A Few Thoughts Re: Google Quality Content (Part 6) – How Well is the Article/Page Edited?

Continuing our commentaries with respect to Google Quality Filters and what questions Google asks to assess the quality of a page or an article; I have been addressing a few questions at a time, providing some insight and explanation as appropriate.  

To date, I have addressed five questions that the Google Quality Filter uses in Page/Article analysis:

1.    What are the Trustworthiness, Quality Content, and Redundancy of an Article/Page?

2.    Why Provide Credit Card Information?  Also, what is the Significance of Grammatical Errors and Reader Interest of an Article/Page?

3.    How Important is Original Content?

4.    What Defines Insightful and Interesting Content?

5.    Why Would We Recommend an Article/Page?

In this post, I will raise some talking points as they related to editing tips of an article/page.  Another question The Google Quality Filter uses in the analysis of assessing the page/article quality is:

Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?

When we are composing articles, a few questions we should ask ourselves are:

• Does the article make sense and will our readers understand what we are expressing?

• What is the interest level from beginning to end?

• Does the article include all of the pertinent information?

A few writing tips to keep in mind are:

• Make your writing error-free – meaning perfect spelling and no typographical errors.

• Double check for the correct usage of homonyms (for example, their, there, and they’re).

• Confirm that all names are correctly spelled – it can become embarrassing by not doing so.

• Format the margins, spacing, and style of headings consistently (for example, font style, bold or not bold, italic, capitalization, etc.)

Sleep on it and wait at least a night before starting your editing.  Many times, errors occur because our minds are filled with ideas, examples, and arguments related to our topic.  When we approach our writing with a clear mind, the mental connections are gone, and only what we’ve actually written counts.


I have previously discussed adding white space between paragraphs, bold subheads and (where appropriate) bullet points.  Also, after the revisions have been made, print your article and read it again – we tend to catch many errors when we do not edit on screen.

Concise writing is more powerful and easier to read than lengthy prose.  Every point, statement, question, joke, even every word should have a reason to be in your piece – if does not, remove it.

For most readers, the language of journalists is a much more appropriate model — and that means aiming for at best a smart eighth-grader’s reading level.