What is quality content?

We often hear from experts that having quality content on your website is likely to improve its ranking on the search engine results page. Before I get into the definition of quality content I would like to talk about “Bounce Rate”. Imagine that you opened a new restaurant in a very busy area and there are many other restaurants around you. Within a week you realize that out of every ten customers that walk into your restaurant, only two end up ordering food. The rest just walk away after looking around. The bounce rate of your restaurant is 80%. This is going to make you wonder why 80% of people who walk into your place, leave. The answer is not very difficult. “Quality”.

Now let us apply the same analogy to websites. Having a website is very similar to having a restaurant in a high traffic area with several competitors around you. The user or the potential customer is most likely to eat in the restaurant that fits his quality expectations. There are obviously other factors that affect a customer’s decision and thus the bounce rate can never be 0%, no matter how hard you try or how good your ambience, food and service is. Better quality is just going to reduce your bounce rate and increase the chances of your restaurant’s success.

Getting back to the topic of this article, I am going to define quality content and give you a few tips to create it.

Quality content can be divided into three categories:

1) Textual content
2) Images and Diagrams
3) Interactive Tools

When you pick a topic and decide to produce some quality content related to that topic, you must make a list of things you know about that topic and categorize them into text, images and tools. It is not necessary that for every topic you choose, you will find things under all the three categories every time but it is important to remember that these categories serve different purposes to the user and your content is most likely to generate higher amount of traffic if your website offers all the three.

The quality of your content is defined by the following parameters:

1) Originality
2) Readability
3) Knowledge

Originality – Write in your own words. The reader wants to know your thoughts and would consider you as an expert if he/she likes your thoughts.

Readability – There are several tools on the internet that will tell you the readability level of your article. Readability is important to search engines too. In fact, if you go to Google.com and click on Advanced Search, one of the search options is Reading Level or Readability.

Knowledge – Demonstrate a high knowledge level by introducing specifics that add more value to the reader. The reader is reading your article because he wants to know more about the topic than he already knows.

A lot of articles on the internet talk about keyword density. In my opinion keyword density is a distraction. One must concentrate on producing high quality content for the reader and not worry about the keyword density for search engines. Quality content is bound to get attention and is highly likely to go viral by word of mouth.

In my upcoming blogs I am going to talk about building a fan base for your quality content and tips for ensuring returning visitors to your website.