In today's Website Marketing Newsletter...
Are You Feeding Google What
It Wants?
In an effort to provide the best possible search experience for
their users, google is always changing the rules. Webmasters and bloggers who adapt
regularly, can get a lot of free traffic from them. Today I'll get you up to
speed.
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A fter the Panda update in
2011, Amit Singhal of Google published new
content guidelines for webmasters and bloggers, at Google's
Official Webmaster Central Blog. While Panda affected many sites
adversely, it also helped many rank better.
While that list is extensive, 10
points stand out in my opinion. Try to keep these in mind when
adding content to the web...
1. Would you trust the information presented?
There's a reason this number one on
the list. Trust is key online. You can earn trust with
great content and a respected platform such as WordPress. You
can earn trust with the way you write, with proper grammar,
lots of details, relevant facts, sharing both sides of an argument and
more. Strive for believability in every bit of content you
write and you'll earn trust instantly.
2. Is the article written by an expert or enthusiast who
knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
I never agreed with experts who
said that when monetizing a site with Adsense, you should be general and
not give too many details. Their logic was that if you shared
content that was "too good" your visitors would not click your
ads. I say the stronger the info the better, and the more
details the better. Knowing a topic well and sharing your
knowledge without holding back gets you more traffic from search
engines via more long-tail searches and better overall ranking!
3. Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant
articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different
keyword variations?
Duplicate content is tricky subject.
Many people think Google punishes sites for duplicate content.
Instead, pages with duplicate content simply do not rank as well,
especially
post panda. With this statement Google is basically telling
webmasters and bloggers not to try and game the system by
rehashing content, and to instead publish fresh, unique content
on a variety of subjects related to the core topic. That takes
more work but enhances the experience of searchers.
Note: Unfortunately, many site
owners have had their content hijacked after publishing and lost
credit for being the original author, even post panda. Something needs to be done
about this by Google in my opinion.
4. Does the article have spelling, stylistic, or factual
errors?
This is easy enough. Fact check
everything before you publish it. Write in a tone that is easy
to follow. Edit everything before you publish it. If you take
time to do this your pages will usually outrank poorly written
content on the same topic.
5. Does the article provide original content or information,
original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
This one is a little trickier.
Original content should be no problem, but the sources where you
get your ideas, ie other websites and blogs, can pose a threat
to true originality. Analysis is often closer to opinion
however, and it seems Google does want webmaster and bloggers to
share their opinions in addition to simply reporting facts. Think
of some of the top blogs you read and you may find that is is
style the writer uses. This can be challenging to adapt but over
time it gets easier.
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6. Does the page provide substantial value when compared to
other pages in search results?
This is an easy one. If you're slapping up short blog posts that
are vague and general in nature, you'll likely get outranked by
others who go into more detail on the same topic. People visit
sites and blogs for information on a subject of interest. If
they have to search through 5 pages at 5 different sites to get
their answers, those pages can easily be outranked by a site
that shares all that same info one one page.
7. Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large
number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites,
so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or
care?
This one really irritated a lot of webmasters who share large amounts
of useful content created by multiple users. Personally, I do
not feel they should be penalized for outsourcing their content,
however I do understand that Google is trying to make the search
experience better by giving preference to webmasters and bloggers who are passionate about their subject and give every
page personal attention. While outsourcing content is certainly
OK, personal attention to each web page or post needs to be a
priority.
8. Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or
hastily produced?
It seems as though Google is finally cracking down on spun
content that is sometimes impossible to read. That's good news.
Every piece of content you place on the web should be edited so
that anyone can read it easily. If you're spinning your articles
to get more use from them, take time to
manually rewrite sentences and paragraphs to add more content, and you'll stand a
better chance at getting more mileage from your content.
9. Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share
with a friend, or recommend?
I think Amit left something out of this sentence. I think it
should have read... Is this the sort of page you’d want to
leave a comment on, bookmark, share with a friend, or
recommend? In my experience, posts at my blogs that have user
comments tend to move up in ranking and do better than posts
with no comments. It could be because of the added length of
content on the page when users comment, but one thing is for
sure... content that people want to share does better,
especially lately. With that in mind, try to make it easy for
users to share you comments by offering a share link with all
the common social networks. If you're on WordPress, a free
plugin like Socialble will do the trick.
10. Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise
lacking in helpful specifics?
In my experience I've found that blog pages and posts with more
than 700 words do better than blog posts with 400 words or less. In
fact, I've gone through some of the pages at a few of my blogs
and added more content to go from 500 to 800 words and my free
version of Traffic Travis reported a move up many postions for
several main keyword phrases within a few weeks. I feel that is
a direct result of increasing the length and depth of the
content.
Remember, this is one person's interpretation based on my own
experience. Yours could differ.
Oh, and in addition to these 10 points, Google has since revealed a few
new insights into recent algorithm changes. One of the most
significant in my opinion is the fact that they now factor in
the "freshness" of content. That means that sites and blogs who
regularly add fresh, original content stand a better chance at
outranking sites that do not update regularly.
See ya in a few
weeks...
Jim Daniels
Jim at bizweb2000.com
make-a-living-online.com - Free
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P.S. Need some personal guidance with making money online? I
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