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This is part two of How to Rank in Google. Writing quality content is one of the most important actions to take in search engine optimization. Clients who come to me with a lot of content ready to place on their site will perform much better than clients without content.
The Beauty of Quality Content: Quality content provides relevant and valuable information to your audience and uses proper grammar. Quality content also:
Looks Organized from a Distance: Is your content all strung together with no white space? Are the links difficult to find or repetitive? Are the paragraphs on your website short enough to be read or is the page completely full of text? Do you use relevant headers that guide the reader’s eye to the next section?
Doesn’t Need to Be Read: Good web content equals content we don’t have to read. (Thanks to Leslie O’Flahavan of E-write for that gem.) Website visitors want to scan a page and get enough information to find what’s valuable to them. If it’s relevant, they will read further.
Uses Proper Grammar: Establishing credibility for your website includes using proper grammar and spekking (just kidding!). If you have numerous mistakes, readers will question your credibility and authority. Exceptions may be made for rare errors or if a person is writing in a second language. On the other hand, one of my marketing mentors makes regular spelling errors. Since he’s established strong credibility in other areas, he’s able to get away with it.
Keeps People’s Attention: When reviewing web analytics for my clients, I check the website’s stickiness. If your site is “sticky,” it means your readers stick around to read and view content. You can discover this on your own site by viewing the “bounce rate.” “A bounce occurs when a website visitor leaves a page or a site without visiting any other pages before a certain session timeout elapses” (Wikipedia). If the website has a 70% bounce rate, then I know there’s a problem with that page’s stickiness, and we have to conduct testing to find out what can be improved.
Read Part 1 of How to Rank in Google