There are three key elements a successful website needs. Great visuals, user-friendly design, and high-quality content. Without each of these, a website will be lacking to users and they are more likely to go elsewhere for what they were searching for. Today let’s focus on the content aspect of a website and talk about what low-quality content is and how it can impact your SEO.
I’ve Never Heard of Low-Quality Content, What In The World Is That?
While there is no clear-cut definition of what low-quality content is, there are very common and telling signs. The overall feeling that users get when they stumble upon low-quality content is that it comes across as too thin or shallow. This leads many to feel as if their purpose on the website wasn’t met and will go back to searching for answers. Now, let’s cover some more in-depth warning signs and habits you should avoid.
Visual Red Flags
Remember when earlier when having great visuals is also needed for a good website? Content helps those visuals look polished and professional. Sites marked with this content error have a design that is for lack of a better word, ugly. Photos might have too much weight over text, causing the page to look unbalanced. Or, the typography could be lacking a clear header hierarchy and generally looks untrustworthy. If you’re a visual learner, close your eyes and remember how Angelfire blogs looked.
Another visual red flag is if a page has a lot of popups, affiliate links, and ads. With other things to distract the eye, and maybe Google, users won’t notice thin content.
Content Red Flags
Other than sounding shallow, low-quality content will come across as incomplete and not concise. The voice and tone of it can sound robotic and empty of meaning. Keyword stuffing is a practice where content is written to hold as many keywords as it can. Regardless of if it actually makes sense or holds a purpose to users.
If the web copy seems outdated, feels copied, or like something you’ve seen on another website, that’s a good sign you are reading low-quality content. Instead of writing something unique to their company and brand some pull bits and pieces from competitors. In hopes, it will work for them as well and hold its own against competitors.
Now doesn’t that all sound awful? If you arent suffering from the ick or fright just yet, I’m about to share with you the CONSEQUENCES of these actions.
How Low-Quality Content Hurts SEO
I cannot stress enough how this type of content will make a website lose the trust of its users. This distrust will over time start to transfer to Google and other search engines. Since, user interactions are a key component of how pages get indexed and placed into search results, having a website that users avoid will pull you right to the bottom of search results.
While websites with low-quality content plummet, those with more authoritative and impactful content will climb ranks. As more users interact with the websites with more desirable content, they will soon start to claim space within that market. Thus making it more difficult for the website with the worse content to compete.
But the worst thing that can come from using low-quality content on a website is to be marked as spam and blacklisted by Google. Once blacklisted any and all search results will be deindexed and pulled away from users, leaving the website to fade into obscurity. Scary, right?
A Checklist To Help Avoid Low-Quality Content
Content writing is difficult and when you toss SEO strategies into the mix it only makes it more of a headache. Luckily there are three very good things to keep in mind while writing to help avoid suffering the woes of bad content.
- Is it unique to your brand?
- Is it helpful to your users?
- Does it make sense?
If you can answer yes to all of these then congrats! You have written impactful and desirable content! Never forget that it’s important to revisit your website content regularly to make sure it is still relevant to your company and users. Your website is not a one and done project. It needs upkeep for many different elements to make sure it benefits your business.
Writer’s Block? We Can Help With That!
It doesn’t matter if you are trying to rewrite bad content or starting from scratch, iNNOV8 Place is here to help. Reach out to us and schedule a consultation!
