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In any random distribution of data scores, the vast majority of scores will fall between two extreme margins that can be set at about 5 per cent of all the data each. Think of the classic bell curve diagram where 90% of your raw scores fall into the sloping shape and 10% tapers off to either side.

If you could grab Web pages at random and rate them on a scale of 1 to 100 (1 being lowest in quality and 100 being highest in quality) you would find a roughly similar distribution. You could set an expectation that about 90% of all Web pages would fall into a range of minimally acceptable quality. These 90% pages are Minimally Useful Content.

You find these types of pages on many large content sites that are very popular: Ickipedia stub pages, IMDB teaser pages for pro content, older news articles that have been archived behind subscription walls, etc.

These minimally useful pages are indexed, rank highly, and in some queries dominate search results despite the fact that more useful content has been overlooked by the search engine. Of course, we know that links and internal PageRank play a great part in achieving these rankings, but it’s a pretty sure thing that trust filters are allowing relatively poor content to move up in the search results simply because of where it is hosted.

You could split hairs and say, “Well, I’d rather my content all fall above the 50% mark”. Sure, and I’d love for random corporations to send me checks in the mail from their cash short and over balances. Let’s be realistic. About half of all Web pages will be lower in quality than the other half. Even on your own sites you can divide your pages into upper and lower halves.

But quality is a subjective valuation. Different people would make different choices so you cannot simply strive to achieve the best quality content possible — your definition of quality sucks by someone else’s standards and their opinion matters just as much as yours does.

Rather than focus on creating quality content you should focus on creating useful content. The more useful the better, but if it’s useful at all the chances of someone linking to it are better than if it’s useless.

Minimally Useful Content is King because it’s easier for everyone to agree on usefulness than it is for them to agree on quality. There will still be people who don’t have a use for your content — you cannot make content completely useful — but as long as most people would find your content to be useful, it should be okay.