How Google defines quality content

The last ten years or so have seen a gradual rewarding of marketers who take a content-focused approach to SEO. Being aware of the keywords people might use to arrive at your site is still important. However, as Google seeks to reward ‘quality content’, there is no reason to override the reader’s experience of your content in order to optimise it for Google’s benefit. Instead, what you need to know is how Google defines quality content.

Jack Simpson of econsultancy reports that there are 5 key elements to SEO today:

• Make it relevant and readable – the stats support the hypothesis that Google is up-ranking longer form content
• Focus on user experience – well-structured and easy to navigate
• Stop worrying about keywords – Google no longer rewards multiple uses of the same keyword or phrase in the same article
• Keyworded backlinks are becoming less important – again, the data shows that the top search results are less and less likely to keywords in the anchor text of their backlinks
• Social shares might be a factor – one of the joys of SEO is trying to work out where the next ranking factor is coming from. The econsultancy report suggests that Google is to some extent using social shares as a measure of authority