Improving page quality is an important part of search engine optimization (SEO). High quality pages tend to rank better in search engine results pages (SERPs). There are a few key things you can do to fix and improve page quality:
Fix Technical SEO Issues
Make sure your pages follow technical SEO best practices. This includes:
- Ensuring your pages load quickly – aim for a page speed under 3 seconds
- Fixing any crawling errors reported in Search Console
- Removing excessive redirects
- Avoiding duplicate content issues
- Using proper HTML tags and structure
Resolving technical SEO problems like these can directly improve page quality signals in search engine algorithms. Faster load times, proper crawling, and clean code are all signs of a high quality page.
Improve Your Content
The content on your pages is a major quality signal. Higher quality, useful content tends to perform better. Here are some tips for improving page content:
- Write longer, more informative articles – aim for at least 300 words, or ideally closer to 1,000+ words
- Make sure content is well-written and easy to follow for users
- Include thorough information that fully answers search queries
- Insert images, videos, charts, or other media to make content more engaging
- Use headings, lists, and other formatting to break up and organize text
Search engines want to surface the most authoritative, trustworthy content for each query. Optimizing your page copy for relevance, depth and engagement will improve quality signals.
Increase Expertise and Authoritativeness
Search engines also look at website and author credibility as quality signals. Ways to enhance your expertise and authority include:
- Research extensively and cite trustworthy external sources
- Have content written by industry experts and thought leaders
- Insert quotes or interviews with credible references
- Link out to high authority websites and references
- Publish regularly and build a track record of expertise over time
Building your reputation as a skilled, knowledgeable authority on your topics will make your content more trusted. Google wants to recommend pages that users can rely on for accurate, thorough information.
Optimize for Engagement
User engagement and satisfaction metrics are also used to gauge page quality. Some ways to boost engagement include:
- Making content visually appealing through design and formatting
- Using compelling headlines and introductions
- Eliciting comments, shares and backlinks from other sites
- Building email list signups and conversions into leads
- Inserting relevant images, charts and media
If your pages keep visitors engaged and interested, search engines will see your content as higher quality. Focus on creating compelling, useful content above all else.
Monitor Your Performance
Keep track of how your pages are performing in search to identify issues. Look at:
- Your keyword rankings over time
- Click-through-rate from SERPs
- Bounce rate from search traffic
- Any manual ranking penalties
Declines in rankings, high bounce rates, and manual actions are signs that search engines see issues with your pages. Diagnose and fix these promptly.
Best Practices Summary
Here is a quick summary of some of the top tips covered to improve page quality:
| SEO Factor | Best Practices |
|---|---|
| Technical SEO | Fix crawl errors, improve site speed, resolve duplicate content, etc. |
| Content | Write in-depth, engaging, well-organized content |
| Expertise | Cite sources, highlight author credentials, link out, build authority over time |
| Engagement | Format for readability, use visuals, encourage shares and conversions |
| Performance | Track keyword ranks, monitor click-through-rate, watch for penalties |
Optimizing these elements of your pages will improve quality from both a technical and content perspective. Focus on creating great resources that benefit your audience, and search visibility will follow.
Detailed Best Practices and Tips
Let’s go into more detail on some specific tips and best practices for each of the above areas…
Technical SEO
Starting with site speed, aim for the following benchmarks:
- Page load under 2 seconds (ideally under 1.5 seconds)
- First meaningful paint under 1 second
- Time to interactive under 5 seconds
- Minimize redirects
- Compress images and media files
- Minify CSS, JS, and HTML files
- Use a content delivery network (CDN)
- Cache assets locally
- Lazy load non-critical resources
There are a range of speed optimization tools and plugins that can help you diagnose issues and improve page speed load times. Test different hosting plans as well – upgraded hosting can often improve site performance.
For crawling and indexing:
- Submit XML sitemaps
- Include a robots.txt file
- Avoid restrictive robots meta tags unless necessary
- Enable server-side rendering for JS-heavy apps
- Allow indexing and crawling in site settings
- Fix any crawl errors reported in Search Console
Proper crawlability ensures search engines can fully access and index your pages. Follow best practices for JavaScript-rendered sites and apps.
