Category Archives: SEO

10 SEO content writing rules you cannot ignore

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10-SEO-content-writing-rules-you-cannot-ignore

SEO content writing has evolved since the days when the only way to get good search engine rankings was to use your keywords and key phrases indiscriminately. People were becoming experts in “website optimization techniques” and “web page optimization tactics”.

Read 5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO

Although you still have to use your primary and secondary keywords for SEO content writing, the exercise has been superseded by many other SEO factors that impact your search engine rankings. Getting your website on search engines, especially among the top 10 results, has become an integral part of content writing and content marketing.

How SEO content writing rules have changed

As I have mentioned above, improving your search engine rankings takes a lot more than simply using your primary and secondary keywords. Social validation is a must. It matters a lot to Google ranking algorithms how people react to your content.

Of course, keywords and how you use them still matter but along with that, what also matters is the quality of your content. All professional SEO consultants admit that the only way you can get better search engine rankings for your website is through content writing.

Contemporary web page optimization best practices

In order to know how to optimize your website or blog, you have to find the “why”, “what” and “how” of the content that you are writing.

You need to give people what they are looking for. If your content is simply misguiding people into visiting your website, your content begins to lose relevance.

The true value of your content can be gauged better through emotional intelligence which machines cannot have. This is why Google seeks social validation to rank your links.

When people find your content valuable and useful, they begin to interact with your content. They respond to it from their own blogs and website (linking to it). They Share it on social networking platforms in order to endorse it, agree with it, or even to disagree with it.

Google’s ranking algorithm takes into account people’s reaction towards your content. Whether they agree or disagree, how do they react to your content? Do they like it? Do they share it on social media and social networking websites? Do they recommend it?

The web, being web, is interconnected. Google and other major search engines these days have access to data from Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn (only to name a few social platforms available at this moment, in 2017). If your link is creating buzz, they know it, and then they use this buzz to determine your SEO. Content writing rules take into consideration, along with your keywords, social validations that pour in from various sources.

Read: 10 tips on how to write SEO content for your website

Why do you need to follow content writing rules to improve SEO?

You don’t need to. In fact, they are not even rules. I just needed a catchy title so I used the term “rules”, you can call them guidelines, benchmarks, or pointers or commandments, or whatever you feel like.

You don’t even have to follow these content writing rules to improve your SEO if you don’t feel like. They are there just for your reference. Sometimes you can use them, and sometimes you don’t need to.

But why use them?

They give you a template. This template doesn’t ensure higher rankings in itself, because your rankings depend on thousands of things in the universe, but they will make sure that if Google wants to rank your content, at least it has the information it needs.

It’s like using an SEO plug-in. Have you used the Yoast SEO plug-in for WordPress? Seopressor? These plug-ins make recommendations like how long your webpage or blog post title should be, what should be your content-keywords ratio, what sort of information you should have in your description, and so on. Provided you stick to these guidelines, there is a great chance that your link will be ranked higher compared to the links that don’t follow these guidelines.

The same holds true for the content writing rules that I’m listing below. If you stick to them, they may not suddenly improve your SEO, but you will 100% have content that will be optimized for better rankings.

