The eyes are a window into the soul. The website is a window into your brand. Whatever you try to do or sell on your website, a company or a personal brand will be judged by its content and overall appearance.
These are some of the facets of web design that must be very well thought of. However, there is still one less evident but still critical criterion for website quality. It is content.
The quality of content is a weak spot for many websites. Users continue to spot grammar, stylistic, or spelling mistakes here and there. Besides, such things as originality and readability are even harder to improve.
This is why creating an amazing content strategy you’ll actually use is key to the overall success of your WordPress website. Without developing a good strategy you’ll end up with poor content that no one wants to read.
In this article, the quality of content is the main subject. Other points to be covered are what its key aspects are and how one can check and improve the quality of the WordPress website. So, keep reading below.
What Does ‘Quality Content’ Stand For?
Given the abundance of information online, it is hard to define what quality content actually means. The development of the Internet was not linear. And many aspects, including grammar and formatting, were missed out or considered unimportant for a long time.
Just remember those marketing texts that had keywords inserted in the wrong way. Some of them turned the message of the sentence upside down.
Content can be different, though. In academic writing, quality content is assessed by its informativeness, correctness, and novelty. For example, EssayPro specialists are not obliged to care about site readability parameters or cross-linking.
When it comes to website content, it is a complex category, the quality of which is assessed based on three main criteria. These are value, accessibility, and appeal:
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Value: the audience finds website content informative and engaging;
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Accessibility: the website is easy to find because its content is original, and search engine optimized;
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Appeal: titles and call-to-action lines are compelling enough to make visitors take action.
Obviously, you may be wondering why content is of crucial importance. Website programming and coding require much more knowledge and skills.
This is a topic for discussion. When website development is largely automated, content creation still requires a human genius to shine.
How Can You Check the Quality of Your Website Content?
The important rule is to check the content quality before it gets published. Creating an amazing content strategy is one way you can make sure that most, if not all, of your website’s published content are excellent. Thus, let’s review what key aspects that you should pay your attention to are.
Content Originality
No one likes reading the same lines over and over. If your content is similar to the one published on your competitor’s website, it won’t earn you any credit. Plus, it will only make you seem less professional.
It is really difficult to create something new and original in the abundance of information flows that we experience now. But this is still the key driving force for your website success.
Moreover, originality also guarantees you better search engine results. The more unique the ideas presented are, the better.
That said, here are some tips to apply, to come up with original content:
- Try to evoke your readers’ emotions in your content.
- Take time to create a list of the different topics to post within a month.
- Ask for suggestions from your social media followers.
Content Informativeness
Whatever you do and whichever your niche is, people will use your website searching for specific information. If you fail to provide them with enough answers, they are likely to choose a competitor.
Your main task is to make sure that your website content is informative and provides readers with expert opinion.
That way, more traffic comes to your site as Internet users will now regard it as an authority site.
To help ensure that your content stays informative, you can be guided by the following rules:
- Ask your audience for ideas about customer needs and pain points.
- Audit your existing content to see which are doing well and which aren’t.
- Perform a keyword research first before coming up with your content.
Grammar and Spelling
The best way to earn an unfortunate reputation is to launch a website full of grammar mistakes. Even those people who are not experts in writing can easily spot grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors in texts. When you’ve got content that’s laden with these errors, it will only show that you aren’t really that serious in coming up with quality content. It will make you seem incompetent compared to other competing websites.
This creates a subconscious bias and prevents them from comprehending the information you try to convey.
The best way for you to ensure that your content’s grammar and spelling are always perfect is to edit and proofread before publishing, as well as keeping a tool like Grammar Checker at a clicking range to ensure that your content is always on point.
Credibility
In the era of fake news, false facts in your website content can really affect its accessibility. Google has proclaimed the war on fakes, trying to rank website content based on information accuracy.
If you mention or refer to unverified facts in your website content, do not even expect high ranking in search engines.
Internet users will also stop trusting your website, so you can expect to have little to no growth at all in terms of traffic.
Here are some pointers to follow to ensure website credibility:
- Incorporate case studies, surveys and other statistics, when applicable.
