Why Quality Is Your Best Bet
Google has spent the better part of 2011 clamping down on bad content. Not “bad” as in dirty or pornographic. Rather, “bad” as in not high quality.
In case you’re wondering, that’s what the infamous Google Panda was all about. It’s got everyone talking.
It’s also got everyone thinking. As well it should.
The most important thing to keep in mind is not that your content needs to be long. You might come away with that impression if you just looked at the surface of the Panda updates. What you should do, however, is look under the hood. Quality content is the name of the game.
So what is meant by “quality?” The truth is, quality is in eye of the beholder. And lest you think that in all cases Google is the beholder, think again. You should not be writing your content for the search engines, or for a search engine. Instead, write your content for your human readers. Quality is whatever your website visitors make it. Quality is what they want.
How do you do that?
For starters, ask yourself this question: “What do my website’s human readers want? What do they really want?”
Then, give it to them.
Quality isn’t about some search engine algorithm. It’s about delivering on a promise – the promise to feed your website visitors with the very best content in your niche. Do that and the search engines will be happy.
How Bing Content Quality Is Different From Google’s
Answer: It isn’t.
But that hasn’t stopped the second place search engine from posting its own content quality guidelines. In a nutshell:
- Avoid duplicate content
- Don’t create pages with thin amounts of content
- No pages with only text or only images – mix it up
- Share your content through social media
- Don’t use automatic translation tools
- Proofread your content
- Keep your videos short
- Turn excessively long pages into multiple-page articles
- Don’t create content just for the sake of content
About the only one of these that might be different from Google’s content guidelines (and even that is questionable) is the suggestion to not use automatic translation tools. I say this might be different from Google’s guidelines because Google actually has an automatic translation tool, but I wouldn’t vouch for its accuracy.
In short, if you follow Google’s content quality guidelines, then you will likely do well in Bing as well. And since Google still delivers over 60% of the Web traffic for most websites, that’s sort of a no-brainer. In fact, Google delivers more than 70% of the Web traffic for most websites.
While it’s nice to hear from Bing just what its content guidelines are, I still think the better bet is to follow Google’s guidelines and you should do well in both search engines.
5 Lessons From Google’s Panda Update
In February of this year, Google came out with the Panda Update and smacked down some very authoritative sites, including EzineArticles and several other popular article directories. A lot of smaller sites were affected as well.
Specifically, the update addressed low quality content on these sites. Many smaller sites were hit because they contained several pages of small amounts of content that didn’t really help their site visitors. For instance, an e-commerce site with 10 similar products might have had descriptions for those products where the only changes in the content were the names of the products. That doesn’t say much for originality and is definitely a characteristic of low quality.
Here are 5 specific lessons we can learn from the Google Panda update:
- Quality Over Quantity – You are better off consolidating your products into one grouping if they are so similar that you can’t produce quality content for each product description.
- Focus On Becoming An Authority – Authority sites reign supreme in Google’s eyes. To become an authority, you have to focus on consistent quality content over time.
- Use Social Media – Social media authority is every bit as important as content authority. Branch out beyond your own web properties.
- Photos Are Nice But …. – Instead of loading your site with photos, use the photos to enhance textual content. Your text is the meat of your content. Too many photos means too much fat.
- Age Is Important Too – Quality + Time = Authority. The age of your domain is an asset. If you do everything right over time, you’ll do well in the long run.
Keep your eyes focused on quality content, authority, and social media branding. These are the tools that successful Internet marketers are using to get ahead post-Panda.
Should You Use A Content Mill?
Content mills are not new. They are, however, new at dominating the SERPs. I’ll restate that another way.
There was a time long ago (like in the late 1990s) when there were two types of content. There was the high quality content that you’d find on any A-list website and there was less-than-stellar content. Some of that less-than-stellar content was produced by freelance writers or people who wrote SEO content for others to profit from.
In those days the ratio of quality content to the other kind was pretty even. But today, the less-than-stellar content seems to have taken over some corners of the web while quality content struggles to stay afloat.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
There really are just two (legal) ways to acquire quality content for your website.
- You can write it yourself
- You can hire someone to write it for you.
If you hire someone to write your content for you then you’ll still be responsible for its quality. What guidelines do you have for that? If you have none then you’ll have to accept the guidelines of you content provider. Will it be quality content?
This is where webmasters who cannot write themselves can end up in a quandary. If you hire a budget writer then you’ll likely get budget content. For the high quality content you need to spend some money. And there’s the rub. Can you afford the quality content?
This is ultimately your decision to make, but don’t make it blindly. If you want your content to shine then you need to hire a quality content provider.
Do Low Quality Back Links Affect SEO?
One of the most common worries among new webmasters is whether or not low quality back links will adversely affect their SEO or web rankings. Generally, no. But you have to take each case on its own merits.
Webmasters, most of the time, cannot control who links to them or why. That’s not your problem as webmaster. But if you are concerned about a particular back link or group of back links you can write to the website owner and request that your link be removed. Most webmasters will oblige, but if you run into a situation where you are refused then you might have other options. The search engines, however, will not help you in that situation.
Back links are generally good for webmasters, but they are only one factor that affect rankings. There are plenty more. Still, some links won’t benefit you at all. If a website has a reputation as being spammy, chances are links from that site won’t go to benefit you. But they won’t hurt you either. And that’s the beauty of low quality back links. It’s best not to worry about them.