Some more thoughts on the value of valuable content:
For a long time, one of the biggest promotional strategies of the ‘net has been to establish lots of “content-based” links by writing an article and submitting it to hundreds of article directories, each one with a link to your website.
There were several problems with this. One was that often these “articles” were thinly-veiled sales letters. For example, if a website was all about baby strollers, the marketer might pick a few featured items, grind out 500 words about the features of those particular strollers, title it something like, “How to shop for a baby stroller”, and off it goes to the directories. Or, it might have a brief overview of what, in general, makes up a baby stroller, with a few keywords.
There was little in these, or most other articles that was truly informative or inspiring. If you check the table in my last post about internet content, these articles would go in the “lame” box in the lower right.
These are web pages that end up as what some people call “flotsam and netsam”. These are pages that are mere clutter that clog up the ‘net and make it that much harder for people to find the real information that they’re wanting.
So, last spring, Google revised their ranking algorithm in an update referred to as “Panda”. A lot of those marketers that had relied on their copied and spun articles with linkbacks found their rankings plummeting. Those that relied on automatically generated content pulled with searches of keywords and scraped and copied text found that their sites had disappeared from top slots in Google’s search engine results pages.
Here are just a couple of good, informative updates on the subject:
What this all boils down to is that Google is, once again, establishing content as king. Good, useful, informative content, that is. One by one, the quick, easy ways to magical Internet ranking and wealth are disappearing (if they ever existed in the first place), and steady, real, honest writing is winning the day.
Here are some ways to get good ranking and good traffic:
These are the ways to make your site the most attractive and useful to visitors, and to make it more respected and ranked by the search engines.
For a long time, one of the biggest promotional strategies of the ‘net has been to establish lots of “content-based” links by writing an article and submitting it to hundreds of article directories, each one with a link to your website.
There were several problems with this. One was that often these “articles” were thinly-veiled sales letters. For example, if a website was all about baby strollers, the marketer might pick a few featured items, grind out 500 words about the features of those particular strollers, title it something like, “How to shop for a baby stroller”, and off it goes to the directories. Or, it might have a brief overview of what, in general, makes up a baby stroller, with a few keywords.
There was little in these, or most other articles that was truly informative or inspiring. If you check the table in my last post about internet content, these articles would go in the “lame” box in the lower right.
These are web pages that end up as what some people call “flotsam and netsam”. These are pages that are mere clutter that clog up the ‘net and make it that much harder for people to find the real information that they’re wanting.
So, last spring, Google revised their ranking algorithm in an update referred to as “Panda”. A lot of those marketers that had relied on their copied and spun articles with linkbacks found their rankings plummeting. Those that relied on automatically generated content pulled with searches of keywords and scraped and copied text found that their sites had disappeared from top slots in Google’s search engine results pages.
Here are just a couple of good, informative updates on the subject:
- How Does the Panda/Farmer Update Impact Affiliates?
- Lessons Learned at SMX West: Google’s Panda Update, White Hat Cloaking & Link Building
What this all boils down to is that Google is, once again, establishing content as king. Good, useful, informative content, that is. One by one, the quick, easy ways to magical Internet ranking and wealth are disappearing (if they ever existed in the first place), and steady, real, honest writing is winning the day.
Here are some ways to get good ranking and good traffic:
- Write (or pay good writers to write) good content for your websites. This is true both of blogs and of ecommerce, products-based websites.
- Write good content for external sites, like reputable articles directories and content sites (ezinearticles.com, squidoo.com, hubpages.com).
- Make good sensible comments on other people’s good content (in blogs or other discussion sites. Even if the links are no-follow, it will help establish your credibility and attract directly clicking traffic.
- Submit good content to other people’s blogs as guest posts.
- Make a good, useful blog yourself.
- Use social networks like twitter and facebook wisely, to draw viewers and generate real buzz.
- In affiliate marketing, give people more content than ads, rather than the other way around.
- Make all of your writing and content rich in good keywords that are not already flooded in the marketplace.
These are the ways to make your site the most attractive and useful to visitors, and to make it more respected and ranked by the search engines.
Mark is currently in the curriculum Department of an internet and SEO training company.
Mark also has other sites and blogs, including Mark's Black Pot - Dutch Oven Recipes, MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.
Another reason that good content is important is to encourage repeat visits to the small business blog. SEO-friendly “flotsam and netsam” as you call it might bring in a visitor once (on the back of a Google search), but that sort of content is unlikely to convert a visitor into a customer. Customers want to see demonstrable proof of industry knowledge or insight ... not canned content that lacks depth.
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