Best-of-the-web content: Graphical Tips
-
This question is for EGOL (if he's willing) and anyone else who wants to partake.
EGOL is the best content writer I've ever run into, really. I'm wondering what his top 3 to 5 tips are on how to use graphical layout (font, images, graphics, organization, menu, etc) to make content irresistable.
A couple of assumptions: The content is written really well from a perspective of authority. Also, we're not including video on this one.
Again, anyone is welcome to answer this.
Thanks!
-
And the legend grows.......
-
Lots of my writing is done from a NordicTrack elliptical. I put a shelf in front of it, added a computer, two monitors... then put a keyboard on top of the display. Any post to Moz that I make between 7pm and midnight is from that elliptical.
-
For, long-tail traffic, definitely worth a try! Thanks
-
**you speak further on this? **
It's a personal opinion . I believe that when I have these on a page I get more long-tail traffic.
Add them to your pages and then you can have an opinion too.
-
And bank account deposits.
-
"on-page anchor text links, in my opinion, have on-page optimization value that is exceeded only by the title tag"
Pretty big statement can you speak further on this? or provide a link if you have addressed this before?
To the best of my knowledge its not included in the http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/services/ranking-factors-2013/ that's what I am referring to by a big statement...
How in search engines' eyes are these links unique to Headings that divide the content accordingly?
Thanks
-
Sorry to burst your bubble Bob, but EGOL is a hobbit.
He drums up his ideas for best of the web content while riding his unicorn across the shire.
A sighting of this hobbit is more rare than reports of run-ins with a sasquatch, the Loch Ness monster and ET in area 51.
It doesn't help that his avatar is actually a photoshopped headshot of George Will.
To make matters worse, the only footprints he leaves are pages of kickass content across the web.
-
Hi Vadim,
EGOL is very active here at the Q&A, and he simply responded to some of my questions early on in my content writing. He gave advice that was over the top in usefulness, and it stuck with me more than anything else anyone has told me about content - mostly how to write best-of-the-web articles. EGOL doesn't even do content marketing. He writes such absolutely fantastic content that lots of people come to and link to his content without him promote it
-
Thanks EGOL! I will contemplate and apply. Priceless advice as usual.
-
Thank you for the quick advice sir!
-
3 to 5 tips on how to use graphical layout (font, images, graphics, organization, menu, etc) to make content irresistable.
My first reaction to this is... Don't expect to put lipstick on a pig and have people line up to kiss him. If you don't have great content to begin with the graphical layout will probably not make much difference.
**Font... ** Use lots of subheadings. These break up the reading and allow marginally interested people an opportunity to scan your article for topics that are personally interesting
Organization... I use a two-column layout. Left column is text and the right column is photography, graphs, data tables, references, videos, related content menus. Sometimes I have way more right column stuff than text so I mix the images, data, etc in with the text column.
Images... I make it a point to have one really nice image at the top of each article. I really like spanning the page with a wide image but if I can't find a good one I find or create a kickass image for the top of the right column.
I often spend good money on images. A staff member here takes great photos and makes great line graphics. I often license photos or pay a graphic artist to make illustrations. We often spend a lot of money purchasing props for photos.
I have lots of articles that are accompanied by hundreds of dollars worth of photos, images, data, videos. A few that have over a thousand dollars worth of this media. I can also have a week or two spent on research and writing. Good content can cost a lot of money. Collecting the data needed to make one graph can require days of labor.
You need to be really careful because.... It is easy to lose money on this type of content. It is easy to lose money on this type of content. I said that twice for emphasis. I have spent a lot of money on content that has bombed.
If you are producing expensive content for low volume or low value audiences then you will probably lose money.
Photos, video, data, graphs, and art will not be successful if you don't present it well. They are not magic bullets. So before you spend a lot of money on lipstick be sure you have a princess instead of a pig.
**Menu... ** If you go to wikipedia you will see that most article of substantive length have multiple subheadings and near the top of the article there is a small box listing those subheadings as on-page anchor text links. Those on-page anchor text links, in my opinion, have on-page optimization value that is exceeded only by the title tag.. and that is the most important tip of this post - in my opinion.
