Is un-searched content worth writing?
-
Hi,
Is every post you write on your site is SERPs worthy?
I'll give an example -
We often cover industry related news items. It is written very well with personal opinions, comments and detailed explanations. Our readers find it interesting, "like" and "plus" it. However, these items will never appear in the SERPs simply because they won't be searched.Needless to say that these are not ever green pieces. If by chance it lands a subject that may be searched in the future, usually it won't appear because it means that the item was also covered by major sites like CNN, Forbes, Bloomberg etc.
Is it worth out time to keep "investing" in these types of articles?
Thanks
-
If there is a need to write these from a customer's point of view, no matter how they are going to find the content, then the posts should be written. You don't need to cultivate everything on your site for search - there should be a reason behind why you create and publish content, however, and EGOL is right that a content plan is an important start if you feel that you're writing / publishing "in the dark" with no structure.
Short updates might be very useful for your current readership, or for historical purposes, so that future readers can go back and research what constituted a "record price" in 2014. They may never arrive at that content through a search engine, but it's useful to them and they find it regardless.
-
Thank you all for the answers!
I like the dramatic approach EGOL presented.
It is true that when I'm writing these articles I'm not doing other things.
However, these articles "land" on my lap since it is constantly happening, it is news worthy, it is related and readers like it.If we are talking about the jewelry industry, an example would be covering auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's where they constantly sell special items at record prices. This however won't be searched (I also know this from experience).
True that articles such as "hot to guides" and educational material are probably better - but it is not instead of those.
It does however take great effort (time and money) to do those and the question is if it is worth it... -
In my opinion you should write for the person going to your site rather than the search engines, they will be the ones using your products and services. You can tailor a lot of "inner pages" towards key phrase in your niche.
-
Write for the user, not for ranking. If the users like, and share, and spend time navigating through your content, search engines will take notice.
Easiest way? Look at what is one the site, look at what the competition is writing, and how they rank. Look back at yours and compare.
"Is every post you write on your site is SERPs worthy?"
This is only something you and your traffic can answer. Reading through what you have, does it address all aspects of the point you are trying to make, or give all information on a topic you are trying to cover? What is it that makes people like or share what you have written?
"You need a content development plan."
-
STOP.
You need a content development plan.
You are under attack and you have limited ammunition and only moments before you are overrun. Don't waste your precious ammunition and time shooting into the air or into the ground. Be sure that you are hitting the enemy!
Content that is never searched can be important, but only when it serves a purpose for someone who is important to your business and you guide them to it on obvious paths.
-
In my opinion most definitely. I think I remember reading that up to 80% of searched per month have never been recorded before. This means that there's nothing to say your content won't be searched for in future. I'd also say that by creating this content you are building an authoritative presence that can help in with your internal link structure to enhance rankings for other pages that may contain more popular search term and aslo link juice to any other sites you may own.
-
If visitors are engaged with your content, they will come back. That's a good reason to write it.
How do you know that they never will be searched? Much of the content I generated focus on "extremely" niche topics (long tail kw's) and we do receive visitors for these topics. Also, generating original content adds credibility to your brand and site. As you know, it's not all about competitive keywords.
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
-
Rewriting content dilemma? should i include keywords ?
hi, i am rewriting content since it had 300 words , lower than top 10s i did some keywords research, on ahrefs, moz, keywordtool . io, semrush. and there are lot of variations like, main keyword is (ios 12) has variations like (ios 12 download), (ios 12 install), (ios 12 not supported) and so on, people have been searching all these terms with ios 12, it feels like if my page talks about all these variations. i have more chances to rank. does it make any sense?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL0 -
Content suggestions and topics
Hello, In the list of topics that moz recommends, how many of the topics that are recommend should I cover just 2 or 3 or 10 of them ? is the more the better ? Then let's say one of the topic recommended is tennis should I just add the topic tennis once in my content or do I need to cover this topic multiple times ? meaning write the topic tennis 3 times across my content ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Duplicate content based on filters
Hi Community, There have probably been a few answers to this and I have more or less made up my mind about it but would like to pose the question or as that you post a link to the correct article for this please. I have a travel site with multiple accommodations (for example), obviously there are many filter to try find exactly what you want, youcan sort by region, city, rating, price, type of accommodation (hotel, guest house, etc.). This all leads to one invevitable conclusion, many of the results would be the same. My question is how would you handle this? Via a rel canonical to the main categories (such as region or town) thus making it the successor, or no follow all the sub-category pages, thereby not allowing any search to reach deeper in. Thanks for the time and effort.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ProsperoDigital0 -
Does Google see this as duplicate content?
