Your blog is only as good as your contents. It means that the quality of your articles is the most important factor which will determine your blog's ranking. After all, website ranking is heavily influenced by how relevant your article is to users.
You may have an optimized blog theme and good domain name. You may also know a lot of good keywords. However, those things will not help your Blogger website to appear on the top 10 Google Search page result if your contents are not well-written.
Good quality articles is also an essential ingredient in order to get AdSense approval in Blogger. It is true that your blog does not need to have good ranking in order to be accepted by AdSense. Nevertheless, a website which contains low quality articles will be rejected.
If you are having trouble getting AdSense approval, you may want to edit your articles. There are several indicators which can help you to identify whether your writings are good or not. These indicators will also give you an insight on how you should improve your blog's ranking.
The indicators are derived from Google's massive Core Update in 2019 and Google Discover guideline. Answer the following questions to see how good your article is:
Content and Quality Indicators
Does your writing contain original information?
It is imperative that your blog should never infringe other people's copyright. Do not copy other people's content without providing additional value to the original source. Google Question Hub may be able to assist you to provide original ideas. Strive to be unique!
Does your writing contain complete description of the topic or keyword?
Knowing good topics or keywords is not enough. You need to expand those keywords and turn it into a complete article. You need to explain the topic or keywords that you have chosen.
Does your writing insightful analysis and interesting information that is beyond obvious?
A lot of bloggers seem to fail to provide information that is already obvious and widely available. You need to be different from other websites. For example, you want to write an article about book review. You need to provide deep analysis on the book, not just describing the plot and the characters.
You may need to do a comparative analysis by comparing it with others books. You may also need to draw a parallel on how relevant the book is to today's value and so on.
Is your article just a simple rewrite from single source?
It is important to avoid creating an article based on just one source. You need to acquire a lot of information based on multiple sources. You also need to rewrite them in your own way so that you can provide additional value and originality. Do not use tool to spin sentences, writing is all about expanding the original idea.
For example, you want to write about current news related to China's aggressive border expansion against India. You acquire your information from multiple news outlets and rewrite them in your own way. You may also put additional information which is not included in the original source, such as the history of the conflict and the economic implication, and thus you add value and originality.
Does your article have a good title or headline?
Good title will attract potential visitors to click your website. Your title should be descriptive and summarize the content of an article. It should not bee too long or too short. According to Moz, Google only displays the first 50-60 characters of your title.
You also should not use obvious click bait. Do not exaggerate. Nowadays, readers tend to dismiss click bait. For example, the users of Reddit (one of the most popular content aggregators in the world) often judge an article based on the title. They will only upvote and visit a website with excellent title.
Be creative with your title. It is best to avoid listicle, like "Top 10". Too
many websites are already using this type of title and the competition will be
too fierce. You may not be able to stand a chance to rank on top that way.
Is your article good enough to be recommended to other people?
Try to read your own article. Ask yourself whether it is good enough to be printed in a magazine. Is your article good enough to be used as reference materials in Wikipedia or a book?
Expertise Indicator
Is your article trustworthy?
It is important to provide clear source or evident to back up the validity of your articles. You can do this by providing internal links which point to the original or authoritative source.
It is also imperative to provide clear information regarding the blog and the author of the article. That's why you need provide information regarding your background in your blog's About Me page or Authors page.
Is your article written by an expert or enthusiast who actually understands the topic?
Do not write an article about something that you do not know. Do you actually understand your own writing? Of course if you are interested about something, you can write about it as long as you do a lot of research. If you are not enthusiastic about a certain topic, then do not write about it. For example, do not write about medical advice if you are not a doctor or nurse.
Is your writing free from factual error?
Do not spread hoax and misinformation. You need to always verify whether your article is the truth or misleading.
Can your readers trust your writing for issues related to life and money?
Articles that you have shared on your blog will have impact on your reader's life. They may base their financial decision based on your writings. For example, you write about a phone review and writing that the phone is good and people should buy it. Can the readers trust your article and buy the phone or do you lie to your readers because the phone is actually bad? You need to be honest.
Presentation and Production Indicator
Have you checked for spelling, grammatical or stylistic error?
You need to make sure that your articles is written in proper language. If you want to write in English, try to write as good as a native speaker. Your blog will be considered as spam if the articles contain too much error. It will be nonsensical. You also need to style or format your article properly so that it is easy to read.
Do you put effort in your writing?
You need to take your time and do not be hasty when writing an article. If you outsource your writings, make sure that the writers which you have hired do their job properly. You need to become the editor. Review the outsourced articles to maintain quality.
Do your articles contain too many ads?
For those of you who have approved by AdSense, it is tempting to put ads as many as possible inside the articles. However, too many ads will hurt your website ranking. Ideally, based on Better Ads Standard, the ads density should be no more than 30% of your overall article.
Is your article mobile friendly?
Google prioritize mobile users. An article which can be viewed from mobile device properly will rank better. Therefore use good formatting style . Choose the size and the style of your font wisely. Use paragraph and spacing!
Comparative Indicator
Is your writings better compared to other website which discuss similar topic?
Do not just follow other people idea. Instead, you need to be better than the original inspiration. For example, your competitors write about tutorial on how to create a blog but they do not provide pictures and their instruction is confusing. You can write about similar topic and improve it by providing better instruction and images.
Do you write contents based on visitor's interest?
You need to write content based on the visitors' needs. Guessing keywords is not good idea. Writing an article based on keywords which may rank well is also not enough.
You need to make sure that the keywords are actually used by potential users. Do people actually use the keywords to search for relevant article? You can analyze what type of contents are searched by visitors using Google Search Console query data and Google Trend. Google Question Hub is a also a good tool to gauge what visitors are looking for in Google search.
Conclusion
Writing good quality article takes a lot of practice. The indicators will help you to determine how you should write your articles. Knowing a popular keyword s not enough. You need to turn it into a good article.
Ask yourself and answer all of the question above honestly. Fix your content based on how you answer the questions. You are the one who actually know the most about your own content. The questions act as a self assessment. It is up to you to improve them.
You need to try to follow the indicators as best as you can whenever you write a new article. It provides you with general guideline on how to improve your ranking by improving your article's quality. Having good quality article will be the source of your traffic because people will keep visiting.
Follow my Instagram at @omudesk for mini blogging updates. Read also: How to the Best Custom Domain Name for Blogger