For duplicate content:
- Use canonical tags
- Implement 301 redirects instead of duplicate URLs
- Consolidate near-duplicate content
- Avoid boilerplate content across pages
- Add rel=”prev/next” markup for paginated or related content
Duplicate, thin content can dilute your rankings across pages. Deduplicate and strengthen content across your site.
For HTML setup:
- Use valid HTML tags
- Structure content using headings and paragraphs
- Include alt text for images
- Use descriptive link anchor text
- Implement schema.org markup where applicable
Proper HTML structure and semantics help search engines understand your content and extract information correctly.
Content Optimization
For creating high-quality content:
- Conduct keyword research to identify topics and questions
- Outline content structure before writing
- Consult multiple authoritative sources during research
- Craft compelling titles and introductions
- Write naturally for site visitors over search engines
- Include tables, lists and captions for scannability
- Insert relevant images and videos throughout
- Limit ads and distractions to improve readability
Think about what information your readers need, and structure the content to clearly provide value. Focus on natural writing over keyword stuffing.
For optimizing existing content:
- Review pages that underperform for keyword rankings
- Identify thin or sparse areas to flesh out
- Add more words, media, citations and examples
- Break up dense sections with formatting and lists
- Simplify sentences for easier reading
- Tighten structure and organization
Refreshing existing content with more detail, updates and better structure can improve quality. Repurpose and expand upon your best performing pages.
Building Expertise and Authority
Some tips for establishing expertise:
- Link out to authoritative sources and references
- Cite research papers, statistics and expert quotes
- Denote author credentials and bios
- Publish regularly to demonstrate sustained authority
- Partner with known industry experts for contributor content
- Stick to topics you have direct experience with
Google wants to surface pages from trusted experts within a space. Cite outside sources and highlight your own qualifications to appear more authoritative.
To demonstrate authority as a website:
- Ensure high domain authority and trust flow scores
- Obtain backlinks from reputable industry websites
- Publish ample resources around keyword targets
- Monitor metrics like time on site and pages per session
- Build social media followings and engagement
Domain-level factors matter in addition to individual page signals. Build your site’s overall authority through high-quality content and backlinks over time.
Engagement and Satisfaction Metrics
To keep visitors engaged:
- Use readable fonts, line heights and sizes
- Break up text with lists, highlights and visuals
- Limit popups, ads and distractions
- Make key information easy to find
- Optimize content structure and organization
- Include compelling media like images, charts and video
- Write clear headlines and introductions
Focus on ease of consuming information from a visitor perspective. Remove friction and distractions to keep people reading and interacting with your content.
To satisfy search intent:
- Directly answer the searcher’s query
- Provide comprehensive information on the topic
- Structure content to map to searcher needs (e.g. FAQs, lists)
- Include media elements for visual learners
- Allow easy ways to engage further or convert
Optimize both for searchers and readers by creating content tailored to query intent. Help searchers fully satisfy their information needs.
Performance Monitoring and Refinement
Keep track of key metrics:
- Google Analytics – bounce rate, time on page, pages per session
- Search Console – impressions, click-through-rate, average position
- Ranking tracking – rankings by keyword over time
- Backlinks – monitor new links from authoritative sites
Declines in rankings and engagement metrics indicate issues to diagnose. Platforms like Search Console and Analytics provide quality data.
Ways to refine underperforming pages:
- Rewrite and expand thin or low-value content
- Look for technical problems like crawl errors
- Review page speed benchmarks and optimize
- Check for manual ranking penalties in Search Console
- Consolidate similar pages targeting the same keyword
- Redirect pages with high bounce rates to stronger pages
Analyze underperforming pages to identify opportunities – strengthen content, remove technical problems, or redirect to better alternatives already ranking.
Conclusion
Improving website and page quality involves both technical SEO optimizations as well as content improvements. You want high-value content presented in a technically sound manner. Monitor search performance regularly, and keep iterating based on the data to improve.
Focus on building expertise and satisfying visitor needs above all else. Search engines want to rank the pages that best serve users. Create content tailored to searcher intent, while making it easy to consume. By providing a great user experience, enhanced page quality and higher rankings will follow.