If you are a webmaster looking to increase rankings and organic traffic from Google, then this tutorial will definitely prove helpful. You may have heard of Google's Panda / Farmer update affecting low quality websites - this tutorial will answer the questions of what does Google view as low quality - and more importantly - how do I make my website a high quality site?
Tip #1: Add Original, Useful and Substantial Content on a Frequent Basis
In this page: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html , Google stresses the importance of having original content on your website. Below are some good content guidelines you can implement:
In this page: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html , Google stresses the importance of having original content on your website. Below are some good content guidelines you can implement:
a.) At least 500 words. Most readers need details - especially if your content is a tutorial or how-to guide. If your content does not explain the details, then your content is not good enough, which also reflects the overall quality of your website. Having a thin amount of content, your site can be labeled as a “content farm” by Google. Make a habit of writing content with details instead of generalizing everything in one or two paragraphs.
b.) Content should be original and not copied. As suggested by Google here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html , some great ideas about writing original content are based on research, in-depth reports, and thoughtful analysis.
c.) Articles should be well written, clear, concise, and direct to the point. The readability of your content is also important.
d.) Content should contain images or videos. Content with images or videos reinforces learning and helps the reading process. Make sure you have rights to these images and videos. Make sure to ask permission first if you do not own them.
e.) If absolutely necessary, cites references to external sources as proof. Sometimes when you are writing something in your blog or website, you need evidence that can substantiate your point. In this case, you need to link to a quality external resource. This linking process should be given with editorial merit.
f.) Link to other content within your website. For example if your content is talking about “building widgets” then in some of your paragraphs you start talking about “configuring widgets”. If you already wrote a separate and detailed tutorial about “configuring widgets”, then have your “building widgets” page link to the “configuring widgets” content. This method is really helpful for visitors who are in need of detailed resources about a certain topic (example “widgets”). You might notice that if you are reading a Wikipedia article, it links to a lot of related pages within Wikipedia, and of course helps improve the user experience and increases the retention time of your visitors.
g.) Allow user-generated comments. When you publish content make sure you allow comments to it. User comments are helpful to validate the accuracy and trust of the content. If certain content receives a lot of interaction and approval, then any future readers do not need to spend more time searching for quality content on the Internet because they already found one. They will stick to your website longer.
h.) Allow users to share your content on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking websites. One aspect of a quality website is that its content is highly shared, liked and added to a users list of favorite websites. You should take this opportunity, as search engines like Google are definitely using this data (source: http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389 ).
i.) Write as often as possible- this makes your website grow bigger with quality content. The end results are higher organic traffic due to long tail effect and higher link baiting opportunity because of your content. Google also loves to rank big websites (source: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Choosing-Keywords-Help/Keyword-Difficulty-vs-Size-of-Domain/ ).
