Elements of a Quality Article
-
In your opinion, what are the signals Google uses to judge the quality of an article or post?
Here are some of my ideas:
- Reactions:
- Comment history
- Sharing (Twitter / FB / Social Bookmarks...etc)
- Citations / Mentions / Pingbacks
- Word count
- Content (Topical and qualitative analytsis, uniqueness)
- Domain (Qualitative analysis of domain article is published on)
- Use of images and media
- Use of references
- Timeliness (News, current affairs)
- Presence of date of publishing
- Spam filters:
- Anchor text usage
- Number, type and relation of outgoing links
- Content (Topical, semantic, qualitative analysis including keyword usage)
- Author data:
- Presence of author name
- Connection / link to author profile (hyperlink, rel tag, meta)
- Reputation of author (prior content, domains published and reactions)
Looking forward to your contributions.
- Reactions:
-
Try the keyword research tool for google adwords.
-
Pretty much if you follow advice from this page you can't go wrong. As far as I know there isn't a "content comprehensiveness tool" out there (yet).
-
So this is a tool or a way that we can determine how to make the article comprehensive enough based on a certain topic? I know I want to write about widgets but is there a tool that can tell me I should write about blue widgets to get better results?
-
Yes, I forgot about that post. These rules became guidelines for my team as soon as they were launched. They fail to provide specific technical guidance however. For example "Would you trust this information?" - how does Google figure that out? Surely there are algorithmic signals involved.
-
Just in case some people aren't familiar with Google's recent post about high quality sites, I'll throw that into the mix. I've edited the list, and selected things that focus more on an individual article than the site itself.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
- Would you trust the information presented in this article?
- Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
- Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
- Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
- Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
- Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
- How much quality control is done on content?
- Does the article describe both sides of a story?
- Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
- Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
- Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
- Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
- Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
- Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
- Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
- Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
-
For a single word query, I believe that google wants an article in the #1 position that is the first document that a person should read about that subject. That article should be comprehensive.
-
I like this. It makes so much sense and Google does have the data to put the criteria together.
-
Is the content comprehensive?
If you are writing an article about widgets, google knows what everybody is asking about them.... people want to know about brass widgets, the cost of widgets, widget inventor, the first widget, number of widgets made annually.... google knows this from search queries.
If you are trying to rank for the word "widgets" google could assess your article and determine if you are comprehensive - that means you are addressing all of the subjects that everybody is asking about - or at least the ones that are most frequently asked about.
Incorporating this into your writing has many benefits. One is that you have what visitors want to know and second it puts your page into relevancy for lots of long tail queries.
Anybody can write an article about widgets... but the savvy writer knows what people want to know about them and has the expertise to address all of those details.
-
In addition to visitor "Reactions", I would like to think that visitor "Interactions" are important.
Google might be able to collect "interactions" information from the SERPs logs, Google Toolbar and Chrome browser to determine... just speculating....
--- how long a visitor stays on the page
--- how much a visitor scrolls
--- does the visitor click
--- does the visitor print or bookmark
I don't know if these are used or if google can even detect them. However, I think that they would be valuable information for determining content qualilty or at least how much visitors interact with it.
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
-
"Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements"
Hi, in page recommondation I get a "Acoid Multiple Page Tile Elements" Fix. Make sure your page has only one <title>tag. </span><em>"Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice"</em></p> <p>Well I'm trying....I am not able to find where og why I have multiple titles in this page?</p> <p>This is a norwegian page, but maybe someone can look through it?</p> <p>http://www.proplantime.no/bransjer/bygganlegg/mannskapsliste</p></title>
On-Page Optimization | | Marked_Proplan0 -
How do i know about my website content quality is good or bad?
According to Google updates, content is the main part of the website ranking, so how do i know about my website content quality...if you have any type of tool for check website content quality please refer to me.