-
I am just curious how you ran into EGOL, and two why you consider him the best content writer? Just curious, Thanks
-
Personally i am a big fan of EGOL so I would love to hear from him and some tips to craft an irresistible piece of content.
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
-
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 -
No-index pages with duplicate content?
Hello, I have an e-commerce website selling about 20 000 different products. For the most used of those products, I created unique high quality content. The content has been written by a professional player that describes how and why those are useful which is of huge interest to buyers. It would cost too much to write that high quality content for 20 000 different products, but we still have to sell them. Therefore, our idea was to no-index the products that only have the same copy-paste descriptions all other websites have. Do you think it's better to do that or to just let everything indexed normally since we might get search traffic from those pages? Thanks a lot for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EndeR-0 -
Can a website be punished by panda if content scrapers have duplicated content?
I've noticed recently that a number of content scrapers are linking to one of our websites and have the duplicate content on their web pages. Can content scrapers affect the original website's ranking? I'm concerned that having duplicated content, even if hosted by scrapers, could be a bad signal to Google. What are the best ways to prevent this happening? I'd really appreciate any help as I can't find the answer online!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Duplicate Content
Hi, So I have my great content (that contains a link to our site) that I want to distribute to high quality relevant sites in my niche as part of a link building campaign. Can I distribute this to lots of sites? The reason I ask is that those sites will then have duplicate content to all the other sites I distribute the content to won;t they? I this duplication bad for them and\or us? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio330 -
Moving some content to a new domain - best practices to avoid duplicate content?
Hi We are setting up a new domain to focus on a specific product and want to use some of the content from the original domain on the new site and remove it from the original. The content is appropriate for the new domain and will be irrelevant for the original domain and we want to avoid creating completely new content. There will be a link between the two domains. What is the best practice for this to avoid duplicate content and a potential Panda penalty?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Citybase0 -
Duplicate content
I run about 10 sites and most of them seemed to fall foul of the penguin update and even though I have never sought inorganic links I have been frantically searching for a link based answer since April. However since asking a question here I have been pointed in another direction by one of your contributors. It seems At least 6 of my sites have duplicate content issues. If you search Google for "We have selected nearly 200 pictures of short haircuts and hair styles in 16 galleries" which is the first bit of text from the site short-hairstyles.com about 30000 results appear. I don't know where they're from nor why anyone would want to do this. I presume its automated since there is so much of it. I have decided to redo the content. So I guess (hope) at some point in the future the duplicate nature will be flushed from Google's index? But how do I prevent it happening again? It's impractical to redo the content every month or so. For example if you search for "This facility is written in Flash® to use it you need to have Flash® installed." from another of my sites that I coincidently uploaded a new page to a couple of days ago, only the duplicate content shows up not my original site. So whoever is doing this is finding new stuff on my site and getting it indexed on google before even google sees it on my site! Thanks, Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jwdl0 -
Blog content - what to do, and what to avoid in terms of links, when you're paying for blog content
Hi, I've just been looking at a restaurant site which is paying food writers to put food news and blogs on their website. I checked the backlink profile of the site and the various bloggers in question usually link from their blogs / company websites to the said restaurant to help promote any new blogs that appear on the restaurant site. That got me wondering about whether this might cause problems with Google. I guess they've been putting about one blog live per month for 2 years, from 12/13 bloggers who have been linking to their website. What would you advise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Content Focus
I have a particular Page which shows primary contact details as well as "additional" contact details for the client. GIven I do not believe I want Google to misinterpret the focus of the page from the primary contact details which of the following three options would be best? Place the "additional" contact details (w/maps) in Javascript, Ajax or similar to suppress them from being crawled. Leave "additional" contact details alone but emphasize the Primary contact details by placing the Primary contact details in Rich Snippets/Microformats. Do nothing and allow Google to Crawl the pages with all contact details Thanks, Phil
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AU-SEO0