So here they are…

10 SEO content writing rules you cannot ignore

  1. Clearly define the “why” of your business: Why would people do business with you? What need do you solve? How do you enrich people’s lives? How do you make it easier for people to work, to celebrate, to entertain themselves or to increase their self-worth? All these bits of information must manifest in your content writing.
  2. Clearly define personas: Whom are you going to target with your content? Who are these people? Where do they come from? What are their aspirations? What problems are they having that they need solved? What are their backgrounds? The more you know about your audience, the better will be your content.
  3. Compile a list of keywords and search terms: Once you have defined the “why” of your business and have also defined the personas of your target audience, it will be easier for you to compile a list of keywords and search terms that you are going to incorporate into your SEO content writing. Remember that you don’t compile the list of keywords and search terms for your own happiness; you need to know the keywords and search terms people actually use to search for your business. You need to look at your business from their perspective. Only then you will be able to compile the right list of keywords and search terms. Having a list of keywords and search terms will also keep you focused and give you a clear idea of what content you should be publishing.
  4. Prepare a list of topics containing your target keywords and search terms: When you talk of SEO we need to take care of these things. Your topics are very important. Your topics are generally the titles of your blog posts and webpages. The titles of your blog posts and webpages are so important that the Google ranking algorithm takes the words appearing within your titles very seriously. This is why it’s very important for your SEO that when you are writing content, your keywords and search terms are present in your blog post and webpage titles.
  5. Start writing engaging content: Once you have created keyword-rich titles, when you are writing content for these titles, initially don’t worry much about their SEO quality. Remember that it’s very important to publish engaging content. Eventually it is the quality of your content that decides your long-term search engine rankings. You will also need quality content to accumulate social validation. Social validation is so important that even if you don’t bother about your keywords and you are able to accumulate enough social validation, your SEO is going to improve considerably.
  6. Whenever possible, write longer blog posts and webpages: To counter “thin content” Google these days has started preferring longer blog posts and webpages. People were publishing lots of “thin content” – meaningless content of 300-400 words mostly to target keywords – and the search results were being filled with lots of junk information. Writing longer blog posts and webpages takes effort and considerable knowledge of the subject. I’m not saying do it always, but whenever you have enough to say, don’t hold yourself back.
  7. Incorporate your keywords once you have completed a blog post or a webpage: Once you are sure that you have created a good quality, engaging blog post or webpage, insert the keywords that you have included in the title of that particular blog post or webpage. Strategically incorporate the keywords and search terms in such a manner that you don’t overuse them.
  8. Format your blog post or webpage in an SEO friendly manner: Your web content should be easily scannable. Use headlines (tags like <h1>, <h2>, etc.) to organize your text under different sections and once or twice use your keywords and search terms within these headlines. If some bits of information can be presented with bullet points, use them. At least once bold your keywords. You can also use your keywords in the anchor text when you link to other blog posts and webpages either on your own website or other websites.
  9. Publish content at regular intervals: SEO content writing doesn’t just mean publishing a few blog posts and webpages and then resting on your laurels. For rare businesses, this works, but not for businesses that need to compete with other businesses. It is because lots of businesses like your business are publishing content with great speed. Even if you rank well for certain keywords and search terms, soon you’re going to be overtaken by your competition with better and more content. This is why you need to constantly supply Google with fresh content. At least to experience the initial SEO boost, you need to continuously post blog posts and webpages for 3-4 months. Holding yourself back would be like getting into a boxing ring and constantly pulling your punches without giving all you have got. If you are not regular, you lose even the slight advantage you have gained by publishing some content initially.
  10. Update your existing content: All the blog posts and webpages that you create are your business assets. You should nurture them and take care of them just as you take care of your other business assets. Constantly update your older blog posts and webpages and resubmit them to search engines to let them know that you have updated them. Add new information. Modify the data that might had been correct two years ago but not now.

Whether you realize it now or five years later, SEO content writing is an ongoing process. As Yoda says, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

yoda quote on SEO content writing

5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO

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5-reasons-why-content-writing-is-important-for-SEO

Do you know that your SEO begins and ends with quality content writing?

It is so important that every major search engine optimization agency these days doesn’t implement your optimization strategy without a solid content strategy.

SEO benefits of content writing have been copiously documented by now.

What is SEO content writing?

It means writing content in such a manner that it begins to rank higher for the related keyword searches. You use the keywords in the title of the web page or the blog post and then strategically use them at various places. Ideally, your content should be optimized for search engines as well as humans.

Read How to evaluate your SEO content writing.

Before you comprehend and decide to use content writing to improve your search engine rankings you need to learn

  1. What is SEO content writing?
  2. What type of content you can publish on your blog or website?
  3. What is going to be your long-term content strategy?