- Always cite your sources.
- Stick to one issue or topic per article.
Formatting
Even though such thing as formatting does not have a direct relation to written content, it still affects that overall reader’s experience. It includes sore rules and norms that make website content look easy to digest. Some of them are really helpful.
For example, shorter paragraphs on website pages look better than long ones. Bullet points can help readers memorize key ideas. Images and other visuals can help in breaking long texts into several parts. Remember that when your text looks too heavy and has no breaks, this can discourage even the most avid of all readers to carry on reading your content.
Keywords
The use of keywords is indeed an art. You should stay original while adding words and word combinations that can help in making your website content searchable and accessible.
Most importantly, make sure you include keywords in titles, introductions, and headings in your website blog. Such a thing can really boost your search engine results.
As for the rest of the website content, keywords should come naturally in the text. Otherwise, your visitor will not read through the end.
Cross-Linking
To help your website content get noticed, it is important to insert external links. Such a practice allows your readers to find out more about the subject without any extra effort.
At the same time, such links earn you credit in terms of online visibility and accessibility. However, when inserting them, make sure they all work and point to the right place.
What Are the Tools That Can Help You Check WordPress Website Content Quality?
Here you will find the most popular and common plugins that are used to improve content quality on WordPress websites. In fact, there are thousands of them that may be equally useful.
Yoast
Yoast is an SEO plugin that was created for websites powered by WordPress. It helps to check the main SEO parameters of the text you are about to publish. In other words, it shows how well your text is optimized and what can be done to improve it.
Moreover, Yoast collects information about your most common mistakes. These analytics can help improve your writing and SEO skills.
Word Stats
This plugin is a fully functional SEO and content analysis tool. It runs the text through special algorithms to find out how relevant the content is. Also, it bridges your keywords with the ones clients actually use when searching for a product.
One of the greatest features this website has is the grades. You can find out what is missing in your text and improve it. Moreover, Word Stats also analyzes the readability.
Easy Content Templates
This plugin helps in formatting your content for it to meet the needs of the pickiest reader. It offers lots of creative templates that can turn a boring page into a creative one.
Easy Content Templates allow for creating or selecting templates for your new posts, keeping them private, or sharing with other authors. The plugin is easy to use and truly handy.
PrePost SEO
This plugin helps professional writers to write excellent content that is optimized according to all rules. Synchronized with the WordPress text editor, it also allows you to check keyword density.
One of the greatest features of this plugin is its integration with other services. For example, it can also check plagiarism, link credibility, grammar, and spelling.
Plagiarism Checker by SST
Every piece of content you publish on your WordPress website needs to be unique.
And this particular tool functions surprisingly easily on your WordPress website. All you need to do is to install the plugin. Once this is done, the software will check your new and old posts, highlighting where content should be fixed.
WP Keyword Suggest
If keywords scare you because you have no idea which of them you should use, WP Keyword Suggest is there to help. You can simply install this plugin and enjoy how fast it brings numerous keywords ideas.
All you need to do is to mention what your blog post is about. The tool will automatically suggest around 250 creative and searchable keywords for you. Some of them may not fit into your storyline, but most will be really helpful.
SEO Internal Links
When it comes to cross-linking, finding the right reference can be a challenging task. However, you can ease this process.
When you install the SEO Internal Links plugin, it automatically includes internal links into your posts, supporting the content.
This is an absolutely customizable plugin. There is no reason to fear that it will insert a link that would have a negative impact on your reader’s experience. You can adjust it to fit the purposes of your website and content best.
Wrapping Up
The quality of content is a subjective and fragile category. However, there are certain metrics that have to be met, which would all help in ensuring that your site’s content quality is good.
Professional writers agree that the content should be informative and original to make readers hooked. However, it is also important to make it valuable, easy-to-comprehend, accessible, and readable.
Since today the information is offered in excess, lots of tools are developed to help writers stand out with their content. There are many plugins that can be easily integrated with platforms like WordPress.
Pick the ones you like the best and good luck in your blogging endeavors!