When your goal is to get your website on search engines for Walnut Creek area searchers, one of the best ways to improve your ranking is to use quality content. In order to accomplish this goal, one must know what is meant by quality content. It is also helpful to know how quality content will help.

Quality content refers to content that is fresh and unique. Since the goal of search engines is to help users find the information for which they are looking, it makes sense that they want the content to be up-to-date and relevant, rather than old and abandoned. The pages that show up at the top of a search result list are, in nearly every case, pages on sites that have a regular addition of fresh content.

Some of the things that most search engines look for when determining quality content include:

• Length of the content. This should be preferably 500 words or more. This must be relevant content, not just rambling or repeated keywords, but actual useful content.
• Relevance to the topic of the site. If the site is about computer repair, and the article is about homeopathic medicine, chances are, the search engine will not see it as quality content.
• Published recently. While the articles you added a year ago may still be ranked reasonably high, that is likely to drop if you don’t keep adding newer content, as well. This shows that the site is not abandoned, and keeps visitors returning.
• Natural writing. When an article has more keywords than sense, it is obviously not quality content. Visitors want to read something that makes sense and offers information, not a list of keywords sort of related to the search they made. Search engines know this, and new algorithms are written to weed out that sort of page.

Some sites use a blog to offer fresh content regularly. This is an excellent option. Whether you use a blog or just add pages, there are several ways you can add fresh content. The most obvious one is that you can create articles or blog posts, graphics or videos, and post them on your site. While graphics and videos cannot be viewed by search engines, the alt text on graphics can explain their significance, and links to videos on your site can count as quality links. If you are not a writer, you can hire a writer to add content for you. You can also link to other sites, as long as the content is valid and relevant, or repost (with permission) quality content from sites with authority. These things will also count as quality content for your site.

If visitors value the content found on your site, the other factors (links and click-throughs, likes and shares) will automatically increase. This will improve the overall the ranking of your website on search engines for Walnut Creek’s searchers, and others across the nation.