{"id":142724,"date":"2021-01-07T18:27:21","date_gmt":"2021-01-07T18:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/?p=142724"},"modified":"2021-01-08T08:02:16","modified_gmt":"2021-01-08T08:02:16","slug":"how-to-analyze-on-page-copy-quality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2021\/01\/07\/how-to-analyze-on-page-copy-quality\/","title":{"rendered":"How to analyze on-page copy quality"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"well\">\n<h3>30-second summary:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Content quality is key to high rankings in Google organic but it is not easy to tell what a search crawler may deem high quality.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">High-quality content is most surely one that is semantically relevant to a target query and covers the given topic deep enough to satisfy a search user, hence semantic relevancy is probably the most powerful SEO signal.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Content structure helps Google and its users to quickly grasp the main points covered on the page. So topical and logical subheadings may be a sign of a good copy.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Readability and accessibility may not be direct ranking signals but they may improve on-page engagement which may send some quality signals to Google.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Relevant outbound links that add to the depth of the content may (or may not) be direct ranking signals but they definitely add to the on-page user experience (and hence may influence what Google thinks of your page).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google\u2019s mantra has always been \u201ccreate great content\u201d. However while 15 years ago creating great content may have been not really that helpful, we are finally at the point when this recommendation has started paying off. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In truth, nowadays high-quality content is key to higher rankings. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But what is great content? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In other words, how to tell a good copy from a mediocre one?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Answering this question is actually harder than it seems. A human being can somehow tell whether any text reads well and provides value but how can this be evaluated from an SEO standpoint, when a machine gets to decide on these pretty subjective criteria.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, we don\u2019t know for sure. We can only make (educated) guess based on what Google reps say, various experiments, personal experiences as well as what we seem to know about search algorithms.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>What constitutes a good copy?<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While it may be easy for a human being to tell a good copy from a poor one, what may be pulling the trigger when it comes to search engines?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here a few calculable criteria that may directly or indirectly define content quality:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Semantic relevancy (Is the copy relevant to a target search query? Is the copy in-depth\/comprehensive enough?)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well-defined content structure (Are there subheadings that reflect key points?)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Accessibility (Can the content be easily understood by a person with some kind of disability?)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Readability (How easy is it to read your content?)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Semantic relevancy<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is content relevancy? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There\u2019s no good answer to that as this too may be quite subjective.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s why Google has been utilizing semantic analysis to create its own understanding of what relevant topics are and how to tell whether a certain document is relevant to a certain search query.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have already shared <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/12\/16\/the-beginners-guide-to-semantic-search\/#.XhOkfuEH4Jg.twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a guide on semantic search<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and what semantic analysis really is. In essence, semantic analysis involves clustering any topic into related concepts and entities and researching relations among all those concepts and entities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Based on the document semantics, you can more or less tell how close it is to any topic and how comprehensively it answers a search query. There are tools that translate relevancy into numbers as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Text Optimizer<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, for example, takes your copy and compares it to Google\u2019s search results for your target search query. The higher it scores your copy, the more relevant it is to your target topic:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-142727\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/textoptimizer-score-1024x719.png\" alt=\"on-page copy quality\" width=\"640\" height=\"449\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/textoptimizer-score-1024x719.png 1024w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/textoptimizer-score-300x211.png 300w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/textoptimizer-score-768x539.png 768w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/textoptimizer-score-1536x1078.png 1536w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/textoptimizer-score-2048x1438.png 2048w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/textoptimizer-score.png 728w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Source: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/textoptimizer.com\/o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Text Optimizer<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0To score higher in Text Optimizer, select and cover more related concepts the tool suggests using. Here\u2019s a quick and easy explanation on <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/textoptimizer.com\/h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">how it works<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Content structure<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For years, content structure has been considered the second most important on-page SEO factor (after the page title).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Content structure is how you are using H2 \/ H3 \/ H4 subheadings to introduce new sections of the copy. Without subheadings, your copy would be a mere wall of text.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google is using subheadings to understand key points of any copy (and often uses them to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.yaelconsulting.com\/what-are-organic-site-links-and-how-can-you-influence-and-change-them\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">generate organic sitelinks<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">). It has long been believed that Google is using subheadings to figure out which keywords within a web document are more important than the others.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These days we know that Google is paying lots of attention to subheadings because it\u2019s now using H2 \/ H3 tags to locate parts of the documents that deserve to be featured.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can analyze your (or your competitor\u2019s) usage of content subheadings by using <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SE Ranking<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It offers a handy page audit tool that lets you see your H-subheadings at a glance. You can also click any tag to see it highlighted:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-142725\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/serankings.png\" alt=\"on-page copy quality - header\" width=\"1024\" height=\"643\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/serankings.png 1024w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/serankings-300x188.png 300w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/serankings-768x482.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Source: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/seranking.com\/blog\/header-tags\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SE Ranking<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Traditionally, you want those extracted subheadings to make sense without seeing the full copy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many web users tend to scan through those subheadings before deciding whether they want to stay on the page and read thoroughly. So you want those subheadings to do a good job keeping all those lurkers engaged. Here\u2019s more on <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitaleagles.com.au\/eagles-blog\/how-and-why-to-structure-content-with-html-heading-tags\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">creating an effective content structure<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with subheadings.