Quality Content? Please elaborate...

I want to make sure I understand what this means...

[Herrmann22]

There has been much talk about the famous "Quality Content" regarding web sites. I am a new .com dude and I'm currently building my sites for the future. When you say to incorporate quality content, what does this actually comprise of? Does it mean wording basically? Using key words regarding your product or business? I am also a little confused about "meta" files. Is it still important to incorporate them within your HTML? Any hard examples would be appreciated. ;)

Sorry for the "rookie" questions but I want to make sure by the time Google crawls my sites I have the right content needed to be successful.

Thanks in advance,

Scott

[eaden]

Quality content is quality from a user's perspective, not Google's.

When you have quality content, people will want to come to your site to read it, and will eventually link to your site.

[Anon27]

Content means to type, a lot. More text, less pic's.... basically.

You will be sticky - mailed by 5752 SEO's on your other question... :)

[annej]

Interesting, unique, entertaining, easy to read online, etc to the visitors you want to attract. If people enjoy it they will share your URL in emails, on discussion boards, mail lists and through links to your site from their site. The key is getting the links but all the above helps get links.

[Ankheg]

For me, in "quality content", quality more-or-less equals "unique and original". It's one of those things that's difficult to articulate, and is kind-of "you'll know it when you see it", but... I try, obviously, to have quality content on my sites. I mean, duh. What I aim for is to produce straightforward copy expressing my own view/opinion/understanding of the topic at hand, honestly and without self-serving cowpoop. For my editorial sites, I try to aim for relevant information or ideas of interest, and applicable to, as many people as possible, given the subject matter. For commerce sites, I aim for an objective, honest description of the product, without resorting to copying the back of the package or manufacturer's website.

(An additional thought comes to mind; I treat editorial copy as I do testimony in court. I try to only write from personal experience, and tend to qualify a lot of statements with things like "in my experience", "according to so-and-so", "reportedly", and so on. Is it humility, CYA'ing, or an attempt to best serve my visitors? You be the judge.)

The idea, as I see it, is to produce web pages that fulfill a visitor's needs. If you sell blue widgets, then make sure your page accurately and honestly describes the widgets you're selling, whom or what they're appropriate for, why someone would want a widget, and why someone would want *your* widget. If you have a page about widgets, make sure you accurately describe widgets, contrasting and comparing where applicable, with enough technical information to keep geeks happy and enough copy in layman's terms to educate the ignorant; links to other sites or pages with quality content are also good.

Good content should be updated, as appropriate... It's probably safe to stop warning people about the impending apocalypse of Y2K. :)

And, of course, make sure G! and the other SE's can index your pages, and that they'll be viewable by as many people as possible.

Hope that helps some... though it probably just confused you more. :)

[Bradley]

The definition of quality content is simple in my opinion. Quality content meets the needs of your customers. That's it, plain and simple. If you have an informational site, provide a good source of information for your users. If you sell a product, provide good content, pictures, testimonials etc to sell your product to your website visitors.

The key is not make "quality content" your holy grail. Instead, make a solid business plan your holy grail. Use your website as an instrumentation to meet your goals and objectives. Then, create quality content to meet your online goals and objective. To create quality content, provide service/product descriptions, testimonials, pictures, pricing info, FAQ section, Contact Us section, etc. etc.

Per above, see how you take the idea of a business plan, and break it down into subsections? (I hope I've helped a little)....

Quality content is not the end all be all, but rather should be integrated into your plan to achieve your goals and objectives.

[Herrmann22]

Good stuff, thanks again gang.

I love this place.... ;)

My second part of the question though was regarding those "meta"? key words that some people place in their coding.

In your opinion (speaking to everyone here) is that just as important to search engines as good content is to human readers?

I often read that your keywords should be listed but I'm not sure if they are talking about in your HTML code, or your web site description. You see, Google does not let you give any detail on your website. They just ask for the URL when you submit it. So unless you insert your keywords into your HTML code, how else can you do this? At least with Google.

Hmmmm...

Scott

[engine]

The meta tags [searchengineworld.com] are enbedded into your page code and should reflect the page/site content.

For sure, including relevant tags will add to the quality aspect of your site.

Some search engines read the codes and some don't. It's good practice to add the meta tags as they do no harm to those search services that do not read them.

As far as site submissions are concerned, search engines only require the url, whereas directory submissions (such as Yahoo) will require a description.

[FourDegreez]

The general consensus is that meta tags have never meant less. I remember the days when to get a top-ranked site, sometimes all you needed to do was tweak your meta tags. I wouldn't leave out the description meta tag, though, because some SE's still use it for your site's description in the SERPs.

[contentmaster]

Quality content is something that appeals to your target audience! It is a good practice to begin by thinking about your audience: what will be of interest to them? What would appeal to them? What would they identify with? If you can correctly identify your target audience and then think like they do! you can write quality content for them.....Its like putting yourselves in their shoes...and providing solutions to them.....
As for meta tags, their importance differs with regard to different search engines: I think there is no harm in including them ...specially the description tags..but somehow I am not in the habit of including them up till now :)