What is 'Good Content'?

I think good content is when you write for your readers, and not Google.

I think a sign of good content is where people go to the effort of sharing, tweeting, liking or commenting on your work.

I doubt anyone really knows what is 'good content according to google', except some google employees, who won't share the truth anyway

Original (not duplicate) and human readable - not software generated or so good that a human editor can't see it's generated - should be enough.

Anything above that is pure speculation and a matter of taste (which the software doesn't have and human editors could have any).

Good content is content that is easily promoted to draw attention to your website or service.

As far as google is concerned google doesnt know what "good " content is unless someone tells them.

I try to pay less attention to what Google is saying and more attention to my visitors. Write for them. They are the ones that click on your ads and purchase your products. Make sure your articles read well and are informative and put less emphasis on what Google is telling you.

Kevin

Content that is valuable to the target audience and not just trying to sell them something.

Good Content = Content that provides value to the READER.

It will differ in each niche.

However as an example:

"How to build a house"

"If you are looking to build a house then you need a good "how to build a house" guide. The main things that you need to look for in a guide that tells you how to build a house is a bricklaying guide, foundation guide etc..."

^ Bad content

Good content would be an indepth guide that ACTUALLY tells you how to build a house from scratch.

Bad example I know but hope you see what I mean?

So think about how you can offer value to the reader.

Chris

If I might add a small suggestion of my own to John's excellent summary above (post #5), I think that "good content" can - approximately - be judged by whether or not others with decent quality and relevant publications/websites choose voluntarily to link to it simply because it's content they want to share with their own readers/visitors/subscribers. Not 100% reliable, certainly, but quite a good indication, overall.

Good content is what the reader thinks is good.

Anything that adds value. Re-writing a PLR article doesnt really add much value but on the other hand an engaging post/article for your visitors is also a great bait for search engines

As defined by Amit Singhal: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: More guidance on building high-quality sites

Both John McCabe and CashpOwer seem to have hit the target. Good content isn't just what you have to say--it's what you have to say to somebody else.

I think google will have a bunch of metrics it uses to decide what good content is, how long people stay on the page for, how many people share it, bounce rate - that kind of thing.


I still think the problem is these are just as easy to game as backlinks and keyword density.
Some content people won't shared, an amazing article on how to deal with genital warts isn't going be plastered all over facebook and surely a page that solves your problem within a minute of reading is better than one that takes 7.

a unique content written for readers cant be called good content.

Bottom line, good content provides value to your reader.

Offering value should be the #1 goal in internet marketing. If your content is valuable, the profit side of the equation will take care of itself.

To me "good content" is content that you would want to read yourself about topic you are writing about. Not using duplicate content is still important I believe. I have stopped trying to give google what they want. Just post good original content and build your own backlinks. I still use PLR as all my original sources of blog post, but rewrite them manually. Just my thoughts.

Good content is content that affects people. It is content that answers what question they have or moves them one step closer to whatever they are hoping to accomplish.

Not everyone is going to think your content is "good". But those who support your world view will think so.

It's really that simple.

My understanding is also that the more your content is shared socially (ie Facebook, twitter, stumble, etc.) the more "reader friendly" Google views it based on the fact that if people are sharing it socially then it is obviously something that people want to read.

That is just something I read in a blog, I didn't get it from Google themselves or anything - but it does make sense

Good content is when you worry less about what your product can do and more about sharing with others what people are doing with it.

One very good way to generate good content is to find out what questions your clients or people in general are asking and answer them.

Regards,
jim

"Good content" in the eyes of Google is simply content that doesn't sound like it was written for the search engines. Typically it ranges from around 500 words or more, and it should be clearly written to educate the reader on the information that they are looking for.

Good content means quality and uniqueness, if it is only unique then you can fool search engines but you can't fool visitors, if visitors are just visiting your site and leaving your site spending just one or two seconds then your site automatically be tracked low quality site as there is no visit length so you are caught by search engines here.

I always thought good content was an article that was interesting, well-researched and informative. I spent a lot of time writing my articles, making sure they were accurate. However, now when I look at the sites on the first page for my niche, I think I should probably save myself time in the future and just buy some spinning software.

There is one site in my niche that I watch regularly. This site survived panda and penguin and has page 1 rankings for dozens of lucrative keywords. The owner adds content several times a week. The content is horrendous. It looks like it's spun or written by someone who doesn't understand English grammar. Basically, an "article" consists of the keywords repeated 4-5x and a bunch of fluff. It's a health site and no proper research has been done on these articles. Some of them offer advice that may be dangerous. This site doesn't even have a privacy policy page, yet runs Adsense. I can't figure out why this site ranks so well.

I guess I just don't understand what Google considers good content. I honestly don't think that Google has the capabilities yet to determine good content from bad content. I think any content is okay with Google if it's semi-readable and not duplicated. These are just my own observations from watching the Penguin aftermath (in my niche, at least).