For this section, I’m going to explore the various aspects of writing content specifically for higher rankings.

Although, merely pushing content doesn’t have a great impact on your SEO, it is the most important aspect of your ranking strategy. If there is no content, there is nothing to rank.

As explained above, in order to write content for SEO, you need to follow certain steps including

  1. Make sure that the main keyword phrase appears in the title of your web page or blog post.
  2. The main keyword phrase and its various parts should be scattered all over the content of your web page or blog post.
  3. You should also use the alternative phrases, what they call LSI keywords. LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing and these are the related keywords to your main keywords. If you feel that you are over-using your main keywords you should replace them with LSI keywords.
  4. Use your keywords (including LSI keywords) within the <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags to put more emphasis on them.
  5. Use your keywords (including LSI keywords) as anchor text when linking to other web pages and blog posts on your website.

These are all a part of on-site SEO. These are the technical side of SEO. These alone don’t decide how Google is going to rank your content, but they are a part of the building blocks that you need in order to write SEO content.

Of course, the fundamental aspect of your content writing must always be its quality, its relevance, and the value it delivers to your visitors. Without quality content writing, there is no hope of getting good search engine rankings. Quality content writing is the most important part of your SEO.

Read 20 Evergreen Characteristics of Quality Content

With quality, SEO-friendly formatting is very important because the Google algorithm looks for important words at particular places on your web page or blog post.

Now coming to the “content” part of writing search engine friendly content. Here are a few things you need to follow:

  1. Do keyword research: Before you start writing content make sure you have a comprehensive list of the right keywords and key phrases you are going to use. These must be the search terms your target customers and clients are most likely to use when trying to find you or your service or your business or your product.
  2. Start writing high-quality content: I can never understate the importance of high-quality content. If your content quality is inferior, no matter how much time you spend optimizing your content, all the SEO benefits will be lost. Remember that the only reason your content exists is to serve your prospective customers and clients. So, whatever you write, keep in mind that you have to provide some sort of solution.
  3. Incorporate your keywords: Once you have written content that you feel is going to convert well, incorporate your keywords. Insert your keywords at strategic locations. Don’t overuse them. Whenever you feel that you cannot help using them, use alternatives – as mentioned above, use LSI keywords.
  4. Promote your content: Marketing your content, making sure that your target audience is able to find your content through various social media and social networking channels, is an important aspect of SEO. Google wants social validation. Try to get social validation from as many resources as possible. Promoting content will also get you precious back links.

5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO

Now that we know what is SEO content and how to write it, let’s come to the main topic of the blog post: reasons why content writing is important for SEO.

SEO is actually all about content marketing. And since content writing is indispensable to any genuine content marketing effort, we can safely say that SEO is actually all about content writing. How come? I’m describing that below.

1. SEO needs strategic usage of keywords and search terms

Although big advances have been made in terms of ranking web pages and blog posts according to their true value, keywords still matter. You can judge the importance of keywords by the fact that your ranking depends on whether you have used your keywords or one of its alternatives in the title of your web page or blog post, or not.

It is only through strategic content writing that you can use the right keywords to satiate Google. If there is no content, it is very difficult for you to rank for the right keywords.

2. Social validation can only be obtained due to quality content

I have personally seen that many web pages and blog posts rank well due to the social validation they have been able to attract despite having inferior quality content. But this can only be achieved by brute force and lots of money. For a small or medium-sized business, the only way you can get social validation is by quality content writing.

When your content is great, when it delivers value, when people find what they are looking for through your content, they tend to engage with your content through social media and social networking websites. When they share your links on their timelines, Google sees these actions as social validation and then uses this validation to rank your links.

3. Quality back links can only be obtained due to quality content

Back links are also a form of social validation but you don’t necessarily have to focus on social media and social networking websites to garner back links.

Why would people link to your website or blog? Apart from the fact that sometimes you can pay websites and blogs to link back to you, in most of the cases, people link to you because they appreciate what you are publishing.

