You know that focusing on quality over quantity is better. And it’s applicable for your blog posts too. But how do you determine the quality of a blog post? What criteria should you use to be sure that it is worth publishing?
Here are 8 Essential Questions to ask yourself to gauge the quality of your blog posts.
1. Would I be Ready to Share this Article with Everyone?
After writing a blog post, the first question should ask yourself: Am I proud of this content? Do I fully assume it?
It could happen, for various reasons, that you are only half convinced (or not at all convinced) by your article: subject missing the point, inaccurate information, lack of consistency.
Always reread your articles with a refreshed head: if you have the slightest regret, make the necessary changes until you fully assume your creation.
Why is this notion of shareability important? Because that’s exactly the question your readers and Google’s indexing robots will ask themselves.
A trustworthy, authoritative text that knows how to combine expert information and a structured and educational style is judged to be shareable. And using all this information, Google’s indexing robots know how to analyze the quality of an article more and more finely to rank higher in search results.
In short, the time lost in proofreading or even reworking the article is ultimately again in terms of brand image and SEO ranking.
2. Does My Article Solve a Problem?
One of the foundations of content marketing is detecting problems or questions that your (future) customers have, then responding to them and attracting them.
This approach is also very effective in finding blog post topics.
Thus, the most relevant articles are useful to your prospects and solve a problem they encounter (related to your industry).
Even if your prospect has not yet asked the practical question you are addressing, it’s a safe bet that if this question is sound, he will ask himself later, once a product has been purchased.
And at the very moment when the problem appears, it will be thinking of you and not of the competition: you will be identified as an expert, which is the first step in subsequently boosting your conversion rate.
Present your article as a tutorial, like a how-to guide. Offer it in different forms: for example, a highly developed verbatim form detailing each step of the process, summarized in a detachable and easily remembered reminder, and a downloadable PDF format allowing offline reading and sharing.
3. Is My Article Original?
We know that the web has many articles, pages, and other content related to almost everything.
To get a higher ranking and stand out from the crowd in google search, you must add extra value to your content – if not innovative, which is almost impossible.
That’s why failing to provide revolutionary new information, exclusive, demanding, and innovative writing is essential to set you apart.
These qualities come at a cost, but keep in mind that they can kill two birds with one stone! Indeed, a feature article without any duplicate content, with a clear stylistic line and an original approach will be valued by Google Spybot, which will automatically increase your ranking in the SERPs.
There are several ways to stand out:
- Basically: deepen the subject and bring more expertise than your competitors, rely on exclusive data and figures, approach the theme differently.
- On the form: accompany your article with a video, an infographic, or any other support out of the ordinary.
Special Notes: To hit the nail on the head, make sure you know your target audience perfectly: the humor that will work very well with one social group can be a bitter failure with another, the addition of many images can attract or discredit the interview with a scientist can bring educational added value or on the contrary give off a boring image.
So take the time to know your target audience’s vocabulary, codes, and collective cultural representations before innovating!
4. Is the content supported by factual data?
The Internet is a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, it is an incredible source of knowledge, accessible to all, such as the Wikipedia website.
On the other hand, the web is the realm of fake news and rumors.
Faced with the mistrust of Internet users, it is, therefore, necessary to rely on reliable and recognized sources: the credibility of your articles depends on it.
Combine internet and university research codes for more efficiency: prepare a complete, neat, and up-to-date bibliography at the end of the article, and insert hypertext links at each authority citation to refer to more external information about this author or specialist called up in your article.
In addition, the articles must always be dated and signed explicitly. The ideal is even to feature prominently, next to the article, a reassuring presence of the author: background, training, the field of specialty, contact details, number of articles and reference to other articles, experience. journalistic, awards
5. Is the content spelling and grammar perfect?
For a truly professional rendering, spelling-grammar figures prominently in the questions to be asked to measure the quality of a blog article.
Indeed, it is the general style of the article which is at stake. Professional writers and proofreaders indeed master and apply uniform TOG (typography-spelling-grammar) rules: these not only cover the rules of the agreement, syntax but also the use of capital letters, italics, punctuation.
These are details, sometimes tiny, but it’s the sum of all these fine-tuned little details that create a true overall harmony, unify the tone, and clarify the style. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes: nothing is more disagreeable than to be stopped, in the course of its reading, by a mistake that strikes our sight and then prevents us from refocusing on the meaning of the text.
6. Is the article pleasant to read?
What is a nice article to read?
This question has multiple answers, but we can list some golden rules to follow to prevent your readers from running away from your page:
- Air the article and structure it clearly and logically to make you want to read it ;
- Ensure the readability of the article for all users, and in particular on mobile devices ;
- Use visuals to capture readers’ attention: make sure you use images properly in your articles ;
- Present quantified and complex data in graphs or tables to make them more digestible.
Think about it
Do not forget how much the average attention span of your Internet user is a data as precious as it is fragile and volatile! It only lasts a few seconds.
7. Does the article integrate the keywords well?
The integration of keywords is also an important question to ask when measuring the quality of a blog post. Why?
Because the blog article generally responds to a double challenge: informing prospects by sending them an expert brand image and giving Google signs of reliability to improve the ranking of its site in the search results pages.
But here it is: Gone are the days when you just had to stuff a text with keywords to be favored by Google indexing robots when crawling your site!
These bots have made immense progress and are increasingly able to appreciate a natural integration of keywords and, on the flip side, penalize gross over-optimization of your keywords.
It is where a professional writer’s know-how comes in, at the crossroads of language proficiency and SEO issues.
8. Is the article recommended by genuine external links?
If you’re familiar with SEO, you know the importance of inbound external links to your website. For example, the idea for a newbie site is to have external links from well-established sites that are authoritative in their field. It is also necessary that these links, themselves, be of quality. That is to say that these links must radiate, by ricochet, on yours.
Warning: Any well-known site cannot do the trick: you must have the same universe in common. Otherwise, the link will appear artificial.
In addition, pay attention to the place on your site to which this external link refers. Indeed, most external links lead to the home page. However, if you want to demonstrate the quality of your article, it is good that certain links refer explicitly to this specific page.
Given the importance of external networking for the good SEO health of your site, it may be interesting to create partnerships between sites or take advantage of the aura of the writer of your article by giving him a showcase in return, and so on.
