Is Creating a Lot of Content A Bad SEO Strategy?
-
In Danny Dover's book, Search Engine Optimization Secrets, he talks about how every page on your site should be at least a little linkworthy, or it is just sucking link juice from the rest of the site and not contributing any.
Does this mean that creating a lot of content, (like a daily news article on your site that summarizes industry news or something similar) is not a good SEO strategy?
Should you limit the amount of content pages on your site unless it can attract links or hits on one of your target keywords?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for your thoughts, Alan. Much appreciated.
I agree that "quality" is the key.
-
I think it all comes down to the quality of the content, the ease of readability, and the ability to not diverge too far from the primary topic.
I personally find pages that are endless content, such as blog indexes that load entire articles on the page, to be quite annoying. In that scenario, helping SEO is outweighed by harming user experience. And if the sub-topics wander too far, it can dilute the primary topical focus of the page.
So with proper planning, and user experience considerations, sure, it can be done. Heck, there's a common belief that short blog articles are better than long ones. Yet some of my best, most read, most linked-to blog articles have gone on seemingly forever.
On the flip side, my "Anatomy of an SEO Audit" articles were each strong enough on their own that it was best to split it out into four pieces. Not only did it make readability a bit more reasonable, it gave me three additional "new content" opportunities, and I got to link across all of them by the 4th article, Yet two more valid SEO factors to consider.
-
Alan,
I am interested in your comment. I agree with the "supporting pages" idea and employ that on many parts of my websites. The main page attacks a primary keyword and the supporting pages attack secondary keywords. The anchor text links between the pages might help the rankings.
However, I am also finding success with another method...
Place all of the content on one page to create a very long and impressive document. The length (and word diversity) causes that page to pull a lot of long-tail traffic. Also, the size of these documents might make a favorable impression on other webmasters who are looking for an authoritative document to link to. Maybe Google also favorably considers the length and subtopic diversity of these documents?
Another variation would be to treat the article like the index page of a blog that has the full text of each blog post displayed. Each of the subtopics is a subheading on that page and the <h>tag used for the subheading is linktext to a secondary page with full text and images displayed.</h>
Any thoughts on those?
-
I'd offer a slightly different perspective.
If you create lots of content that supports a higher level page, many of those supporting pages might very well not ever garner any external links. Yet they very well could offer tremendous value in boosting the primary page's value from an internal linking perspective as well as an inbound link perspective.
For example - if you want to be known as THE AUTHORITY on all things related to widgets, you'd be wise to have many second and even third tier content pages within your site structure. The vast majority, if not all of the inbound links would point to the higher level pages exactly BECAUSE you've got all that depth.
-
- Creating a lot of bad content is a bad strategy.
- Creating a lot of good content is a good strategy.
(Assuming it's done in balance with your capacity.)
Content is the king but a kingdom needs other roles to run smoothly so I would not completely sacrifice other SEO activities just to satisfy monthly content needs.
One example of content being a problem is when too many pages discuss the same topic and fragment your inbound links, diluting the effect. This would only be good if that was only way to get as many diverse inbound links.
-
Should you limit the amount of content pages on your site unless it can attract links or hits on one of your target keywords?
In general, the answer to this is YES, don't put up pages that are not going to attract links or search traffic. The exception would be pages on topics such as "ordering information"... "privacy policy".... etc.
Why put up a page if it will be useless?
Does this mean that creating a lot of content, (like a daily news article on your site that summarizes industry news or something similar) is not a good SEO strategy?
If you run a content site the best way to bring in "new money" is to publish new content. However, you might be careful about creating pages about "news". Those pages might be "new content" but they become "old content" quickly.
If you are going to have a site that places an emphasis on news and does a good job of it then publishing news is a good idea. However, if you have any other goal then a focus on "evergreen" content might be a better strategy.
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
-
Does google penalize you if you post content in french and english on a website
I'm trying to encourage content editors to only post content in either English or French. For example we have a French press release but the team are wanting it on our site in French and English. I thought this would fall under duplicate content rules. Does google penalize you if you post content in French and English on a website?
Content Development | | EstherBrice0 -
Blog or article length and SEO value
Why do different blog lengths affect SEO differently? Is it directly affected by Rankbrain or the Google Algorithm, or is it more because of user engagement?
Content Development | | CyrusDariusXerxes0 -
Need suggestion to place longer content on products category page
Hi All, I wanted to place longer content on products category page, Currenty I am showing product listing first and then small description at the end of listing.I don't want to add longer content either bottom or top. I want to make two tabs at the top of each category pages like Products | Informtion In Product section (after clicking on it) I want to display all products listing & in Information tab (after clicking on it) 2-3 paragraphs of webpage content but I'm afraid If I will place the content in this way Google won't index content and my purpose of adding webpage content to target long tail keywords won't fulfill. Please suggest me if you have any better idea & let me know what I am going to do would be good or not in SEO perspective. Thanks
Content Development | | Alick3000 -
A good content calendar/organizer suggestion?
Does anyone have a good content calendar/organizer/software/etc to help plan delivering and pushing out content? I haven't ever used anything other than an actual calendar, and that doesn't seem to help all that much. Is there anything better out there? Any suggestions would be fantastic! Much appreciated, Ruben
Content Development | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Duplicate Content
Hi All, I am doing work for a rug company that acts as a third party. They have close to 4,000+ products. Each rug belongs to a collection. The collection has one main description that is the same throughout every rug in the collection. Ex. One Collection has 15 rugs, all with the same description. Should I take the time and change every single description? I think the answer is yes but I wanted another opinion. Thanks
Content Development | | Mike.NW0 -
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?
Content Development | | GoAbroadKP0 -
Is paid content a good or bad thing
Hi, over the past couple of years we have turned down thousands of request from companies to have paid editorial on our sites, I have always turned this down but i have seen some sites accept this and would like to know your stance on this. In newspapers and magazines which i have worked in both, they have paid editorial all the time, so i am just wondering what google thinks of paid editorial. look forward to hearing your thoughts
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How quickly should one add content?
I'm building a content site (the model is AdSense revenue) around a certain niche, and I'm currently paying for about 6 articles to be contributed per week. I have the capacity to be paying for a lot more articles, however, so I'm wondering what, if any, factors exist to recommend building the site up slowly as opposed to throwing on e.g. 100 articles over the next week? Those I can think of are: 1. Going slowly leaves room for better keyword optimization etc. 2. Google seems to favor aged domains/content, so 100 good articles now certainly isn't as advantageous as 100 articles 2 years from now. All that being said, I still feel like the benefit in terms of traffic of adding more content now - since I can - might outweigh these considerations. Does anyone have any thoughts?
Content Development | | ZakGottlieb710