The Quality Content Myth

I keep reading thread after thread that talks about "my site with original quality content is getting out ranked by these thin, MFA sites" or some other random complaint.

So here's my question for those who believe their site is full of "quality" content. What exactly makes it high quality content? If you're thinking along the lines of "original, unique, well written" you've got it all wrong IMO.

Here are my thoughts.

Quality content needs to be broken up in 2 distinct categories.

1. As defined by search engines - This is just my opinion, but quality for the search engines means well organized, can be crawled, has back links. Proper grammar, your "original" thoughts, etc. are not important to the search engines. Even after the latest and greatest Google updates the SERPs are still littered with "unworthy" sites leading the way.

2. As defined by humans - Must be informative, funny, useful, or fill some other need. I think the majority of people think they're providing quality content for readers, but the reality is 99% of what you're providing does not fill the bill.

Just because you write an original article doesn't mean it's high quality. I don't care if it's written in perfect english, if it's boring to read, it's boring. Simple as that.

What's the point of all this?

Understand your audience. If your audience is the search engine, as in you have an MFA site (even if you call it something else), you're going to have to play the game. Stop whining about being outranked by a bad site and figure out what you need to do to win the ranking game.

If you have a site that's truly focused on the user, then give them really great content. If they're not willing to share your article, it's probably not that good to begin with. Simple as that.

Ask yourself this about the content you're writing. Will it make people __________? The blank could be laugh, cry, learn, get made, react, buy, etc. But you need to have a purpose for your content, and then it needs to deliver on that purpose.

So why does any of this matter?

Because if you don't understand this, you'll either be wasting a bunch of time or money and not even realize it. I see people talking all the time about the price of a "good" article. And all the Real article marketers come in talking about being willing to spend a $100 or more on a good article.

Do you think they're putting that on a lousy "micro niche" site that's trying to rank for keyword getting 1500 exact matches per month? I can assure you they're not. They are focused on getting that article syndicated, and in order for that to happen it has be high quality for humans.

Then there are those that take a $5 article submit to a few directories and wonder why they can't make any money. No one cares about your "7 tips to cure acne with morning urine" article because 1,000 others just like it have already been written.

So take a few minutes and take the time to understand what your content is intended to do, and make sure it does that.

One last thing...

Here's a quick way to tell if your content is high quality for humans. If all your traffic is coming from the search engines, then your content probably sucks because no one is sharing it. That's okay if your only intent is to get people to click your ads (and there's nothing wrong with that), but don't complain when you're getting outranked by an auto blog with better SEO.