This, Google sees as validation and its algorithms use this validation to rank your webpages and blog posts.

4. In order to rank your website and individual links, Google needs content

This is a straightforward logic. If you don’t have content, what is Google going to rank? In Google Images Google ranks images, in Google Video, Google ranks videos and in the same manner, in the normal Google section, Google ranks text, your written content.

This is why content writing is important for your SEO: it is giving Google something to rank. It also tells Google for what keywords and search terms your content should be ranked.

5. Content writing contributes to the “Search Task Accomplishment” factor

This is a new trend emerging: does your content solve any purpose? Search Task Accomplishment is becoming a new buzzword on the Internet, especially in the content marketing and SEO circles.

Soon, Google is going to rank your content according to the true purpose it solves. A user should be able to find exactly what he or she is looking for when he or she uses the Google search engine. Google is working on an algorithm that will be able to find if people are able to find exactly the information they need on your link. If yes, your rankings will start improving and if no, your rankings will start deteriorating.

Additional SEO benefits of content writing

  1. People voluntarily link to your content.
  2. People have more reasons to link to your content because you give them a wide choice of topics and interest areas.
  3. There are greater opportunities for your content being shared on social media.
  4. With high quality content people spend more time on your website indicating to Google that you have quality and relevant content.
  5. Content writing boosts your content marketing efforts and this in turn improves your search engine rankings.
  6. Organic rankings achieved through quality content writing last longer and attract more traffic because people prefer to visit links that appear organically rather than promoted by advertising.

There was a time when SEO existed in isolation. No longer is the case. SEO these days is the sum total of your entire content marketing dispensation. Without great content, you can never hope to enjoy good search engine rankings. With every preceding month, content writing is becoming more and more important for SEO.

Google’s Featured Snippets: How to rank at #1 with strategic content writing

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Google-featured-snippets

I was checking the rankings of my blog posts that I have recently published and I suddenly found one of my links in Google’s Featured Snippets box. Here is the screenshot

credible-content-showing-up-in-Google-snippets

What Are Google’s Featured Snippets?

Nobody knows exactly how Google decides to feature a particular piece of content in its “featured snippets” box, but you must have noticed that sometimes when you do a search on Google, one of the links appears at the top with highlighted paragraph, or some portion of the web page or blog post, along with the link.

Some call it ranking #0 because the link that is featured in Google’s Featured Snippets box appears even before the first link on the search results page. But many would be scared with #0 so, in my title I have used #1.

As you can see in the image above, the Google’s Featured Snippets box appears at the top, within the highlighted box, and a description almost as long as a paragraph.

It isn’t always a paragraph that is featured in the snippets area. Even if you represent the information in bullet points, it can appear over there. See for example, this one…

another example of Google snippets

How does Google pick a particular link for the Featured Snippets box?

As I have written above, it is unclear how Google decides which link to feature in the snippets area. Many SEO experts and content marketers have tried to figure out but there is no algorithmic logic to it. Google seems to be picking the information randomly.

Here is a very extensive blog post on how to optimize your content so that it can feature in Google’s Featured Snippets box [HubSpot link].

The author says that whether you get featured in the snippets box or not doesn’t depend on the SEO quality of your link. Your link may not even appear on the first page of search results and still appear in the snippets box.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that even if you throw all SEO benchmarks out the window you are still going to feature in the snippets box. No, that won’t happen. Your content must be of good quality and it must give some indication to Google that it deserves to be featured in the snippets box. Read What is quality content and how does Google recognize it?

Is focusing on the Google Featured Snippets box good for your SEO?

People are sometimes worried that featuring in the Google Featured Snippets box deters people from clicking the link because what they are looking for is given in the box itself. Since they have found a solution to their problem, there is no reason for them to click the link.

