Is Good Unique Content Sufficient to Rank for SEO?

Author: Sunita Rajput

Most of the SEO Experts are talking about Quality Content? As an SEO, we often come across a very common phrase ‘Content is the King.’ Every business owner wants good quality content. But the question remains, how will you define good quality content? Would you run a test on Plagiarism Checker or Check the quality of the content on Grammar Check and confirm that the content is High-Quality Content?

Well not really.

Another instance is where writers are being asked to write 1000+ words or even 2000+ words content on the blog. But more is not always better. Honestly, Google does not care about the no. of words.

What exactly is Good Quality Content?

Basic Principles of a good quality content as per Google:

  • Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
  • Don't deceive your users.
  • Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
  • Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.

What is Google Panda?

Google Panda was a content quality algorithm introduced in 2011 to stop sites from creating thin content, keyword stuffing and duplicate content.

Panda’s major target was to eliminate sites with poor quality content thereby enhancing the user experience by providing fresh and high-quality content to the website visitors. This almost affected approx. 12% searches across the web.

What are the ‘Strict NO’ according to Panda?

  • Thin Content
  • Duplicate Content
  • Scraped Content
  • Poor Quality Content
  • Very short content
  • Content with incorrect grammar
  • Bad spelling
  • Keyword stuffing
  • Doorway Pages
  • Internal Links pointing to incorrect pages
  • Bad usage of anchor text
  • Poor On Page Optimization
  • Affiliate sites with poor quality content

Google Panda had a huge impact on websites across the web; as a result, 80% of the sites were penalized.

Here are some questions to ask yourself in order to analyze the quality of the content

  • Is the content relevant to your business?
  • Was the content drafted by an expert?
  • Does the content cascade in a logical manner?
  • Is your content trustworthy?
  • Is your data backed by sufficient statistics?
  • Have you provided sufficient references?
  • As a user, would you come back to the site for more information?
  • Would you consider bookmarking the page for later reference?
  • Is the content supported by good quality images and resources?
  • Finally, has the content been proofread by an expert?

Content as a major factor for returning user

Content is a primary factor to improve audience engagement, increase the no. of returning users and eventually drive sales.

Creating unique content consistently is the most effective method for developing the brand presence across the web. A study by McKinsey & Company reveals consistent high-quality content is the secret behind a happy customer.

This means, businesses focused on efficient content writing and content marketing techniques can easily rocket their success.

Writing a good piece of content is merely not sufficient, it is also necessary to align it with measurable analytics metrics to understand the performance. Content marketing measurement is often challenging to be tracked; however, these are few meaningful business metrics to track to identify how well your content is performing:

  • Traffic: Monthly traffic analysis will help us understand if the content strategy is working
  • Pageviews: A Google analytics metric to track total no. of pages that people have viewed in total. They were earlier referred to as ‘Hits’.
  • Average time on Page: Indicates how much time a user is spending on reading the content
  • Bounce Rate: Is the percentage of users who have exited the page
  • New and Returning Users: Shows how potential the content is in attracting new users and have them returning to the website
  • Social Engagement: If it’s a Wordpress site, there are plenty of
good quality Wordpress plugins available to track likes, shares, and mentions. These metrics also help in evaluating if the content is creating a buzz amongst your audience

Prioritize 10X Content

10X Content as referred by Rand Fishkin in one of his Whiteboard Friday edition ‘Why Good Unique Content Needs to Die

  • specifies that content is present all across the web but a piece of content is only best if it is 10X better than the best SERP result. Here is a snapshot from Rand’s post

Google says it is the same appreciable similar content present across the internet. In order to raise the SEO bar, it is imperative to create 10X content consistently.

Creating a better version of the best version of the content already present? Sounds difficult!

Well here are the criteria to create a 10X content

Rand highlights some basic criteria to create a 10X content:

  • Relevancy in the SERP Results: Identify how relevant the answers are to the questions asked.
  • Enhance user experience: Here are some of the major factors to consider for a better UX:
  • How fast does the page load?
  • How is it rendered on mobiles and desktop?
  • Can it be accessed on any browser?
  • Do they have a prominent call to action buttons?
  • How appealing is the layout?
  • Font type and colors that are being used
  • Reasonable use of visual content: Visual content is often captivating. It should be used wisely and wherever necessary
  • Solve the problem or answer a question by providing accurate, in-detail explanation and supported by sufficient resources

Conclusion

The baseline here is, if you want to win the SEO game, you need to be unique and find unique and exceptional ways to present your content to the audience.

And SEO is a huge cycle; you need to consistently repeat this to rocket your success to Google #1 rankings