How To Measure Content Quality

For an online publisher, the importance of content quality needs no further stressing. It is one factor that can single-handedly propel your blog or website to success. Though a lot has been said about its relative importance, very little attention has been devoted to its quantitative aspect. Therefore the question which lies before us is: How do we measure content quality? How do we know that the article we are posting confirms to the accepted guidelines of quality?

One of the problems that we face while measuring quality is the fact that quality is often defined in subjective terms. There is no objective definition available. The Oxford dictionary defines quality as 'degree of excellence’. Quality is the ability of an article or thing to satisfy human wants and needs. Quality therefore is not measured but perceived and what might seem to offer great advantages to one, maybe of little or no VALUE to another.

Keeping the above discussion in mind the following guidelines will help you to form a subjective idea of what content quality is all about.

Error-free – The articles you post on your blog or website should be free from errors – grammatical or otherwise.

Informative – An article must provide some information that will be of value to its readers.

Correct – An article should not be based on unproven facts or misstatements. It is therefore of paramount importance that you verify the genuineness of any claim you make or information you share on your blog or website.

Easy to read – A good article is one which is easy to read. The right choice of font colour or size is therefore very important. Remember to break up the article into a number of paragraphs to aid easy reading.

Solutions to Problems – An article that offers a practical solution to problems faced by readers, will definitely be perceived to be of 'high value' by them.

Original – Originality of content adds more value to it and is accepted more readily by  the readers. In contrast when the same thing is said over and over again, it's perceived value (to the reader) is somewhat lost because the reader might have already heard it somewhere before.

To the point – In the fast moving word that we live in today, no one seems to have the time for anything. So if your article ‘beats about the bush’ without conveying the actual ‘message', the reader is likely to losing interest very easily, and the article; however great, would then be of no value to them. ‘To the point’ is therefore the buzz word in today's information age.

Convincing – An article must be convincing and authoritative enough to be perceived of being of a good quality.

Though this article has been written from the point of view of an online publisher, there is no reason why the points mentioned above should not hold true for articles that are supposed to be published in a printed media. Thanks for your time and do share your views on this topic.

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