The author of the above HubSpot link says:

From a sample of just under 5,000 queries, I found that the CTR to the HubSpot website for high volume keywords increased by over 114%, even when we ranked #1

What he means to say is that even when their link was already appearing at #1 there CTR increased by over 114% once the link started appearing in the Featured Snippets box.

Even I feel that this should actually increase traffic to your website because one, people who know how important search engine rankings are, are quite impressed that you are bang there in front of them, at the top, even above the link at #1, and two, they want more information. A single paragraph may provide a concise view of the solution they are looking for. They can only find a detailed description when they visit the link. Most do.

Here is a Moz link that demonstrates that traffic to your website actually increases if your link features in that box.

How to write content for #1 ranking by Google’s Featured Snippets?

As I have mentioned in this blog post titled 20 Evergreen Characteristics of Quality Content, focus on quality.

Provide to people what they are looking for. Don’t mislead them. Don’t create titles and headlines in such a manner that people are tricked into visiting your website and then when they come there, they are disappointed.

In fact, due to the “Search Task Accomplishment” factor, web pages and blog posts that don’t provide straightforward answers to people’s questions will start ranking lower even when they are decently optimized and even when they have quality back links. It matters what you are providing.

In order to be able to feature in Google’s Featured Snippets box, it has been observed that

  1. Try to create a question out of the main expression and put that question within the <h1> or <h2> tags.
  2. Try to enclose the main quarry by the user in the above tags.
  3. Just beneath the question, provide an answer. Try to provide the answer within 50-60 words.
  4. Use the language as if you are providing an answer to a question. Your answer should follow the question naturally.
  5. For question-oriented keywords, Google prefers bullet points but if you are searching for something like “content writing services”, Google prefers to pick a paragraph.

Focus on answering questions when writing content keeping Featured Snippets in mind. Ask a question, and then immediately provide an answer, preferably in 50-60 words.

Does this guarantee that your link will appear in the Featured Snippets box? No.

It is quite random.

Then how can you get your link featured in this coveted section?

Create lots of content. Create many webpages and blog posts providing high-quality content.

You have to establish your authority. Many of your links should already be ranking well before Google begins to notice useful chunks of information on your web pages and blog posts. You cannot suddenly start publishing blog posts and then expect that your links will be featured in the snippets section.

Follow the pattern. Follow the SEO format that includes

  1. Use the main search term or the keyword at least once within <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags.
  2. Write shorter paragraphs under the headings and try to provide as complete an answer as possible to the main quarry within 40-60 words in a paragraph.
  3. Use bullet points wherever possible to present stepwise information.

I would like to stress again that there is no set formula for appearing in Google’s Featured Snippet box. All you can do is, keep publishing great content.

5 content writing tips to improve SEO

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5-content-writing-tips-to-improve-SEO

This blog post contains 5 content writing tips to improve your SEO including

  1. Do thorough keyword research before starting content writing
  2. Decide to focus on the quality of your content
  3. Use the title and the headlines in your content writing to improve your SEO
  4. While writing content, focus on the structure of your content too
  5. Use content writing to create longer web pages and blog posts to improve SEO

The purpose of content writing isn’t just to improve your SEO but it is one of the major advantages of effective and engaging content writing.

These content writing tips to improve SEO will explain to you that at the crux of every SEO endeavor lies effective, quality content writing.

If targeted, quality content writing doesn’t exist, your SEO doesn’t improve, and by a fluke, even if it does, it solves no purpose.

What does improving SEO with content writing mean?

Being a content writer and a content marketer I am always aiming at improving my clients’ conversion rate.

Read: More sales with Credible Content Writing Services.

Not being merely an “SEO expert”, for me, improving SEO means getting search engine traffic that converts.

It’s no use ranking high for your keywords and search terms if people coming from search engines don’t buy from you.

So, for me, improving SEO with content writing means:

  1. Writing highly effective and convincing content for your website or blog that makes your visitors do business with you (which means, you have a great conversion rate).
  2. Getting higher rankings for keywords and search terms that bring you business-ready search traffic.

One needs to strike a balance.

