asks that you produce content that is readable. It asks you to produce content that is well-edited, grammatically accurate, and factually correct. It wants you to consider whether the piece could be printed in a magazine, or published in a book or encyclopaedia.
Basically, Google wants you to make sure you’re producing pieces that actually have some value and which have had real effort put into their creation. They pointedly chastise mass-produced content which has not received the proper care and attention that quality articles require. So put some thought and attention into your content. Consider the value of each piece – could you get it published anywhere apart from the web? Make sure you take the time to thoroughly proof-read and edit everything – get rid of all typos and clean up sloppy presentation.
Google thinks content is important and valuable, so you need to start treating it as such; put some real time and effort into each and every piece you publish. Set yourself high standards and stick to them.
Provide real insight not just information
Finally, Google wants you to consider whether your content will mean anything to your readers. Is the information you’re providing interesting and original? Does it offer an insightful analysis, new information, or a well-balanced debate on the topic? If not, then what’s the point of it?
You need to make sure the content you’re creating has a reason for being. There is no point producing content on a topic which has been done to death unless you’re looking at it from an entirely new perspective or you’re bringing fresh information to the table. You need to do this because in doing so you will encourage people to share it – something which Google values very highly. The best way to get your content recommended and passed on is to make it new, or helpful, or interesting, or preferably all three! So stop re-hashing old material and be innovative. One caveat though: don’t be offensive. Although a bit of controversy can be great for getting people to read and share your article, Google warns you off creating anything offensive which could cause people to complain.
So that’s it. That’s what Google recommends and, really, it isn’t that much to ask. They value content because internet users value content. All they want is for you to do the same. It’s time to stop being lazy and stop churning out poorly written, badly researched, unhelpful, and irrelevant articles. Start putting some real effort into the content on your site and treat it like the valuable commodity it is. In doing so you should not only improve your rankings but also the real value of your site for the people who matter – the users. It’s a win-win situation!
If you’ve got anything to add that I’ve missed, please feel free to include them within the comments below. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Image Credit: FindYourSearch
That’s some good information. I have been hit by the Penguin update due to over-optimization and I am trying to stage a comeback but it’s tricky. Should I start a new page or recue the existing one. And what will happen during the next update? It’s hard to tell!!
Hi – thank you for your comment. It can be hard to know what to do for the best. If you think you’ve been badly hit by Penguin, then I’d strongly recommend that you have a look at this post of ours where we covered the topic in a lot of detail: http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2012/06/post-penguin-recovery-link-removal-strategy-for-back-link-profile-clean-ups.html
You could also look at this news story we did on penguin as soon as it was announced. We got some really insightful and useful comments from our community members on it which I’m sure you’ll find quite useful: http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2012/04/googles-over-optimisation-algorithm-update.html
Let us know how you get along.
everybody tell us about great content. Only one trouble – I not see where google cares about it. Google cares only about link velocity and diversity, about anchors percentage, unnatural social signals, ad placement in their search results, etc.
But i not see where great content here playing important role.
There is a huge bucket of signals in the Google algo that depend on content. Some of them are easy to game (such as reading level, length of article, size/color of content, etc), and some of them are more complex and rely on combining signals such as bounce rate, social sharing, and contextual relevancy. These are more difficult to game because they are constantly refining their definitions of the natural profile for these metrics. “Good Content” is in because no matter how Google changes, you can sleep soundly knowing you are playing on the same team and that if you create sound content, Google will make it easier to find.
I’m agree with John’s opinion, google did not take the top content as the high rank standard, so is the high quality and valuable content can really bring our site a good rank, or can improve ranking.
I believe that whether a particular site can be considered to be an authority in its industry or not is arguable. It’s not all about having the best content, imho. Let’s consider a practical example: I run an SEO company, but maybe the content I’m writing for my website isn’t of the highest quality – it may even contain lots of factual errors. I believe that the search engine algorithms aren’t able to determine the quality of our content at the moment, so the bounce rate, the time spent on our websites, and so on, will still be strong ranking indicator for now.
These are more difficult to game because they are constantly refining their definitions of the natural profile for these metrics.
A good and quality content is always advisable for driving traffic to your website. Laura Grace also has a point on this. One can just overcome any updates of algorithm if you have quality content and also adhere to other rules of ethical seo.
Thanks for the post
I have been reviewing my website over and over again and along the way I think I have lost direction. The design itself is not set out for containing the content I want displayed and will be looking for a complete new format – one designed I know the important thing to do is get the content right.
“Stop rehashing old material”
Music to my ears, so many SEO’s write or brief people to write unintresting and un innovative material that may as well of just been spun from another article that already exists on the net.
I recently wrote an article on the topic, your feedback will be welcomed:
http://www.upsearch.co.uk/do-you-follow-fashion-or-are-you-a-trend-setter.html
Tops
This is a great post and very eye opening for some people I would believe. I think that the Google Penguin update is probably one of the smartest ones out there. I know it will affect a bunch of people and their businesses, but sometimes that just pushes people to work harder and not put out half done material.
I couldn’t agree more with Sam Hall opinions here. In fact a recently Leaked document from Google backs up Sam opinion. If you search around on some of the social networks for the document Google guidelines June 22, 2012 you’ll be able to see for yourself how Google is evaluating your content on your website .
Thanks for sharing this post to us. This adds more information about SEO services. This will also help business owners to have good traffics.