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Outbound links (References)<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Outbound links have long been the center of many SEO misunderstandings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do they directly contribute to your web page ranking? Can they be a signal of content depth or quality?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I guess we will never know for sure but what we do know about links is that:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google is using them to go from page to page, from site to site<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Links are part of your content quality: Whether you are using a trusted source to back up your copy determines how trustworthy your content is<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Links are your in-content calls-to-action: You are defining your readers\u2019 browsing journeys by inviting them to check your external references.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You want your in-content links to contribute to the usefulness of your copy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Site Checker<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> does a good job analyzing outbound links within any page. The reason why I prefer this tool is that it shows the anchor text (as well as highlighting possible errors) giving you an idea of whether you are doing a good job controlling your readers\u2019 browsing journey.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-142726\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/sitechecker-1024x900.png\" alt=\"on-page quality analysis - outbound links\" width=\"640\" height=\"563\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/sitechecker-1024x900.png 1024w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/sitechecker-300x264.png 300w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/sitechecker-768x675.png 768w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/sitechecker.png 728w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Source: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/sitechecker.pro\/on-page-seo-checker\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SiteChecker<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like with subheadings, the best practice is to make sure that you can guess what your copy is about by just looking through its links.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Also, don\u2019t <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.redsearch.com.au\/resources\/nofollow-links\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">bother nofollowing those outbound links<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> either. Only link to those resources that provide helpful further reading. This way your readers\u2019 experience will be meaningful and Google will catch up on that.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Readability<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.seroundtable.com\/google-reading-levels-algorithm-search-25157.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">doesn\u2019t seem to use<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> readability as a direct ranking factor but a readability score may help them determine a certain audience type you are using.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Besides, high readability levels will make your content hard to understand for people with various cognitive disabilities, so this may be another indirect signal to Google that your content is good for a limited audience.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Both of these signals may be negative ranking criteria of some sort.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To be on the safe side, avoid high readability scores. Apart from better accessibility, this will also make your content easier and quicker to understand (and hence improve on-page engagement which is surely a ranking signal):<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Make sure your sentences and paragraphs are short<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Avoid lesser-known (and complicated) terms and jargon<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Use active voice instead of passive voice where possible<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Create a lot of lists<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Again, use subheadings<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yoast<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> plugin will score the readability of your copy as you are still working on it. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpbeginner.com\/plugins\/how-to-install-and-setup-wordpress-seo-plugin-by-yoast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here\u2019s how<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to install and set it up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-142728\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/yoast-readability-1024x887.png\" alt=\"on-page copy quality analysis - Readability\" width=\"640\" height=\"554\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/yoast-readability-1024x887.png 1024w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/yoast-readability-300x260.png 300w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/yoast-readability-768x666.png 768w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/yoast-readability.png 728w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>Content accessibility<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Again, most of the above (content structure, links, and readability) contribute to the accessibility of your content. Google representatives <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.seroundtable.com\/google-accessibility-ranking-factor-29273.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">offer no confirmation<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as to whether Google is using accessibility or ADA compliance as a ranking factor. Yet, we know that Google has been <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/accessibility\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">desperately<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> trying to introduce and standardize accessibility guidelines of the web resources that show up in Google SERPs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As we know from years of working on Google\u2019s SEO, Google\u2019s various efforts to force anything usually reflect in its webmaster guidelines. That\u2019s what happened to site speed that started as a mild initiative, that\u2019s what is happening to the mobile user experience signals that are now being included in Google\u2019s guidelines.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whether it is a direct ranking factor or not, web accessibility is an important on-page engagement factor allowing more users to properly interact with your content. It\u2019s also a huge topic, so go ahead and read this whole <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/accessibe.com\/compliance\/ada-title-iii\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ADA compliance guide<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to understand the concept (and the legislation behind it) better.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Obviously, there\u2019s more to content quality audit than running the tools above but it is helpful to know some of the metrics that can be improved.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Ann Smarty is the Brand and Community manager at InternetMarketingNinjas.com. She can be found on Twitter\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/seosmarty\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@seosmarty<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How to tell if your content quality is high enough for Google to be willing to rank the page high enough? Here are a few tools to help you out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1092,"featured_media":142729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[75,14539,27869,768,134,28035,369,37,19138,932,33,423,13581,32],"content_type":[],"class_list":["post-142724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content","tag-content-2","tag-content-analysis","tag-content-tips","tag-content-writing","tag-copywriting","tag-copywriting-guide","tag-evergreen-content","tag-google","tag-guide","tag-ranking-factors","tag-search","tag-semantic-search","tag-seo-content","tag-serps"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":false,"tad_content_format":false},"post_info":{"name":"idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/How-to-analyze-on-page-copy-quality-scaled.jpg","category":"Content","timeago":"5y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142724"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=142724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}