Google considers over 200 ranking factors when promoting webpages in SERPs, but almost all of them fall under one primary category: quality.

That's because Google is always trying to make search better for users. For a webpage to rank well, it must provide high-quality content and an elevated page experience. It should also come from a well-trusted, reputable website.

So how do site owners and digital marketers prove to Google that their content is not only relevant to users but also high in quality?

By improving content quality signals on their web pages. By focusing on those quality signals, digital marketers will have better SEO results across all of their landing pages.

How Does Google Define High-Quality Content?

Although having the right keywords is essential to showing Google that your landing pages satisfy search intent, Google's technology has gotten much more advanced over the years. It now looks for more than just keywords when deciding whether to rank your webpages.

Google also looks for high-quality signals such as the following:

• Original information, reporting, or research
• Comprehensive, substantial exploration of the topic
• Original insights and analysis
• Clear sourcing and expert authorship
• Accurate spelling, grammar, and error-free copy

Conversely, certain practices will cause Google to view your landing pages as low-quality. Some low-quality signals include:

• Automatically generated or scraped content
• Irrelevant, unnatural keyword usage
• Unoriginal, plagiarized content
• Excessive redirects, broken links, or hidden text

Google has always emphasized discovering unique and valuable content for users. Therefore, any digital marketer who wants to show up in search needs to aim for the same goal.

Five Content Quality Signals and How to Improve Them

1. Semantic richness: add subtopics, questions, and related topics to your landing page copy

Semantic SEO is the process of creating meaningful content that satisfies users' intent in addition to their specific query.

When semantic SEO is effectively implemented, Web content answers the users' questions as well as all of the questions they may have next.

The more semantically rich your content is, the more Google recognizes it as well-researched, informative, and original. To improve semantic richness on your page...

• Do competitive research. What type of content is already ranking on page one for the keywords you want to rank for? What types of words and phrases do those pages include in their content?
• Use a keyword tool. Identify related subtopics, synonyms, questions, and autocompletes related to your target keywords. Add them into your content to improve its semantic signals.
  
  

  

  

• Use content AI software. Software such as SEO Content Assistant can help you create more semantically rich content. Content AI tools use natural language processing to generate terms to add into your content to give it more ranking power.

2. Topical depth: increase the content length of your landing pages to match your competitors'

Technically, word count is not an official ranking factor for Google. So why does content length matter to SEO strategists?

Well, multiple studies have found a correlation between content length and a higher ranking. That's because in-depth content influences other elements that Google does take into consideration, such as...

• Backlinks: Longer content earns more backlinks. Backlinks are Google's #1 ranking factor, so the more backlinks, the better the ranking.
• Comprehensiveness: Long-form content shortens the amount of research the searcher has to perform independently. Web users prefer content that presents all necessary information in one place.
• Engagements: Long content tends toward better user engagements, such as longer page sessions, better scroll depth, and more clicks on submission forms, signups, and CTAs.