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A look at what low value content is, how to identify any that isn’t adding value to your search ranking (or possibly hurting it) and a 9-step guide on how to improve it.
Value is the most important quality search engines and users both want to see from your content. High-value content ranks higher in search engines, generates more traffic and compels more users to take meaningful action on your website.
Low-value content adds little or nothing to your search ranking and, in some cases, can cause more harm than good. At the very least, low-value content is a drain on your marketing budget because fewer people will see it and even fewer will take action. The thing is, every site has low-value content but, in this article, we explain how you can boost these pages and turn them into high-value, high-performance pages.
Google wants users to find the answers they’re looking for so they keep coming back to the search engine as their primary source of information. However, it also wants to maximise the time users spend within the search experience and your pages are an extension of this.
Even if users may benefit from accessing information as quickly as possible, it’s more important to Google that they feel satisfied by the search and discovery process. So Google wants to see users engage with your content and interact with your website (as do you).
The key characteristics Google is looking for from high-value content are:
Knowing what Google wants from content is one thing but how does Google measure subjective qualities like value?
Well, there are two key methods here. The first uses artificial intelligence (machine learning, neural networks, etc.) to analyse user queries and compare your content with other pages to determine the relevance of your content (and links), check for uniqueness and verify the accuracy of your information.
The second looks at on-page analytical signals to assess the performance of your pages and determine how satisfied users are with the content and the experience. For example, pages with high bounce rates and low Avg. Time on Page figures typically suggest the user hasn’t found what they’re looking for – or the page experience is poor.
Google can compare engagement metrics with page performance to determine between scenarios where content quality and UX issues are problematic.
There are two types of low-value content you need to identify: content that’s low-value from day one and content that becomes low-value over time. Keep in mind that all content loses value as it ages because relevance and accuracy diminish – and this is why it’s so important to update old content (more on this later).
It’s also worth remembering that, even the best content strategies, produce the occasional piece of low-value content that fails to perform.
Low-value content is an issue every SEO and content marketer has to deal with and the first step is identifying the pages that need revising.
Here are the key data points to look out for:
You can track most of these warning signs between Google Analytics and Search Console but some of them require a little more analysis. For example, we run automated content audits that flag up pages with old content, competing content and other potential quality issues (including all of the above and more), which provides us with a list of pages that require our attention.
When it comes to things like broken links, those are black and white issues that need fixing.
However, most of the warning signs require further investigation to determine the best course of action. For example, pages receiving little or no traffic are a strong indicator that the page needs serious attention or removing altogether but we have to look into the issue to decide which option is best to take.
Likewise, high bounce rates are a strong indicator that something is wrong but the issue isn’t necessarily related to content quality. It could be slow loading times or an overly complex form that’s preventing users from converting and forcing them to quit the session.
It’s a similar story with old content that needs analysing and updating to maintain or improve quality. And, in many cases, competing content requires the most attention to decide whether you should differentiate them or merge them into one high-quality page.
Now you know how to identify low-value content, let’s run through some of the most common ways to improve pages that could be harming your overall search ranking. Here’s a quick preview of the steps we’ll be looking at in this section:
For some pages, you may need to follow all or most of these steps while others may only require one or two of these steps.
From the user’s perspective, high-value content delivers what they’re looking for and satisfies their needs to the extent they have no instinct to click back to the search results. There are two key interactions taking place in the search experience where you have to deliver for each user:
Users have expectations when they type queries into search engines and you have to understand the search intent behind keywords and phrases to deliver what they’re looking for. This informs the topics you cover, the titles you publish and the information you provide in your content and also helps you optimise your search listings (titles, meta descriptions, etc.) to encourage clicks.
You want to show users that your page provides the best content for their needs and your listing allows you to differentiate from the other results.
For example, if a young student has decided on their career path, they might wonder what they need to study in further education. They could type in something like “what courses should I study to become a criminal psychologist” into Google and see a results page that looks like this:
Interestingly, we’ve got a featured snippet showing at the top of this results page and it’s not a university or online learning platform taking the top spot, but a recruitment company based in Ipswich.
If you take a closer look at the search listing, you can see a few reasons why this has won the coveted featured snippet and why this is the most compelling listing in the primary viewport.
First, you’ve got the title that promises to unveil the “best” path towards becoming a criminal psychologist and the meta description clarifies that the next page explains the complete journey from high school through to higher education. As soon as this results page loads, this listing matches the user intent with 100% relevance, positions itself as the best result to click on and accurately represents the value users are going to get from clicking through.
Crucially, when our future criminal psychologist clicks on the listing, the page delivers on the promise made in the listing by describing the specific courses people should take at each stage of education.
We touched on this in step #1 and the importance of using search listings to differentiate from the other results on the page. The thing is, you have to deliver on this differentiation and this requires you to produce content that’s truly unique from the other pages ranking for the same query.
To achieve this, you have to analyse the content of your rivals and strive to offer something of value that your target audience won’t find elsewhere.
In the example we looked at above, we saw a recruitment agency cover the entire academic journey of criminal psychologists to illustrate the entire path students need to take, rather than simply covering the higher education stage of their studies.
For competitive keywords, you’ll need to analyse your rivals’ content and know what matters to your target audience. For example, the three listings below all cover the same story of supposed leaks of Apple’s rumoured M1X Macbook Pro line – a topic that’s been covered in thousands of similar articles.
Yet, Apple Scoop finds a way to differentiate from the listings around it by including rumoured storage space and memory specs in the title, which was the key talking point surrounding the previous release of M1 Mac devices.
Also, consider content formats and the best mode of delivering value to your audience. Let’s imagine someone looking for advice on how to clean the seats in their car – some of whom may benefit from a step-by-step list article while others may prefer to watch a demonstration video to see these steps in action.
