Define: Good Content
-
I am curious to hear what you guys consider to be the characteristics of good content and in which order if you have a preference.
Here are a few I can think of:
- Informative (you can learn something new)
- Substantial (enough of it and thorough)
- Complete (doesn't give half-baked information or ideas)
- Unique (not regurgitated original content)
- Helpful (practical actionable information)
- Visual (content complemented by media)
- Referenced (claims made are substantiated through citations)
- Entertaining (or otherwise emotional, e.g. surprising, sad, shocking, controversial)
- Formatted (easy to read and follow)
- Timely (right content at the right time, applies for news)
- Professional (writing style, grammar, spelling and sentence structure)
Can you add to this list?
-
"quality content = ranks well."
Well that's what Goog keeps telling us. ... so are we talking real world or pixie land?
Honestly, I knew I was stepping into a pile of crap when I put the "Ranks Well" criteria in there. But, it sure makes for a good litmus test. So yes... quality content = ranks well. ...and the vicious circle continues.
-
I guess, as far as SEO goes, all content is written with an action in mind. So whatever increases the action is what I would measure
Bounce rate/time on page is not a good one for me, you could have a great reference piece that people return to over and over but dont stay long or they naturally bounce from it - like the BBC or CNN homepage, continuously checking for news - youd have to be super careful what you measured on that type of site, as you could unintentionally skew what you produce
-
1 part, should be that it grabs you visually straight away - like a glue value, keeps you glued to that page to actually engage with the content - that can be a good headline, or image or typography or any combo
- Actionable!
-
We're working on the duplicate posts. I was able to delete some of them, but not all.
Keri
-
Well, one would assume that quality content = ranks well. It's kind of a loop, isn't it
Demand is a very interesting point!
If there are 200 content pieces on a topic versus only 2 pieces of content and one is really good value would undoubtedly be much higher where there is less such content available.
-
I am surprised that as a bunch of SEOs that no one has said SEO friendly.
So can I add:
- Ranks Well.
- Demand Research (Keyword/demand/competition)
Demand researched content also makes for more engaging content, but any of the current list could be classified as engaging. The difficulty with defining "good content" is that it's an opinion. But you've got a great list going. I wonder how individuals would prioritize that list based on their verticals.
-
Good Content is specific to what ever would get the site book marked, and that is very specific to the topic and purpose of the site. Give the visitor the information they were seeking, and you have great content. It doesn't need to be deep or wide , it just has to tell them what they came to see.
I would be interested in how you all measure great content? Bounce rate? Conversions?
-
I read this post and it reminded me of when this actually clicked with me recently. I have read thousands of words on blogging, writing good content and the list above resonates across the top bloggers that you can read who all beat this drum constantly. I was recently in the process of putting a guest post together for a blogging forum when after a day I realised that I had put more effort into the guest post than any post that I had for my own blog. So I **abandoned **the planned submission and used it on my own blog. I had spent 2-3 hours tweaking, looking for good images, deleting wasted words, working on all the formating and so on.
A lot of us who are email slaves and quick content junkies should revert back to our English High School class where we spent time on our essays for exams and tests. I have even applied this logic to forum replies like this. In the past I would have been much pithier and not as informative (I am being informative I hope !!)
It is worth looking at some of the blogging resources out there Problogger to see that they constantly expound on this topic. Even guys like Matt cutts say it again and a again about making your content STAND OUT like just thereWe
You may say how do I do this for a product like a Blue Widget. At first glance this may seem impossible. But if I am looking to buy a blue widget and am doing research over the web I would like to see
- Product Information in depth
- Reviews
- Some usage of it
- How to use it in different situations.
- A user forum
- Some evidence of good product support
- Some social media juice about it and some fan love
Replace blue widget with website design (my area), cameras, puppy dog collars and so on.
You might say that this sounds like complete overkill but believe me it isn't as the effort will pay off as over time your site will become a rich resource of solid quality information that can't be gotten anywhere else and there will be good payoffs.
There is a well known saying you wont get better by doing the same things every day so work on your blue widget page today then move onto the red widgets and keep going. Then revisit them all and polish again.
-
I use two columns for articles.
Left column is for text with multiple subheadings. (scanable)
Right column is for images, captions, data tables, references, video embeds.
Really important promotions and links to related content on my own site are floated to the left side of the left column or roadblocking it.
This makes for easy scanning and a big stack of images/data/video in the right column gives a rich and substantive look.
-
Well, I guess a well-formatted content does not always mean scannable. Little eye catching elements, bolding of key terms and colour would aid in the process.
-
I wanted to emphasize the scannable aspect in terms of bullet points etc. But, yes, I guess it's the same
-
Give Google content it strives/loves to deliver to it's users - the thing that is the core of their whole ethos: RELEVANT content - without that Google users go elsewhere to find it and you miss the opportunity to promote your product or service.
-
Ah, good point which goes well with "Formatted (easy to read and follow)".
