What Makes Great Web Content and Why Is It Important?

If you’ve ever tried to get a website off the ground, you’ve likely had to start paying attention to user engagement statistics, organic traffic accumulation, and bounce rates. But did you know that keeping users on your site has less to do with your actual services or offerings and more to do with the caliber of content on each page? Creating quality content for your website is one of the best ways to reduce bounced users and increase session engagement duration–all beneficial for your page’s Google rankings and grabbing more people’s attention. Superior web content is achievable; let’s break down some of the common factors separating the “adequate” content from the “great.”

Top 10 Common Denominators in Quality Web Content

There a few key characteristics found in good web content that a trained eye can pinpoint and learn to exploit. From understanding who you are writing for to adding key meta information and alt tags, there are many ways to optimize your website’s content to be even more Google-friendly. 

Understanding Your Audience

If you don’t know who is looking for your content, you will never be able to provide value to the reader. For example, is the user navigating to your site for transactional purposes or informational purposes? What is it that your desired demographic is looking for, specifically, and how will you provide them with that answer? Linking your relevant pages to web content (also called “interlinking”) is a great way to strengthen your website’s standing with Google while continuing to drive traffic.

Intuitive Navigation and User Experience

Let’s face it–if your website is hard to use, counterintuitive and confusing to navigate, hard to read, or any other number of factors that might negatively impact the user experience, folks are likely going to “bounce” from your site and find another site with easily-accessible, high-value information. 

Mobile-Friendly Design

According to Think With Google, over 50% of website traffic comes from mobile users. This means that if your website is not optimized to accommodate smaller screens of on-the-go scrollers, you are likely to lose people–particularly if you offer services that require calling in to secure. Creating a mobile friendly design also helps to capture the interest of younger generations and the next iteration of clients for your business. 

Offers Value (Information, Entertainment, Links, Product Reviews) 

When creating content for your website, it’s important to offer your readers some form of value–whether this is comedic content and entertainment, information, how-tos, product reviews, links to primary sources of information, etc. Readers understand if the content on your website is fluff or advertorial copy and are more likely to bounce if you are not offering something useful, unique, or interesting. In fact, if your content does not provide some kind of value, Google may even consider it spam (via Search Engine Journal). 

Include Keywords or Phrases

In order to optimize your web content for Search Engines like Google, you’ll want to include keywords and phrases that correspond to user-related interest. For example, if you are writing for a plumbing company, you may want to rank for keywords like “plumber near me,” or “clogged garbage disposal.” Use tools at your disposal to find appropriate keywords that aren’t too challenging to rank for–whether using bought tools like SEMrush or free ones like Google Ads or Answer the Public. Make sure you include these keywords not just in the body of your text but also in headings, subheadings, and your initial title (called your H1) as well. 

Appropriate Meta Description and Meta Title

When it comes time to upload your content to your site, you will have the option to enter a meta description and a meta title for your content. Ensure your meta info includes your keywords or phrases, and take care to include a compelling call to action enticing Internet users to click on your content. Using appropriate meta info will not only help Google to crawl and index your content but will also rope in more readers who find their way to you via organic search.

Link to Credible Sources

This might seem obvious, but if you are linking to secondary (or even tertiary) sources where fact is more often than not replaced with opinion–or even casual observation–you’ll likely want to reconsider linking to that source. Try to opt for credible, primary sources such as those with URLs ending with a .gov or a .edu. Think about the last time you read a compelling journalistic article–did the writer link to informal blog posts or Reddit threads to support their point, or scientific journals? Which one are you more likely to believe?

In addition, linking to reputable sources can help boost not only your topical authority but your website’s authority as well. Don’t settle for second-rate links!

Proof Read!

Make sure your content is free from glaring errors with grammar, spelling, and the like. When in doubt, run your content through a program like Grammarly to make sure that everything is correct and flowing smoothly. While proof reading, be sure to check that writing is kept at an easily-understood reading level to appeal to the widest demographic possible. Using overly inflated vocabulary can encourage some readers to bounce; and using niche industry jargon is a surefire way to turn off readers looking for entry-level information. 

Add Multimedia Content and Alt Tags

Another surefire way to boost your content’s SEO friendliness is by adding multimedia content such as photographs, videos, or a gallery. Aside from creating a more attractive web page, adding photos and multimedia content to your writing will not only draw in more readers (from Search Engine Journal), but will also create an opportunity to add alt tags to your images–giving Google more fodder for its crawl bots to assess your site. 

Clear and Compelling Call To Action (CTA)

The most well-crafted content in the world won’t serve much of a purpose if it is not generating clicks or customer conversions. A reader who has just finished reading a piece of writing has generated momentum–your job as the writer is to give them somewhere to go with that energy. In general, linking to a home page, contact page, or services page is a good idea–but you can also direct readers to previous content you’ve written or specific products you offer. The goal of creating content is for users to be more interested in interacting with your site–so make sure you give readers every opportunity to explore your offerings!

Why Work With The AD Leaf?

While the latest iterations of Artificial Intelligence have certainly made the process faster, as of today, achieving good content still takes a human touch. Why set yourself up for stress and spending countless hours researching tools, material, and toiling over content that Google still might see as spam at the end of the day? 

An experienced marketing team like The AD Leaf will not only be able to take this task off your hands, but possess the insight and industry-leading tools necessary to create content for you that is not only unique and palatable to your readers, but is competitive on Google. While they say “Content is King,” quantity does matter–but quality reigns supreme in the eyes of the world’s most popular Search Engine. A team of marketing professionals like those found at The AD Leaf will be able to take this task off your plate so you have more time to do what you do best: run your business. Good content should not only improve your website’s performance and rankings, but should also bring in more warm leads for you as well. Why wait to generate good quality content when you could be gaining loyal clients?