I'm working on a site that has too many pages in Google's index as shown in a simple count via a site search (example): site:http://www.mozquestionexample.com I ended up getting a full list of these pages and it shows pages that have been supposedly excluded from the index via GWT url parameters and/or canonicalization For instance, the list of indexed pages shows: 1. http://www.mozquestionexample.com/cool-stuff 2. http://www.mozquestionexample.com/cool-stuff?page=2 3. http://www.mozquestionexample.com?page=3 4. http://www.mozquestionexample.com?mq_source=q-and-a 5. http://www.mozquestionexample.com?type=productss&sort=1date Example #1 above is the one true page for search and the one that all the canonicals reference. Examples #2 and #3 shouldn't be in the index because the canonical points to url #1. Example #4 shouldn't be in the index, because it's just a source code that, again doesn't change the page and the canonical points to #1. Example #5 shouldn't be in the index because it's excluded in parameters as not affecting page content and the canonical is in place. Should I worry about these multiple urls for the same page and if so, what should I do about it? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Above the Fold Content
How important is the placement of unique content "Above the Fold". Will attention grabbing images suffice or must their be a lot of unique text?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
Fresh content has had a negative affect on my SERPs
Hi there, I was ranking pretty well for highly competitive keywords without actually doing any link building please see graph attached, so I thought I have an opportunity here in getting to page 1 for these keywords, the plan was to write fresh & original content for these pages, because hey Google loves fresh content, right? Well it seems NOT, after one week of these pages been re-written (21st Feb 2012), all of these pages dropped all together, please note: all the pages were under the same directory: /health/flu/keyword-1 /health/flu/keyword-2 and so on... I have compared both pages as I have back ups of the old content On Average there are more words on each of the new pages compared to previous pages Lower bounce rate by at least 30% (Via Adwords) More time on site by at least 2 minutes (Via Adwords) More page visits (Via Adwords) Lower keyword density, on average 4% (new pages) compared to 9% (old content) across all pages So since the end of February, these pages are still not ranked for these keywords, the funny thing is, these keyword are on page 1 of Bing. Another NOTE: We launched an irish version of the website, using the exact same content, I have done all the checks via webmaster tools making sure it's pointing to Ireland, I have also got hreflang tags on both website (just in case) If anyone can help with this that would be very much appreciated. Thanks ZCJDa
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Duplicate Content Help
seomoz tool gives me back duplicate content on both these URL's http://www.mydomain.com/football-teams/ http://www.mydomain.com/football-teams/index.php I want to use http://www.mydomain.com/football-teams/ as this just look nice & clean. What would be best practice to fix this issue? Kind Regards Eddie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
How are they avoiding duplicate content?
One of the largest stores in USA for soccer runs a number of whitelabel sites for major partners such as Fox and ESPN. However, the effect of this is that they are creating duplicate content for their products (and even the overall site structure is very similar). Take a look at: http://www.worldsoccershop.com/23147.html http://www.foxsoccershop.com/23147.html http://www.soccernetstore.com/23147.html You can see that practically everything is the same including: product URL product title product description My question is, why is Google not classing this as duplicate content? Have they coded for it in a certain way or is there something I'm missing which is helping them achieve rankings for all sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss19840