On-Page Optimization | | renukishor0 -
Articles URL
Hello, Currently, I am parsing article base on article ID on URL request. For example:
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh
To go to the content of article **What is the visa on arrival? How to get it? **I am using URL like that http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/news/what-is-the-visa-on-arrival--how-to-get-it--245.html and base on ID 245 to get this page content.
But, now I want to optimize this URL to http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/news/what-is-the-visa-on-arrival--how-to-get-it.html. Then I got a problem: How to get an article without ID? Thanks,0 -
Are outlinks an essential element for onsite SEO?
I recently read the blog post by Steve Webb about performing a SEO Audit (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-perform-the-worlds-greatest-seo-audit). In the article he mentions that it's important to have outlinks to high-quality websites. So my questions is if this is an essential element of onsite SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | Nick_Johansson0 -
On-page score vs adwords quality score
Dear Sirs. According to your on page SEO card my page gets an A grade. But in google adwords the quality score is 3. Why is that? What's the difference? Thanks for your reply. Gela
On-Page Optimization | | gelakiev0 -
New Articles and Posts - what key word to focus on?
I have a few pages on my site focused on key words...such as office design Birmingham. The contact page and a tag page. http:www.businessinteriors.co.uk/tag/office-design-birmingham/ Now I recently published an article about a big new office design in birmingham for a company....and I tagged it as office design birmingham naturally...put it in the category for Birmingham office news....and then also put office design Birmingham at key strategic seo points.... the result being this article now seems to rank higher than my office design Birmingham pages?! My question is this....how should I optimise posts? Lets say I put 3 or 4 posts on my webiste/blog about an "office design Birmingham"....I dont want to rank for "HSBC office design birmingham"....I want the article to lend weight to my office design Birmingham credentials ...so I focus on office design birmingham? I dont really want my posts to rank very high though...I want them to help my key pages "float". I'm very confused how to optimise my posts. If I do it too well, they out rank the "old" pages that I actually want people to visit?! Mmm, thanks for pointers!
On-Page Optimization | | bizint0 -
Articles on our own site?
Hi Guy's Is it better to have articles on our own website under a news section, with keyword phrases that point to relevant pages or is it better to post them on our blog (that is seperate, we use blogger) and point them to relevant pages on our site? or maybe a bit of both? Thanks Daniel
On-Page Optimization | | LushDuck0 -
Main landing page does not rank as good a single news article - why?
We are running several special interest websites in the German speaking market, covering outdoor sports and vacation topics. We are trying to focus on one main landing page for events and keywords, this should be number one für search engines. Besides we are producing numerous content (news, pictures, videos), which are supposed to rank well and to be found on Google News, but not to rank higher for the specific keyword than our designated landing page. It seems, that we fail with this attempt. Example one: The main page for the alpine Ski World Championships on our skiing portal www.skiinfo.de was supposed to be this one: http://magazin.skiinfo.de/3170--ski_wm_2011_garmisch-partenkirchen.html for the Keywords 'ski wm 2011' in Germany. We missed this goal. Many of our own news articles ranked higher. When searching for 'ski wm 2011' on skiinfo.de only directly after the World Championships, the main page was ranked on 33rd position - 32 of our own articles ranked higher. Why does the landing page rank worse than an article like this: http://magazin.skiinfo.de/3173-ski-wm-2011-tina-maze-gewinnt-riesenslalom-keine-deutschen-medaillen.html ? Another example: Our designated landing page for the Event 'International Mountain Summit' (a major mountaineering and climbing event in Bressanone/ITA) is this: http://www.bergleben.de/klettern/2148--international_mountain_summit.html (Keywords: international mountain summit, IMS). We are experiencing that our news articles rank higher, when they are 'fresh', this one still does: http://www.bergleben.de/klettern/2149-international-mountain-summit-4.html. Why? It would be perfect, if good content would strengthen the designated landing page. We are linking back to this landing page from each article in the breadcrumb, but this does not seem to be very successful. How can we achieve this?
On-Page Optimization | | Beatbuster0