Quality content does not always rank. The advantage of Author credibility and how up to date the content is can sometimes be irrelevant to how it ranks. That isn’t to say those factors are useless, but content creators tend to miss an important factor that controls ranking: Relevancy.
What is Quality Content?
This is a simple definition. Quality content is determined by its success. If it has achieved a goal, drives traffic, conversions, or Google search rankings, it is seen as quality content.
The quality of content is not determined by what is put into it as much as its effect on a particular audience or search query.
The definition of quality content has shifted from the past, where it was defined by its relevance to a search query. However today, it is formed by relevance to the people who search for it.
What’s the Difference?
When creating content that is relevant, it is important to realize the difference between content that is relevant to a search engine, and relevant to the person searching. Content should be designed to meet the needs of the customer, first and foremost. That is, producing content that meets the needs of the person searching, instead of matching keywords to a search query.
How to Be Relevant
That is not to say using keywords are bad. Instead, evolve your experience with keywords to prioritize those people. People with problems to solve and questions to answer make content Relevant.
Know your Audience
When creating relevant content, it is important to know your target audience. The best way to do this is with tools like Google Analytics. It is designed to analyze different aspects of a website, from viewer location, most and least searched content and best to worst content.
When creating content based on analysis of your website, keep in mind the nature of your target audience. These questions here are perfect to consider what your target audience is all about.
- Who are they?
- How old? What gender?
- What Social status/ background?
- What do they like?
- What are there problems?
- Where do they live?
Now that you have figured out just what your target audience is like, it’s time to produce content that is based on that information. Make sure to write at a level your audience can easily comprehend.
Finding out the nature of your audience is an immensely experimentative path. However, deciding and sticking to a particular niche is the best way to normalize your audience.
When posting content on social media, make sure to utilize analytics tools to determine the state of your content in relation to your audience. Audience analysis helps content creators adapt to their needs to keep content relevant to the audience. This is more officially known as data-driven marketing.
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Backlinking
Backlinking is a great way to ensure your content is relevant. Web pages rank because websites link back to them. The reason they are linked to the web page is because they add useful information. Giving and receiving backlinks are truly one of the most powerful ways to rank content.
The benefits of backlinks for content ranking are:
Ranking is Organic – Backlinks drive organic traffic to your website. Organic traffic ranks content and web pages a lot higher than paid traffic. Websites and content that ranks organically are also more likely to be clicked.
Organic traffic is ideal for establishing trust with consumers over time while PPC traffic is great for producing short-term conversions.
Index Speed – Backlinked pages can be found more quickly by a search engine’s bots which in turn index’s it much more effectively. The quicker a page is indexed by a search engine, the faster it can start ranking.
Referral Traffic/ Low Bounce Rate – When producing blog content, the aim is to have a low bounce rate. This is the rate at which people come to your website and the time they spend on the website. If the content does not constantly grab the attention of the readers, then high bounce rates are sure to come as a result.
When receiving or giving backlinks, referral traffic is distributed from the referer to the authority content. Referral traffic is good because it usually has a low bounce rate. Since referral traffic is comprised of users looking for extra information relevant to the primary search query, it has lower bounce rates.
Also, referral traffic is trackable in Google Analytics, making it a useful way to monitor the strength of a backlink.
How Backlinks Affect Relevance
Backlinks should come from pages that are relevant to the content. This is how backlinks create relevancy.
When backlinking content to a web page, you create referral traffic to the backlinked website. Although this does not inherently create more traffic to your webpage, it does, however, increase its ranking on a search engine and strengthens the credibility of the page if the backlink is relevant to the page’s topic.
When receiving a backlink from another website, users are referred to you. This improves the relevance of your page and drives referral traffic to your page. Since that traffic is referred, there will be a low bounce rate for users who have searched that topic. This also establishes your page as a form of authority because your source supports related content.
When creating content, It is important to know your audience and seek the support of backlinks. When users view content that is relevant to their needs and supported with information that is also relevant, the content will rank highly in search engines. Use keywords that relate to your target audience and seek the aid of data to drive content that highlights your audience’s needs.