Define Quality Content?

[PaulH]

We all know it when we see it but how do you explain what it is?

Looking to keep as simple as possible, came up with list below but not happy with it

High Quality Content

• is bookmarked by users
• is sent to friends
• is talked about
• would the Sunday Times publish it?

How to create content that does this!

• Answer the users questions!
• Make it accurate!
• Make it informative!
• Make it comprehensive!
• Make it authoritative!
• Make it useful!
• Make it grammatically correct, no typos, and spelt correctly.
• Use images if these help.
• Link to relevant resources.

[4Eyes]

In terms of the algo 'learning from human reviewers' thing that is supposed to be behind Panda, I would say you also need a bunch of 'essential' silly stuff - t&cs, privacy policy, a few reasonable sized images.. etc - anything that just might be on a site that made a reviewer happy, and that can be detected by an algo.

[eurotrash]

I'd second Colin - but I am still seeing some utter shite floating to the top with none of those

[ukgimp]

Paul he is talking about your sites. :-)

[eurotrash]

and probably Colin's as well!

[PaulH]

I've still some old turds floating about, but am in the wrong forum for this question really

forget SEO+spam for a sec(i know, its near impossible), am not trying to game Google here or slip past panda -

Am looking for a brief easy to understand way to define high quality content to some of our less experienced staff so they can find and trial writers without me doing it all. Even for the writers it would be useful for them so they know the level of research to perform and how long to spend on it. 

[buckworks]

Answer the users questions!

This one can get tricky, because we're so often at the mercy of users to ask good questions and the search engines to match our content with their questions. What might be excellent quality content for answering one question might be useless for another.

Other than that slight caveat I agree with everything on your list.

Does anyone remember Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? The protagonist went crazy trying to define quality.

[ukgimp]

Can these people read?

Good content is formatted properly with spot on grammar, it needs to have the correct usage of their,  there and they're. Perhaps you could devise a test that requires he correct usage of these type of confusables. Only needs to a small para.

[Gurtie]

and there's a human element. Good content is compelling. Thats why good copywriters are good and less good ones churn out content for $4 an article.

[rcjordan]

>is sent to friends

I've several sites that have good traffic on their TAF scripts.  While I agree that they are an internal sign of quality content, I can't say that they help with SEO.  I'm thinking active comment streams would do both.

[eurotrash]

When you bring humans into look at it, Buckworks is right.  She read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Everybody told me it was quality when it came out and I was in the Army at that time so most of the people I was around were squaddies - (frightening being that old).  I bought it when it came out in paperback and over literally a couple of years people kept speaking about it.

In all my attempts I think I managed to get to about page 20.  It was boring crap - I couldn't get it to it at all.  It's not only me who thought it was shyte!   It was originally rejected by 121 publishers, more than any other bestselling book, according to the Guinness Book of Records - they thought it was shite and they owned the shit shovels.

[4Eyes]

Yup - I think it is a Subjective/Objective issue really.

If it is targeting search traffic, does the page answer the searchers question in a way that is accurate, informative and entertaining.
If it is not bothered about ranking, then is it entertaining and thought provoking.
If we subtract Google and SEO from the equation, 'Quality', IMO, does not need perfect grammar and punctuation, it just needs to 'grip' the reader in some way.

... all of which is 'eye of the beholder' stuff. Until you define your audience, and come up with a few 'personas' to target the quality at, it has to rely on 'the average joe' as a judge of quality, and as we all know, you can't trust that guy.

It's not only me who thought it was shyte!

LOL - I thought it was one of the best books I ever read.. but I suspect it only has value if it is addressing some of the questions that are already in your head (ditto web pages I guess). If you already know, or have had no reason to ask, the questions, then it could be boring as hell. FWIW, I thought his second book written many years later was complete and utter bollocks.

To summarise the ZATAOMM argument re: quality:
If it is objective, then you should be able to measure it scientifically, if it is subjective then it has no real value and should be able to be subtracted from the world without anyone caring too much. As I recall, the main character decides it is neither, and then decides that it is actually the motivating force that brings subject and object together, and that 'quality=good=God'.... then he goes insane for a few years

So... all we have to do is find a way of replicating that motivating force and we will get traffic without needing to rank

[joedavies1987]

Quality content?

That's easy, anything that is spurted out of Parabuilder is quality content IMO

[I, Brian]

For "How to create content that does this!" you forgot to add:

ensure you have quality writers in the first place

I was going to type "no Indians" but recently I've been taking on UK freelance journos who quote national papers on their resume, but I find their work quite poor and over-priced. Luckily, in that sort of arrangement, you only pay for what you use, and easy to reject what's not suitable.

[PaulH]

Find even the really good writers have a mix of clients, and will deliver different standards of work depending what you ask for.  Why we wanted some very simple criteria to give them a guide.