My Boss tells me personal narrative content isn't read online and bad for SEO, anyone else disagree? b/c I do!
-
I am in a constant debate that content 1st person or 3rd person doesn't make a difference in terms of SEO and what people on the web want to read. What do you all think? Does it make a difference?
-
I couldn't agree more! I believe the only reason that they didn't want personal narrative is because of some bad information about that style being bad for SEO; but as I have expressed to them, it's not!
Appreciate your response!
-
Gonna be blunt... a travel writing contest that doesn't allow first-person stories is simply ridiculous. (Disclosure: I work predominantly in tourism/travel too)
Travel is an incredibly personal experience. A travel guide that lists attractions of a city is one thing, but an inspiring, exciting, or moving storing of how one person experienced that city is far more likely to actually inspire others to start thinking about visiting there as well. It's the personal stories that allow a reader to start to visualize themselves doing and enjoying the things the writer is talking about.
Travel is aspirational and emotional - people don't do it because they have to but because something inspires them to do it. That inspiration doesn't come from a logic-based laundry list of places and events (facts), but the ability of the visitor to imagine themselves in and enjoying the destination (emotions). And that comes in large part from reading others' experiences. Even most travel fiction is based on first-person narrative for that reason.
Sure, once you've captured their attention in the dreaming phase, you need solid guidebook-like info for followup. But even then, people are looking for personal connections to assess the validity of the guidebook recommendations. One need only to look at the explosion of TripAdvisor over the last couple of years to see that even guidebook info is more effective when accompanied by personal stories (reviews).
The writing contest is a great idea for generating interesting real content. Don't neuter it by removing the emotional connection to the stories.
There's more than my $.02
Paul
-
Hi Kane,
You are spot on, there is room for both types of content! We are in a panic mode to get as much content up as we previously lacked pretty much any type of content being a directory!
I like your suggestions with museums, I think that is a good strategy!
-
Dear Jonathan,
Moosa and Kane have given nice insights. Here are my two cents. No matter what, an original piece of content which is unique, fresh, relevant and link worthy, always gets great traction online and goes viral with little to no help. So all that we need is try and come up with such content. All the SEO goodies will follow it after...
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi.
-
Hi Jonathon,
This won't cause any problems. The only argument one could make to support this theory is if one type of content tended to earn more links. An example would be authoritative content like Wikipedia. I don't believe this to be the case. 1st person voice can be just as link-worthy and perhaps more likely to get shared socially.
Honestly, there's room for both types of content on your site: a resource page written in 3rd person tone about a subject, and a blog article in 1st person with a personal recount about the area. Use the 3rd person content to target a keyword phrase like "Museums in Rome" and the 1st person content for a phrase like "Best Museums in Rome".
Hope that helps.
-
Yup, I mean personal experiences, specifically to a travel experience, as we are a travel website. We are creating a writing contest and they are wanting to restrict 1st person experiences, doesn't make sense to me!
But I agree the more personal and a piece of content that hits the user emotionally will be the most impactful!
As you said, content that is straight 500 words with links, is dead content these days!
Thanks for the feedback! I am mostly hoping for responses so I can prove my point! As with all SEO'er it is easier to convince with data!
-
From personal Narration if you mean a story about something that happened to you and how you feel about it. Then in that case i am with you... The world is moving towards personalization... even in the SEO world people love to hear personal experiments, tests instead f theory articles!
Technically speaking content that have a touch of personalization tend to go more viral as compare to the one that only talks about boring theory...
I think if you boss want straight 500 words of article and a link at the end to get SEO benefits.... so the time is over for that... today if you are not creating valuable and engaging content you are almost wasting your time as far as SEO is concern!
Hope this helps!
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
-
What if your content is getting social shares but no links?
Suppose you have a weekly blog article and sometimes your articles earn social shares (e.g. 23 +1's on Google Plus on one article but normally 3-5 social shares). One out of 10 earns an organic link from a random blog. Would you continue publishing these blog posts?
Content Development | | ProjectLabs0 -
Advice on the layout on this page for user experience and seo
Hi, we are testing a new website using wordpress, we have never used wordpress before and normally use joomla so we would like some advice to make sure the page below is good user experience, good for seo and the layout of the page including text style and size and paragraph space is ok would love your feedback here is the page http://www.cheapflightsgatwick.com/david-cameron-economic-rescue-plans-fail-as-families-are-forced-to-give-up-holidays/
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
SEO, Rel Author and Several Clients
How do you deal with Rel author on blogs for your clients? Suppose I'm a contributor (or rather, the only copywriter) to a clients blog - which happens to be about DIY. The blog articles are written from the business perspective and published from 'the business'. not from Me. Should I be adding myself as a contributor and using my own personal Google profile on these blogs? If so, then it's my face that appears next to the blog post and I'm not sure that's what I want for a blog about fixing shelves etc! Am I misunderstanding how I should be using rel author? Is it for SEOs to work into client strategy, or is it just for our own personal blogs?
Content Development | | littlesthobo0 -
Magento Multi Stores and seo
Hello all, im not that clued on SEO and only know the basics so please bear with me! I've just had built 5 different furniture retail websites, all of which will be selling the same products, but all priced differently and all of the sites will have different content etc on each one (4 of the 5 websites are on a multi store system with one back end on magento). The only thing that the 5 sites will have in common is the names of the products in the titles but all the content in the text and prices etc will all be different on each site, including articles and blogs… How will this sit with google in terms of rankings on each site? I know a lot of other companies that do this already and they all have good rankings on each site for their chosen keywords, the only difference between my scenario and theirs is 4 of my sites on the same back end which is mainly the ones i am concerned about… Any thoughts? thanks anthony
Content Development | | anthonybriant0 -
Hosted eCommerce with Outstanding Content Management
Can anyone recommend a hosted eCommerce solution that makes blog/article creation very easy and seamlessly integrates the content into the storefront? If the solution also offered great social media tools, also, that would be great.
Content Development | | DenverKelly0 -
Press Releases and Duplicate Content on Event Related Site
I have a site that lists events. I ask those submitting events to submit original content if possible, but frequently they submit press releases which are already published elsewhere. I rewrite some of the press releases, but do not have time to rewrite every press release that comes my way. I want my users to get a comprehensive list of events, but I don't want get a penalty for duplicate content. What is the best solution?
Content Development | | andywozhere0 -
Content Marketing - Guest Blogging
We're doing a guest coulmn here - http://www.securityweek.com/public-cloud-ecommerce-truths-basics-new-pci-dss-20-standards, how do we re-use/rewrite this for our blog? Whats the best practice if the column comes first?
Content Development | | FirePowered0 -
Duplicate content via syndication?
I have a full text RSS feed of my blog available for users with RSS readers. A few sites have said they would like to republish the unedited feed on their site (so my blog postings show up on their sites with links back to my site embedded). I'm wondering if this is a good/bad idea (to let them republish my postings) and/or if I should do anything in the feed to protect myself from an SEO point of view? Am I at risk of some kind of duplicate content penalty from Google, or will Google figure out that I'm the original source (which would be good) since the blog postings have links back to my site? Thanks!
Content Development | | scanlin0