Great Content
-
Hello fellow Mozzers!
I'm still new to the SEO game and have been doing lots of reading and research about SEO. From what I've learned nowadays it all comes down to great content and links that come from it. I have to admit I'm a visual learner, I need to see it to understand and learn better. I was hoping that someone can provide some examples of GREAT Content (whether its a blog post, page, article, etc...) I know EGOL is one of the most valuabe SEOMoz users and by reading his forum responses he always advises to write great content to build links... Hoping EGOL and other SEOMoz users would be so kind to share an example or two of what they think is great content.
One more question (related). Since all the Google updates this year in regards to links and content, I've read numerous times on this Q&A forum that great content gets links, and that submitting articles to directories or buying links doesn't work anymore or at least not something that a whitehat SEO should implement for a long term strategy, does that mean that if you publish great content on your site that is informative, unique and valuable it will get you links without submitting to directories or buying links? Is it really that simple?
Thank you in advance!
Igor
-
Hello Robert,
Thank you for your input I agree with you, EGOL whether intentionally or not did provide a great example of GREAT content just by answering my question.
-
Hi Gamer07,
Thank you, that's a good strategy.
-
Something that is GREAT to you may not be THAT GREAT to another and it could possibly be bad to another one.
You should try to understand who your visitors are. I would check out the websites they visit. See what they are interested in. See which topics and posts receive more attention. Comments, social media shares etc.
I have been learning this myself in the last two years. Before, I thought GREAT content meant FLAWLESS content and it wasn't true in some cases.
Keep an eye on Google Analytics to see which content receives high bounce rates and which content is really read (look at average time on page). Then start doing some A/B testing for content that is failing in terms of BOUNCE RATE and Avg Time on Page. Create an alternative of the same page but change the layout, places of text and media. Increase the number of visuals, decrease the text and vice versa.
good luck!
-
EGOL
As a confirmed content junky, I have to say this is great content.
...my goal is to be aware of the above and produce things that have potential. We have all written things that we knew would be stunning to the world and later scratched our heads wondering where we missed the boat. At the same time, we have written something because it needed to be written and looked up a few days later as it was showing up everywhere and then re-read it to see what those who shared it liked about it.
IGOR,
Please understand the wisdom of this statement:
**This type of content is not written in a moment or acquired for a few bucks on a freelance site. It is produced by someone who knows a subject very well and has creativity to come up with something awesome. **
One cannot overstate the importance of understanding the subject and of creativity. We are an agency and our copywriters are tasked with writing on a lot of subjects. Literally everything from rewriting product pages so that they are not the same dupe all others have to writing about the law, the weather, medicine, current events, and so forth. While they are great at what they do, without giving them enough time on a subject to know it, all the creativity in the world will not make a piece good. At the same time, subject matter experts who lack creativity usually write like...subject matter experts without creativity...(read the text book, ain't this fun?!). Lastly, asking them to write something great in an hour or two will not produce something great. (We are aware, that on some sites, we are writing to cover a given page topic in the best possible way based on time and money limitations of clients.)
Search the web for queries that provide basic information in your niche and identify content that ranks well and clearly deserves it. Then create something that beats it soundly. Well said in my opinion.
Great content alone will not win the war instantly. You must have a powerful site to get instant rankings, or get it in front of influencers who will help you promote it or put word of it it out to places like slashdot, reddit, facebook where people can share it.
I could not agree more. All to often in SEO we see those who want to do one thing and capture position one in the SERPs. There is no easy path. Yes, there are tricks, etc. but in the final analysis the battle will be won by those who are meticulous in their approach. Someone getting 500 backlinks from a Chinese ginseng business directory, etc. may rank ahead today; I guarantee you they will not win out over time against skilled SEO's who possess determination, skill, and an understanding of reaity.
EGOL,
This was great content you provided to all. Thanks,
-
Hello EGOL,
Thank you for your answer. It's very helpful and informative! I will try to follow it as a guideline when working on content.
-
Hello Greg,
Thank you for your answer! Yes promoting and sharing the content makes sense.
-
....an example or two of what they think is great content.
What I think doesn't matter. It's what my visitors think and their friends think that makes all of the difference. Go to sites like slashdot and reddit to see what is getting heavy action, look at pages like this on sites like NewYork Times. These show what is taking off with people. Look at your own site to see what is getting a little action and make it bettter.
The above shows you the type of content that is highly shareable. It is hard to predict what will be highly shared and produce it repeatedly.
So, my goal is to be aware of the above and produce things that have potential. But another area where I focus is on basic information topics where I can produce content that is better than anything that is already out there. Then produce substantive, well-written content that is rich with photos, graphics, video, data. Substantive content is long and has a huge diversity of words. Rich content is attractive and interesting and motivates sharing.
Put these all together... a topic with potential, basic information that is best-on-the-web, substantive to be impressive and pull lots of longtail queries, well written for appeal and rich with media to capture attention.
