Content is the King. Does this phrase sound familiar?
Perhaps you’ve already read it in some article or book on web marketing or maybe you’ve heard it spoken by consultants and web professionals.
Many do not know it, but it was Bill Gates, in a 1996 essay, who coined this expression that quickly became the “divine” law of all copywriters and digital content producers in the world.
The content is the King; the King of the web we could add; and even more precisely the King of SEO.
So if you want your website to appear on the first page on Google, the first thing you need to think about is to start creating quality content , able to attract and engage your audience and then improve the ranking of your site .
Table of Contents
Your money or your life
But what does creating quality content mean? What are the parameters that allow you to define them as such? And why does Google really appreciate this kind of content?
To answer these seemingly trivial questions, but which in reality require answers that are anything but obvious, we refer to the Search Quality Rating guidelines published for the first time by Google in 2017 and which are still to be considered valid.
In this important document Google establishes some criteria to define a quality site, that is able to offer contents appreciated by the public and therefore well indexed on the search engine.
The first qualitative aspect that Google takes into consideration for the indexing of a website is the purpose for which it was created.
When the Google algorithm perceives a clear and precise purpose, then it manages to identify more easily and in a more defined way the audience to which to show the contents of the site.
In the document, the Google Team lists different types of sites based on the purpose for which they were built:
- Sites created to share information on a specific topic
- Sites created to share personal or social information
- Sites created to share photos, videos and media in general
- Sites created to express opinions and points of view
- Sites created for fun
- Sites created to sell products and services
- Sites to allow users to ask questions and give answers
- Sites to allow users to share files and download software and apps
If your site falls into one of these categories then you are already one step ahead.
But in the document, besides these, Google also mentions another category of sites that is transversal to all the others, called “Your money or your life “(YMYL).
Specifically, these are all those sites that in one way or another are able to positively influence people’s lives and finances, such as medical, financial, legal information, e-commerce sites, etc.
YMYLs are considered websites with quality content and for this reason they have a greater chance of appearing quickly on the first page on Google.
Quality format of a web page
The second important qualitative factor mentioned in the document concerns the reference format of any content published online, ie the web page.
How should a web page be constructed to appear qualitatively attractive?
Google distinguishes three elements on a page:
- The main content that is what the web designers commonly call “body”. This is the main section of the page where the information that the user is looking for is published and where the purpose appears clear and well defined. All-important texts, images and videos must be entered here.
- The additional content, well separated from the main one but which helps the user in navigating the site and searching for information. These are the classic sections that most call “header”, “footer” and “sidebar”.
- The Advertising or that content created only to generate profit and are not necessarily useful to your audience, but rather they are a distraction from the main content. Google considers this kind of content to be inferior in quality, so a website full of advertisements will have less chance of gaining positions in the ranking.
Competence, authority and trust
Third qualitative factor: public perception.
The contents of a website are perceived as qualitatively valid when the author is considered an expert in his field and therefore stands as an authoritative voice on which the reader can place his trust.
An effective way to appear competent and expert is to make your online presence consistent overall. All information about your account and the content you publish on blogs, social media, portals, applications, etc. they must be consistent with the topic you consider yourself an expert. This will immediately make you recognizable as a competent person in the eyes of your audience.
This will allow you to gain recognition of others (through links to your content for example) and thus gain authority over time. All this translates into trust, in the sense that readers at that point will have more than one reason to trust you and will gladly prove it with reviews and positive comments, thus generating a virtuous circle.
Conclusion: take care of the user experience for a site with quality content
How can these factors be concretely rendered in a quality website, precisely according to the parameters defined by Google?
In two words: user experience.
It is the concept of “user experience” that best summarizes the ability to make a common website a real point of reference for the public in search of quality content.
Taking care of the user experience therefore means ensuring that your users easily find exactly what they are looking for by implementing a congenial graphic layout and a navigation system capable of effectively supporting their research and knowledge needs. This is very positively evaluated by Google, who will not hesitate to consider your site as qualitatively significant.
In this article we have deliberately focused on generic aspects and in particular on those factors that search engines consider to be paramount in defining the quality level of a website.
In the next article we will come back to this topic, approaching it from a more practical side: we will see how you can produce quality web content for your site, thus creating the basis for lasting success.
Author Bio:
Nichole T Gardner is a specialist in content marketing, she has a vast experience in writing different content on various topics. Currently she is associated with the leading Corporate Video Production services in Dubai. In a meantime she also manage her own blog and reading books.