Difference between revisions of "Learn/Good-Content-Vs.-Spam"
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It sounds simple: Good content conveys information that someone will find valuable, whether it's conveyed in text, graphics, video, photos, or some combination of these. | It sounds simple: Good content conveys information that someone will find valuable, whether it's conveyed in text, graphics, video, photos, or some combination of these. | ||
| + | [[Image:MermadeArtsSalesPage.png|right|Sales page for agarwood strips|300px]] | ||
Website owners are often urged to provide "good content" containing the keywords that are important to their business. The idea is that search engines will crawl the site, include the pages with "good content" in their indexes, and then include these pages in searches for the keywords that have been repeated often enough and prominently enough to matter. | Website owners are often urged to provide "good content" containing the keywords that are important to their business. The idea is that search engines will crawl the site, include the pages with "good content" in their indexes, and then include these pages in searches for the keywords that have been repeated often enough and prominently enough to matter. | ||
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The ideal situation is when a business owner has a genuine passion and expertise in his or her field, and writes interesting small pieces on the company's website to attract and engage new and current customers. One great example is the material on this product page at [[MermadeArts.com|Mermade Magickal Arts]], displayed to the right. | The ideal situation is when a business owner has a genuine passion and expertise in his or her field, and writes interesting small pieces on the company's website to attract and engage new and current customers. One great example is the material on this product page at [[MermadeArts.com|Mermade Magickal Arts]], displayed to the right. | ||
Notice that there's lots of fascinating information here about the product. It's meant to entice someone to buy, but it's also text that naturally contains important keywords for this product - words like '''aloeswood''', '''agarwood''', '''incense''' and '''aroma''' that tell search engines what the page is about. | Notice that there's lots of fascinating information here about the product. It's meant to entice someone to buy, but it's also text that naturally contains important keywords for this product - words like '''aloeswood''', '''agarwood''', '''incense''' and '''aroma''' that tell search engines what the page is about. | ||
| + | ===Why Good Content Is Good Business=== | ||
| + | Websites with lots of helpful or interesting content can benefit in a number of ways: | ||
| + | * You can sell ads directly to companies whose business is related to the content on the page. | ||
| + | * You can host Google AdWords ads on the page. | ||
| + | * If your content is really good, people will link to it when they discover it. You can also seek out bloggers or other online writers, share your interesting information with them, and invite them to link to your pages. Inbound links from reputable websites can help a site get better rankings in search results. | ||
| + | ===What Poor Content Looks Like=== | ||
| + | If good content is useful and interesting, then poor content is just text larded with keywords that offers nothing of value to people. | ||
| − | + | A great example of this is this "article" on a site about automobiles that is clearly designed to do little but run ads. | |
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Revision as of 23:53, 3 February 2011
By [[User:|]] on
If you are building an online business that depends on lots of content, you're probably watching as the search engines - Google, Bing, Blekko and others - declare war on content farms and spam content.
But what does that mean for small business owners trying to get more traffic to their websites? We're always told that creating good content is really important. What is good content? What's bad content? What's a content farm, anyway? And most important of all, how do you produce the good stuff, and enough of it to matter?
Contents
Good Content: Something You'd Actually Want To Read
It sounds simple: Good content conveys information that someone will find valuable, whether it's conveyed in text, graphics, video, photos, or some combination of these.
Website owners are often urged to provide "good content" containing the keywords that are important to their business. The idea is that search engines will crawl the site, include the pages with "good content" in their indexes, and then include these pages in searches for the keywords that have been repeated often enough and prominently enough to matter.
The ideal situation is when a business owner has a genuine passion and expertise in his or her field, and writes interesting small pieces on the company's website to attract and engage new and current customers. One great example is the material on this product page at Mermade Magickal Arts, displayed to the right.
Notice that there's lots of fascinating information here about the product. It's meant to entice someone to buy, but it's also text that naturally contains important keywords for this product - words like aloeswood, agarwood, incense and aroma that tell search engines what the page is about.
Why Good Content Is Good Business
Websites with lots of helpful or interesting content can benefit in a number of ways:
- You can sell ads directly to companies whose business is related to the content on the page.
- You can host Google AdWords ads on the page.
- If your content is really good, people will link to it when they discover it. You can also seek out bloggers or other online writers, share your interesting information with them, and invite them to link to your pages. Inbound links from reputable websites can help a site get better rankings in search results.
What Poor Content Looks Like
If good content is useful and interesting, then poor content is just text larded with keywords that offers nothing of value to people.
A great example of this is this "article" on a site about automobiles that is clearly designed to do little but run ads.
What Is a Content Farm, and Why Are They a Problem?
Content farms often commission their writers' work based on analysis of search engine queries that proponents represent as "true market demand", a feature that traditional journalism lacks.