This type of content is not written in a moment or acquired for a few bucks on a freelance site. It is produced by someone who knows a subject very well and has creativity to come up with something awesome.
If you read the SEOmoz blog you will certainly see some content that knocks your socks off, triggers lots of discussion and lots of thumbs up. Those people didn't sit down and crank that out in an afternoon. They began writing with deep experience, did more research to be sure that they were write, created something great that they were not afraid to show to experts who would give them heavy thumbs down if they were full of it.
Search the web for queries that provide basic information in your niche and identify content that ranks well and clearly deserves it. Then create something that beats it soundly.
Great content alone will not win the war instantly. You must have a powerful site to get instant rankings, or get it in front of influencers who will help you promote it or put word of it it out to places like slashdot, reddit, facebook where people can share it. Sometimes it takes a hurricane or a convention in the news to trigger interest.
-
In layman's terms, yes, useful great content is all you need to get links naturally.
That's how search engines work, they expect that if people like a website or an article, they will link to it. If you can satisfy your visitors by giving them what they want, they will link/like/share your content. (creating brand exposure, more links)
Obviously its not as simple as posting a "great" article on your site and then forgetting about everything else.
You still need to promote the article in social channels/blog comments etc etc to spread the word.
In time, when your website/brand grows in authority (by building relationships with related webmasters/bloggers etc) Google will rank your articles without you having to do anything as your domain has the authority and trust to back it up.
Publish your great content, but then also promote/share it among the influential people in your niche and over time, the links will come.
Just my opinion on the matter.
Greg
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Parent pages : Duplicate content
Hello, I think this question relates to "Parent pages" structure or SILO but I couldn't find an answer online. For a website that sell products, for example "Appliances". A link to this page appears in 1 category of the menu named "kitchen" but also in another 1 category named "household appliances". It means that it appears twice in the menu but with a unique URL. Would that affect SEO ? Is it duplicate content ? And would it be better to choose 1 father or let it that way ? Thanks for your help. Max
Link Building | | Sodimaccl1 -
Will linking to very similar (or duplicate content) hurt SEO
One of my clients started working with a traditional PR company to get media placements and they've placed articles on some very excellent and relevant sites. However, the article's content is nearly identical on each site. We would like to link my client's site to these articles, but will the duplicate content hurt SEO? Because there are some very minor variations within these articles, will that be enough of a difference where we don't need to be concerned if we did link our site to each article?
Link Building | | Liggins0 -
How can a site with no content, non SEO optimized or any value rank better?
I understand there are many more variables to rank #1, but this site is currently #1 for one of our top keywords and I really don't understand what they Competior site barely has 200 words on any given page, very few content other than images with no ALT tags, titles, No H1 tags. in other words the website is not SEO optimized. My site has content, product descriptions, images, relevant titles, and definitely more optimized than competitor. My site VS competitor Total pages: 246 (me) vs 49 (them) Page Authority: 34 vs 26 MozRank: 5.3 vs 4.5 MozTrust: 5.7 vs 5.4 Domain Authority: 22 vs 17 External Links: 65 vs 7 Internal Links 152 vs 1 Followed Links 14 vs 5 More C-Blocks 14 vs 4 Total Social Shares: 127 vs 4
Link Building | | Droidman860 -
Deciding on anchor text for content-based backlinks
So you have a decent blog on the other side of the world ready and willing to work with you. Their content relates to your industry, and you're going to be allocated a lovely page of content, once a week, with a link or two back to your site. Do you think anchor text is still as important in May 2012 as everyone said it was three years ago? How do you determine what anchor text to have based on your answer to the question above?
Link Building | | Martin_S0 -
SeoMoz duplicate content
Hi all, There's a lot of controversy around duplicated content. If you google "The New SEO Process (Quit Being Kanye)" you'll get tones of results with a copied content from the original article. How does google manages this? (duplicated or not) Is this good for the original content/website? Thank you Cornel
Link Building | | Cornel_Ilea0 -
Same Content on Different Blogs
We host our blog on WordPress as part of our site. The blog "address" is www.website.com/blog/post. If I were to take the same content that's on this blog and post it on a Blogger account we have, would Google consider that duplicate content? If not, would there be any benefit to doing this?
Link Building | | rdreich490 -
Are there content swap tools/forums for linkbuilding?
Anyone know any besides myblogguest? I have a pipeline of content at the moment and not enough distribution. I also have web properties that can take posts etc Cheers S
Link Building | | firstconversion0 -
Nofollow links & content syndication
When syndicating content, I have heard/read that even if the piece you syndicate has a link back to your site (original post), the engines should be able to tell your post is the original because of the link that is pointing back. Is this the case when the links are "nofollow"? I think not, but I just would like to get someone else point of view. I think that if they don't want to follow the links, they should at least add noindex meta robots tags to the post so it doesn't create duplicate content... Any thoughts? Thanks!
Link Building | | bonnierSEO0