Ranking in the videos reel is a great way to jump to the top of results pages for relevant queries and differentiate your content from the 10 blue links on the page. You can also optimise a step-by-step guide article in addition to your video and double up your real estate on the results page.
Once you know your content delivers value to users, make sure you format your pages correctly to help them find it. Nobody wants to scroll through endless blocks of text and search engines also want to see content that’s well structured.
Check every post meets the following criteria:
All of these formatting techniques make your content more scannable and visually easier to navigate. Careful formatting helps the key points of your content stand out on the page, which means users can easily find the value in your content without reading everything word-for-word.
This one’s nice and simple. Once you’ve flagged up content that needs improving, you have to analyse the pages on your list and make the call: improve or remove. For content that can’t be saved or isn’t worth the time/resources it would take, your best bet is to get rid of these pages altogether.
As we explained earlier, content naturally loses value over time so it’s important to update pages as they age. As a general rule of thumb, you should update any content that’s 2+ years old, even if you only update the external links and check everything is still relevant.
Two years is a long time in the content world so, chances are, you’ll need to complete the full list below for older pages:
For your most important pages (high-performance, evergreen content, etc.), you’ll have to regularly update these to ensure every point is up-to-date and value remains consistently high.
Also, make sure you update content to meet the changing requirements of Google and other search engines. This year alone, we’ve seen the introduction of a new page experience signal, core web vitals and a series of algorithm updates.
Not long ago, we also saw Google place a greater emphasis on expertise, trust and authority (E-A-T), so this is something else you’ll need to consider when updating older content.
Keep tabs on the latest developments in every topic you cover and in SEO, too – because you’ll need to update your content for both.
Any informational page that contains fewer than 300 words is at risk of falling into the thin content category and you’ll need to expand these or remove them. This doesn’t apply to functional pages like login pages or contact pages but any page that has a target keyword should include at least 300 words of content.
Keep in mind that 300 words is still a very low word count and it’s difficult to deliver any real value without exploring topics in more detail. There are some exceptions (eg: if you have a glossary with individual pages for each definition), but almost every page you publish will benefit from exploring topics in detail.
While there’s no perfect word count for SEO, longer content tends to rank higher in Google but there’s no fixed formula that works for every piece of content.
We explore this topic (in plenty of detail) in the following article: What is the best word count for SEO?
Over time, you’ll often find multiple pages compete for the same keywords. The problem with this is you’re essentially splitting potential search ranking between multiple pages, meaning they all rank lower instead of one, improved page ranking higher than them all.
This is called keyword cannibalisation.
For primary keywords, you can overcome this by creating category pages for the topics you want to publish regular content for. This way, you can optimise the category pages to rank highest in the SERPs and avoid splitting the rewards across too many pages.
However, this doesn’t work for the secondary and long tail keywords you target across much of your content.
To prevent keyword cannibalisation, the best strategy is to regularly audit your content and identify pages that are competing for the same keywords. Next, you decide whether to merge the competing pages into an improved piece of content worthy of ranking higher or differentiate them – ie: offer something of different value in each piece.
For example, a website publishing buying advice on cars may have two pages competing for the keyword “best family cars,” which may sound like it already targets a specific audience.
However, the publisher can differentiate further by updating these two pages for different family types and purchase interests, such as families of five and second-hand cars specifically, as shown above.
As you update your old and high-value content, make sure you also update the visuals on each page to ensure they remain up-to-date and relevant to the content. The images, graphics and other visuals on each page should reinforce the key points made in your content. Over time, these points are going to change – in some cases, mildly; in others, drastically – so your visual content needs updating as soon as it starts to lose relevance.
This is especially important for data visualisations, which should be updated with the most recent data.
You may also experiment with updating content formats, such as replacing images with short videos or static graphs and charts with interactive visuals.
Finally, make sure all of your visual content is optimised for users and search, which ties in with step #9 and technical SEO.
Once you’re happy that your low-value content is improved and ready to update, you should run a quick check on the technical SEO essentials to make sure no performative aspects could get in the way of higher search rankings.
Here’s a quick summary of the key points to check before republishing:
The list above isn’t a complete audit. It’s a quick summary for individual content pages, so it doesn’t count for sitewide issues, such as server requests, hosting quality and responsive design. You’ll also have to check other technical factors of each page after you’ve updated your content: indexing, crawl errors, broken links, etc.
This is among the many reasons that regular content audits are important.
Before we sign-off, here’s a quick checklist for identifying and improving low-value content?
If you’ve got more low-value content than you know how to deal with, our SEO team can help you identify and prioritise the pages that you’ll benefit most from updating. Call us on 02392 830 281 or fill out the contact form below to find out how we can boost the performance of every page on your website.
Kerry has been working in digital marketing almost since the beginning of the World Wide Web, designing her first website in 1995 and moving fully into the industry in 1996 to work for one of the very first web design companies. After a successful four years, Kerry moved to an in-house position for a sailing company, running the digital presence of their yacht races including SEO, PPC and email marketing as the primary channels. A stint then followed at another in-house role as online marketing manager. Kerry moved to Vertical Leap in 2007, making her one of the company’s longest-serving employees. As a T-shaped marketer – able to advise on digital strategy outside her main specialism – she rose through the ranks and in 2012 became the head of the Small and Medium Business (SMB) SEO team. In 2022 she became Vertical Leap's Automation and Process Manager. Kerry lives in the historic town of Bishops Waltham with her husband and daughter. When she’s not at work she enjoys cooking proper food, curling up with a good book and being a leader for Brownie and Rainbow Guides.
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Categories: Content Marketing, SEO
Categories: SEO