The ironic thing is that Google said that they were going to do something about spun content. Instead, there are more sites with spun content ranking.

You should probably spend a few days reading over the content from the top 50 websites in your niche. This will give you some clarity of what pleases Google post-Penguin.

As a newbie I've been thinking about this content question as well... As I gather, good content is something that gives the visitor valuable info on the subject, info that makes the decision making process easier. And I think the content should be as unique as possible as well : )

Everyone thinks they write "good content", but very few people do.

from the horses mouth



Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map has an extremely large number of links, you may want to break the site map into multiple pages.

Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number.

Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.

Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.

Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the "ALT" attribute to include a few words of descriptive text.

Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.

Check for broken links and correct HTML.

If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

Review our recommended best practices for images and video.

It is preferred to have most of the traffic come from other sources in addition to SE. I have seen a lot of sites having a ratio of 15% SE and 85% other sources.

It’s been said, but good content is written for the reader. So if your niche is- say military,
then you need to write in a way that keeps them reading. This will be a different writing
style if your niche is games. A point that was made to me is one thing G looks for is how
long someone stays at a site. If you feel you must write for G then do it with that in mind.
Better yet always be writing for your reader.

The answer seems pretty simple to me.
Good content is content that you want to read, content that you search
out for yourself!

Example: I was recently looking to purchase a new 3D TV..so where did I go for reviews?
CNET.com. Occasionally I play video games, and where do I go for reviews? IGN.com.

Why do I search out these sites? Because they provide what I want...good quality reviews that break down the products.

I believe good content is four fold:
1. Original content - unique content
2. Targeted content- must pertain to your niche
3. Contains some LSI - long tail kw's related to your main KW
4. Must make sense to the reader - quality vs kw density%

But what exactly Google means by it, that I am not sure. For example I did some research a few months ago on acne and a site about "Jeans" was on the first page?
I am not sure if it's still there since the panda update, but how could a site about jeans rank on page one above other sites containing content targeted to acne?
I am still confused by how google acts.

You have good content when you write something useful, original and constructive for your visitors. And off course, you don't need to copy other content and as others mention above you don't need to write for search engines but for humans.

Okay, now that's a better perspective of things. If you know what's bad, then you'll be able to whip up something good by avoiding those patterns that you see in those bad stuff that you see on the Internet. Thanks guys!

Whenever I tell some people to write good content, what's in the front of my mind is the quality. When I got to this thread and read some of the replies, I asked myself, how does Google really weed out the good stuff from the bad. Then comes JohnMcCabe's reply. I have to say, man. Good stuff.

In my humble opinion, I would say good content is actual useful information rather than just a sales pitch.

Content is the King if your have relavent and high quality content then your site will be good rank on the search engines.

Some factors of good content.
1. Content should be relevant, informative descriptive.
2. Not copy content and content should be fresh
3. Keyword density should be 2 to 4 %
4. Content should be friendly. Without grammatical error.

Look at it from the view of the searcher and ask yourself "Is this a good article which give me information what I am looking for?"
Make sure you will use lots different words.

Anything worthwhile and informative to the reader. Designed to draw the reader to your site for more good info.

Must be informative, original and catchy.

So if i have 1.000.000 pages content (even original and cool) on my website it does not mean i will get 100.000 daily traffic. because of google..

A content which gives readers really beneficial information and increase their knowledge. And Indirectly it will also help to attract the Google

Many people listed unique as one of the necessary qualities. But some of the most well written content that is eagerly read thousands of times every day is not original. Think Associated Press.

It seems the Google quality raters handbook was leaked several months ago. If you read through that you will find that "relevant" is probably the most critical factor when a reviewer assesses a page. It doesn't matter whether the content is fresh, unique or interesting if it isn't relevant to what the searcher is trying to find out when he or she entered a term into Google's search.

When someone enters "train my Chihuahua," for example, an article or video about general dog training is not going to be 'good content' no matter how original it is or how great it looks on the page. Relevant (good) content will be specifically about how the reader can train his/her Chihuahua.

Say what?

*Looks at avatar*

I should be ready for that by now.

I use to write articles for PR Web and the content was keyword appropriate. I ranked well on niche keywords.

A good content for is a write-up which is timely and has competitive keywords.

Forget about Google for a moment. I am sure you already know what you want out of your site and the products/services that you want to provide. Based on that write something (original) that you yourself would want to read and find valuable. You always have to put yourself on the buyers end and ask yourself a question"If I was to read this would I like it and find it useful?". To me that's a good valuable content. Good Luck!

Giving people something useful is so important, and when I'm googling something theres nothing more of a turn off than spun stuff where it doesn't even make sense to read. I'm outta there. Whats the point of hanging around somewhere when the site owner can't put out anything of value. I know they arent interested in me. Only and only my money. Its so important to give a damn about who's landed on your page and bothered to look at what you have to offer/say.

Good content is something useful, unique, coherent and no hard selling.