-
I agree on that. That's a very important step. Reassurance that they are in the right place before they hit 'back'.
-
When the visitor arrives on your content the first goal is to let him know that he is in the right place with a very clear title and then let him know that he is in an interesting place with an interesting graphic above the fold.
Even before he determines if your content is gold or crap the appearance must pull him in. Then as with a good book you need a "hook" and after that the real quality of the content and the presentation style will have to take over.
Then... if you want the link or the tweet or the like, the impact must be there. This can be quality of content, substantiveness, engagement, impressiveness.
Bottom line... I think that you must have both academic quality along with aesthetic presentation - without stinking it up with too many ads and side-promotions. Its a fine balance and hard to know when you have it.
-
- scannable (aid people in natural scanning proces)
-
I consider user driven metrics as a big part of what Google uses to judge quality (citations, links, social buzz). Other stuff would have to be with their understanding of the content itself. I wonder how much of it they are able to figure out?
And when it comes to user motivation to spread and engage I am curious what the elements are and attempt to dissect and analyse what makes up a good piece of content.
-
I think of this question in terms of the effect that it will have on the visitor.... Will it motivate the visitor to link, tweet, like, share, email, bookmark.
If it doesn't do that then it isn't very good.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate content penalty
Hi there, I'd like to ensure I avoid a duplicate content penalty and could do with some advice. There is a popular blogger in my industry. I have agreed to add his blog to my website. He currently posts his blog on one of the popular free blogger platforms, and will continue to do this. The issue is that I will be posting duplicate content onto my site and I want to ensure that I do not trigger a google penalty. Is there a simple way form me to inform Google of the original source of the content. My intitial thoughts are: 1. Add a noindex to the Robots.txt file 2. Add a link at the beginning of the article pointing to the original source 3. Adding a rel=canonical tag in the header of each blog entry pointing to the original blog post which resides on a completely different domain. Thanks DBC
Content Development | | DBC011 -
Anyone good at ranking on Yahoo?
I don't get Yahoo or Bing these days! I wrote a story "Did David Wineland and Serge Haroche Steal Idea For The Nobel Physics Prize?" It is a unique story, sourced from a prince. It is referenced on many other sites. It has had about 115,000 pageviews so far. most of those people read 2 or 3 pages. Do Yahoo or Bing list my story? No. They list all the referencing sites, they even list unrelated stories on my site that show that headline in the "top ten stories of the day" widget, but not the story itself. It has about 1250 shares. What am I doing wrong? http://buff.ly/WXso4P Is it page structure?
Content Development | | loopyal0 -
Can having similar content on my company's two sites hurt our rankings?
We have a very successful website that has been up for a number of years (www.comellaortho.com). We rank high in the natural rankings for that site. A few months ago, we started seeing patients in another nearby city. I purchased a new domain name, www.dansvilleortho.com, and had our web company duplicate the website under the new domain name. The reality is that the content on these two sites are nearly identical. Some of the pages are different; for example, there are fewer pages on the new site. But the pages that do exist are nearly identical. My question is: Can having similar content on my company's two sites hurt our rankings? Based on what I've read thus far, I believe the answer is "Yes". However, I'm curious how bad this may hurt us. I'm not as worried about the new site (dansvilleortho.com) because our competition in that city is slim to none. But I AM worried about harming the original site/business (comellaortho.com). Which site(s) rankings may be affected by this, and if so, how bad? Thank you.
Content Development | | comellortho0 -
How quickly should one add content?
I'm building a content site (the model is AdSense revenue) around a certain niche, and I'm currently paying for about 6 articles to be contributed per week. I have the capacity to be paying for a lot more articles, however, so I'm wondering what, if any, factors exist to recommend building the site up slowly as opposed to throwing on e.g. 100 articles over the next week? Those I can think of are: 1. Going slowly leaves room for better keyword optimization etc. 2. Google seems to favor aged domains/content, so 100 good articles now certainly isn't as advantageous as 100 articles 2 years from now. All that being said, I still feel like the benefit in terms of traffic of adding more content now - since I can - might outweigh these considerations. Does anyone have any thoughts?
Content Development | | ZakGottlieb710 -
Metrics to measure the quality of content?
When trying to decide what is low quality content, page views & bounce rate are the main indicators I use for pages already on site. But, how do you measure the quality of content that you are trying to produce? Is it entirely subjective?
Content Development | | nicole.healthline0 -
Duplicate Content on WordPress Blogs?
We are getting ready to add a WordPress blog to our established website. Our plans are to place it in a subfolder on our website to maximize rank. My question is...Do we need to utilize a Meta Robots WordPress plugin by Yoast or similar so that noindex,follow robots meta tags will prevent search engine indexing of search result pages, subpages and category archives? We want to avoid the dreaded Duplicate Content Error and penalty. Any other great SEO WordPress plugins? Thank you for your time. Brian
Content Development | | gw3seo0