If you have great content but if that content doesn’t rank high on search engines, it becomes difficult for people to find it and if people can’t find it, they are not going to come to your website.

Read: What is quality content and how does Google recognize it?

On the other hand, even if you get good search engine rankings for your favourite keywords, unless this traffic converts into business for you, it solves no purpose.

Improving SEO with content writing should strike a perfect balance between improving your search engine rankings as well as improving your conversion rate.

Read: How to strike a balance between SEO and quality content writing.

How do I do that? How will my content writing improve your SEO?

5 content writing tips to improve SEO

Content writing that improves your SEO is quite straightforward because the ranking algorithms, especially those that rank links in Google, are quite straightforward.

Here are 5 content writing tips that will help you improve your SEO in a balanced manner so that you get higher search engine rankings as well as higher conversion rate:

1. Do thorough keyword research before starting content writing

Thorough keyword research solves two purposes:

  1. Helps you incorporate the right keywords into your entire content writing process.
  2. Keeps you focused.

Why does thorough keyword research keep you focused?

Keyword research here means listing as many longtail keywords related to your business as possible.

Remember that when you’re writing content for your business you want to solve people’s problems.

You want to provide answers to their questions through your content writing.

People these days don’t use small phrases. They use longer expressions to find precisely the information they are looking for.

For example, if a person wants to promote his accounting business through content writing he won’t simply look for “content writing service”; he will look for “content writing service for my accounting business“.

Therefore, if I want people who are looking for a content writing service for their accounting business to find my website, I will be writing a few webpages or blog posts specifically addressing this issue – “content writing service for accounting business”.

Similarly, I have a page on “content writing service for real estate business” rather than simply, again, “content writing service”.

Another example: content writing service to improve your SEO.

This sort of content writing that uses your longtail keywords definitely improves your SEO and also helps you create content people are actually looking for, rather than random terms very few people might be looking for.

Here is a nice HubSpot blog post that lists 9 best keyword research tools to find the right keywords for SEO.

Here is from none other than Moz: How to do keyword research – The beginners guide to SEO.

2. Decide to focus on the quality of your content

Yes, even at the cost of improving your SEO.

When it comes to content writing to improve your SEO, the quality of your content takes precedence over your SEO effort.

No matter what, decide that you’re going to stick to your quality standards because, if your content doesn’t convert, no amount of SEO can help your business.

When writing content for the first time if you don’t want to bog yourself down with your keywords, don’t bother.

Create well-written webpages and blog posts first.

Remember that you need to solve people’s problems.

They have got a problem and you have got a solution.

If you stick to this philosophy, in more than 90% of the cases you will be automatically taking care of your keywords.

Even if at the time of writing you cannot write around your keywords, once you have written content that is good for your visitors, you will be easily able to incorporate your keywords.

Read: Choosing the right keywords for content marketing.

3. Use the title and the headlines in your content writing to improve your SEO

The title of your webpage or blog post is the sum total of what you’re going to communicate through your webpage or blog post.

For example, you clearly know what this particular blog post is going to deliver to you: 5 content writing tips to improve SEO.

Decide a central keyword or a search term and weave your title around that.

For Google, make sure that your title does not exceed the 60-character limit because this much is what is visible in the search engine results.

It is always good to address the main issue within the title of your webpage or blog post because this is going to appear as a hyperlink.

For example, on Google if you search for “how to write SEO content for your website” this is a sample of some of the results:

how-to-write-SEO-content-for-your-website-screenshot

If the hyperlink addresses the central issue of the search query people click the hyperlink more.

Organize your text under various headlines to make it easier to skim your webpage content.

As you will easily notice in this blog post, it contains various headlines and then these headlines are followed by text details.

You can use this opportunity to use your keywords because the Google search algorithm takes the keywords within the <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc. tags seriously.

4. While writing content, focus on the structure of your content too

I have slightly touched upon this topic in the above heading: use the headline tags to organize your text.

