Quality and relevance are different things, yet we often discuss them as if they were the same. Seos have been optimizing for relevance all this time, but are now being asked to optimize for quality. This post will discuss what that means and how to do it, with a focus on what I believe to be the single most effective and scaleable tactic for improving your site’s overall level of quality in most situations.
Potential ranking factors
You need both quality and relevance to compete these days.
First, let’s establish what we’re talking about here, which is quality. You can have relevancy (the right topic and keywords) without quality, as shown here:
Highly Relevantb but Very Low Quality
This mfa site is highly relevant for the phrase “Chairs for baby.” but it also sucks.
“…Babies are sensitive, delicate individuals who need cautious. So choosing a right chairs for baby is your gentle care.” wtf?
It doesn’t matter how relevant the page is. The Fast Food Direct Mail only way to get that page to rank these days would be to buy a lot of links, but then you’re dealing with the added risk. After a certain point, it’s just easier to build a better site. Yes, google has won that battle in all but the most hyper-competitive niches, where seasoned experts still find the reward:risk ratio in their favor.
Quality indicators Tactics (how to optimize for quality)
Grammar, spelling, depth hire a copy editor. Learn EL Leads to write better.
Expertise, authority, trust (eat) make content deep and useful. Call out your awards, certifications, news coverage, and use trust symbols. Make it easy to contact you, and easy to find policies like terms of service, returns, and privacy.
Pagerank (pr) from links build high-quality links. There are thousands of great articles out there about it.
Reviews ask your best clients/customers.
Short-clicks improve out-of-stock pages with in-stock alerts and related products. Be less aggressive with your pop-up strategy. Also see query refinements, pages per visit, and dwell time.
Query refinements only attract the “Right” audience and deliver what you promised in the search results. Choose keywords by relevance, not just volume. Think about query intent.
