Tips To Measure Content Quality: A Complete Guide

Content quality is crucial to the digital success of every brand. In fact, content, along with the website’s design, look and feel, is among the first elements users encounter when they attempt to interact with a brand. As first impressions are usually the last ones, providing good content doesn’t suffice. You need superlative content that translates your brand identity into a user-oriented one.

However, while apparently every piece of content may look fine, how do you know if it boasts the quality users and search engines expect from you? In other words, how do you measure the quality of a particular piece of content? Here’s a guide from BrainMine, the top digital marketing company in Pune.

What is Quality Content?

Fundamentally, an excellent quality content refers to being informative, relevant to the user’s concern, authentic, readable and the one that actually helps users find an answer to their question. And yes, not to forget, for a brand, a superior quality content is the one that also helps it derive commercial and strategic value. However, content isn’t only about words, images and videos. With user expectations evolving by the day, content quality has transcended these traditional aspects to become more experience-oriented.

What does Google Think About Content?

Google is more critical about content than users are! It has its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, which is a handbook that helps assess content quality. The content raters assess a webpage, look at the quality guidelines in the handbook, and rate its quality. Per the document, the rating does not directly impact the search engine rankings of that particular content piece. Its sole purpose is to help Google evaluate how well its AI has ranked that particular page and vet its content.

For Google, a high-quality content, as defined by its quality rater guidelines, should,

• Have a high level of Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (EAT)
• Satisfactory information about the website and the one responsible for it
• Satisfactory amount of high main quality content, which includes a helpful or descriptive title
• Positive website reputation for the one responsible for the main content on the page
• Positive reputation of main content’s creator, in case they are different from that of the website

On the other hand, Google considers a piece of content as low quality if,

• Low EAT levels
• Exaggerated or shocking title of the main content
• Low quality main content
• Distracting ads driving users away from the actual content
• Unsatisfactory amount of information about the website and people responsible for it
• A mildly negative reputation for a website or the main content creator

How to Measure Content Quality?

Let’s get to the point now. How to measure the quality of a particular content? Let’s begin with the writing aspect and then look at a few metrics that decide that quality of content.

Writing Aspect

• Content Focus

Your content must focus on the actual idea without unnecessary excerpts or extracts that either distract readers or drive them away from the original query or concern. In other words, your content must remain integral with the actual idea or the purpose for which the users have landed on your page. This applies to all forms of content, whether textual, graphical or visual.

• Content Development

Content must expand on the main idea and be supported by verified facts and figures, examples that are easy to understand, current trends, etc. These help users relate with the content quickly and get value in the form of vital insights that contribute to their knowledge.

• Content Readability

The content you create must have a seamless flow. Here, going back to the basics can help. Beginning with a general (yet related) idea and then narrowing down to the actual topic, elaborating on it and then concluding the topic sensibly, preferably with a call to action that drives people to your brand.

Additionally, the choice of words, sentence and paragraph structuring also matters. Choosing unnecessarily complex words and framing long and complex sentences is an absolute turn down. An interactive content with relevant and resonating questions connects better than the one with plain sentences and statements.

• Content Correctness and Accuracy

Last but not least, content correctness and accuracy. Ensure you verify facts and figures and their sources before citing them in your content. Additionally, it is important to perform a technical check through experts if the content is technical in nature. It will help you deliver your users relevant, correct and accurate content. Not to forget, plagiarized content also is considered low quality content and rejected by search engines!

Metrics Aspect

• Time on Page

What is the average time people are spending on a particular webpage? Finding an answer to this question will help you know if users are reading your content or not. For instance, a page may attract millions of clicks due to advertising. However, if you analyze the time on page for that particular page, you may find that it is no more than a few seconds. It means, people aren’t really consuming any content.

However, on the contrary, a page may not have as many visitors, yet the time on page is relatively high. In situations like these, such a page is likely to provide a higher conversion rate.

• Social Media Shares

Shares are a solid indication of excellent quality content, as they not only signify that your content has been read by someone, but liked to the extent they’ve recommended it to others. So, while assessing the quality of a particular content, also look at the number of social media shares that have happened concerning the content.

• Scroll Depth

Tracking scroll depth refers to monitoring different points within the content to determine how far users went reading a particular content before bouncing. This metric can help when you know your content is lengthy. You can also track the user’s scrolling speed to determine if your content is only being glanced at or read in depth. Although the former isn’t necessarily an indication of a bad quality content, as that could be the user’s choice.

Enhance Your Content with BrainMine – The Premier Digital Marketing Agency in Pune

As an agency that provides content writing services in Pune, BrainMine helps strategize, design, develop and evaluate content to optimize its value for its users as well as its owners. The agency employs content developers with years of experience in content development for diverse business domains and various content forms such as text, graphics and video. So, connect with BrainMine at +91 84464 77774, if you want to enhance your existing content, get it evaluated or write content afresh for your brand.