Aside from using headline tags you can also use bulleted points, bold text and anchor text of your hyperlinks to improve your SEO.

As you keep publishing blog posts and webpages, you will have plenty of content to link to.

For example, if you have already written about a topic and you need to mention the topic in your current blog post.

Instead of writing about the topic all over again, you can simply link to the topic using the appropriate anchor text for the hyperlink.

Something like: In this blog post I’m writing about 5 content writing tips to improve SEO, but if you have no idea what SEO is, you may like to read SEO content explained.

Since I already have a web page that explains what is SEO content, there is no need for me to rewrite the entire explanation.

You can link to your previous content in similar manner.

5. Use content writing to create longer webpages and blog posts to improve SEO

You must have noticed that these days my blog posts are rarely less than 1000 words.

Google prefers longer blog posts and articles because

  1. They can pack lots of information about a single topic.
  2. It takes hard work to write longer webpages and blog posts.

Thin content no longer works.

There was a time when people would write 200-400-word articles and blog posts and they would enjoy good search engine rankings.

This encouraged lots of junk content that had no meaning.

Also, since it is easier to create smaller webpages and blog posts, people who wanted to spam search engine results would indulge in lots of trash content writing.

Because of this, Google has started preferring longer webpages and blog posts because it takes hard work to write them.

You must have a lot to say to be able to write a 1500-word webpage or blog post.

You must be an authority on the topic.

Authority is good.

Google likes authority.

There can be many content writing tips to improve SEO but the tips that I have listed above basically sum up your entire effort to improve your search engine rankings through content writing.

In order to improve your SEO keep your content writing as relevant as possible.

I cannot stress this point enough that it’s the quality that matters.

Writing your content around your keywords is of course necessary, but this isn’t the only factor that impacts your SEO.

Search engines these days also need human validation and human validation can only come through relevant, quality content writing.

What is quality content and how does Google recognize it?

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what-is-quality-content-and-how-does-Google-define-or-recognize-itIf you want to enjoy good search engine rankings you need to understand how Google defines or recognizes quality content.

Since the Penguin and Panda updates Google has been putting more and more stress on quality content. All its ranking algorithms are focused towards crawling, indexing and ranking as much quality content existing on the Internet as possible.

Read 20 Evergreen characteristics of quality content

In order to understand what is quality content and how Google defines or recognizes it, you first need to define for yourself what is quality content.

For me, the definition of quality content is quite straightforward:

  1. Well-written content
  2. Content that educates and informs
  3. Content that does not mislead
  4. Content that delivers on the promise of the page title or the headline
  5. And in terms of copywriting, contend that improves your conversion rate

These are the basic definitions of what is quality content and these definitions don’t change no matter what the format of your content is. Whether you are publishing text, images or videos, the underlying purpose is to provide quality content that delivers value, whatever that value is, to your particular audience.

Read Why quality content writing matters and how to maintain quality

Why should you bother how Google defines or recognizes quality content?

Although there are multiple search engines in the world Google sends you the most traffic. So, this is why it matters to you how Google defines or recognizes quality content and then ranks your content accordingly.

As you can see in the chart below, almost 90% of the search market is dominated by Google whereas other “major” search engines like Bing, Yahoo! and even Baidu, have more or less remained at the bottom.

Google-search-marketing-share-2016-2017

But carefully note the red line representing Google at the top. If you notice, there is a slight downward slant. Although it is still miles ahead of its competitors, it is losing market. Since most of its revenue comes from search advertising, even a small drop in the share of search traffic means a lot to Google.

for-google-search-is-equal-to-money

So there are two reasons why you should bother how Google defines quality content:

  1. Most of your search traffic comes from Google
  2. Google would tenaciously like to hold onto its market dominance by continuing to provide quality content through searches

If Google is unable to find quality content – no matter how it defines it – people will move on to other search engines.

Give Google quality content and Google will rank your website or blog higher

give quality content to googleThis is not completely true, but it is indisputable that Google will only rank you higher if you have quality content on your website or blog. I have personally experienced that quality content alone doesn’t help you much unless you have tons of it. There are many other factors that affect your ranks including:

  1. The quality of your content, of course
  2. The frequency with which you publish content (the greater the frequency, the better the rankings)
  3. The quantity of quality content that you already have
  4. The age of your domain
  5. The keywords and search terms that you use in the title tag and the headlines
  6. The number of authority websites linking to your content
  7. The social validation your content gets (how many people share your content on social networking websites)
  8. The popularity of your content

A cocktail of these reasons gives you better search engine rankings but all these reasons originate from the fact that you need to have quality content.

Read How to strike a balance between SEO and quality content writing

If you don’t have quality content nobody is going to bother about it and if they don’t bother about it, they won’t share it, they won’t link to it and your content won’t get validation. Without getting social validation, it is very difficult to enjoy good search engine rankings no matter how much quality content you have (although it does have some benefits).

In fact, Google wants quality content so much that it has even created a tutorial on how you can create quality, valuable content.

Googles-course-on-how-to-create-quality-content

How does Google define quality content and then ranks it accordingly?

quality-content-according-to-google

To understand how Google defines quality content, again, you need to understand why Google craves for quality content and not for every type of content irrespective of what its quality is.

Why do you use Google and not another search engine? There might be two reasons:

  1. You are not aware of the existence of any other search engine
  2. You believe that Google gives you the best results for your searches

It’s the second reason that keeps Google hungry for quality content. Whenever you do a search on Google, Google wants to find you the best results. If it doesn’t find you the best results, gradually some other search engine will, and you will move on to that search engine.

This is why among the most brilliant minds on earth working at Google are constantly creating algorithms to find quality content on the Internet.

Now that we know why you need to bother with how Google defines or recognizes quality content and why Google craves quality content, we can come to the topic of how Google defines quality content.

Listed below are the examples of inferior content, according to Google:

  • Scrapped content
  • Thin content (Read What is thin content according to Google? Does it harm your SEO?)
  • Doorway pages
  • Pages and blog posts senselessly stuffed with your keywords
  • Webpages and blog posts solely created to draw traffic with no value
  • Content containing hidden text or links
  • Cloaking
  • Automatically generated text strings
  • Content lifted as it is from other websites and blogs

The folks at Google dislike inferior content or low-quality content so much that they penalize your website by lowering its rankings or worse, completely removing your links from its index.

You may also like to read quality content guidelines straightaway from Google.

Listed below are a few factors that Google uses to define quality content:

  1. Write content for your users not merely for search engines.
  2. Provide information people are actually looking for – don’t mislead people by deceptive titles.
  3. If possible write expert-level content. According to this Search Engine Journal blog post, Google’s human raters as well as algorithms can distinguish between content written by an amateur and content written by a pro.
  4. Become a resource. Link to high quality content from other websites and blogs. Cite reputed publications like the New York Times and Time whenever possible. When you come across quality content on other websites, refer to it from your own website.
  5. Publish fresh content as much as possible. Google is ravenous about fresh content. It crawls your website or blog repeatedly, sometimes multiple times a day to check whether you have published something new. Though, publishing with great frequency doesn’t mean you compromise on quality content. Publish less, but definitely stick to quality.
  6. Abundantly use images and videos. It enhances your presentation and it has been observed that the top 10 ranked sites in Google search results normally have around 6-8 images.
  7. Deliver what you promise in your web page title. Misleading titles attract penalty from Google. Your page title and content should always match.
  8. Create lengthy posts and webpages. Since it is difficult to create long content, and if you are publishing lots of long content, the Google algorithm assumes that you are publishing quality content. Longer blog posts and articles also tend to have lots of information and useful images.

These are the factors using which Google defines quality content. These factors may not play a crucial role all the time at the same time, a majority of these factors are considered when Google tries to assess whether you are publishing quality content or not.