nick usborne's blog

Is Seth Godin guilty of publishing "thin content"? (I bet post-Panda Google thinks he is.)

Seth Godin’s post for today is 79 words long, including the headline.

That’s a pretty short post.

When post-Panda Google finds that post, which they undoubtedly already have, will they consider it to be "thin" and of low value? More to the point, will they then penalize Seth’s entire blog in the search results because of this "thin content"?

This goes to the heart of my biggest problem with the Panda update.

Who gets to determine what quality really means?

As any fan of Seth’s blog will tell you, part of his appeal is that he shares rare nuggets of quality information in just a few words. He doesn’t need to write 500 words to make his point.

But what does the Google algorithm make of his short posts? Can it discern quality within brevity? I bet it can’t.

The idea that brevity should be equated to low value is absurd.

Let’s imagine Seth’s blog does drop in the rankings. So he manages to speak to someone at Google about it, and the Google guy says, "Sorry dude, all I can suggest is that you add more content to your posts."

So Seth then goes back and adds another 500 words to his posts. They would be 500 words of fluff, because he already made his point with 79 words.

Now Google comes back and says, "Ah, 579 words. Now that’s quality!"

But, of course, it’s not. It’s fluff.

There is an underlying hypocrisy here.

Google tells us to write for our readers, not the search engines.

But now, post-Panda, if writing for our readers involves writing short content, we’re screwed. In fact, we are forced to do exactly what Google tells us not to do – which is to write for the search engines by adding 500 words of fluff to our posts or pages.

Am I missing something here? Am I wrong?

If I’m not wrong, then I think Google is making a huge mistake.

 

 

Take the 30-day cure for thin and disappointing content.

For any site that depends of Google for a significant part of its traffic, the days of easy content are over.

Last year’s Mayday update and this year’s Panda update have driven the final nails into the coffin of quick, cheap content.

If you want Google to show your pages on page one of the search results, you need to create content that is truly useful.

In addition, as Google and the other major search engines increasingly factor in social signals as part of their listings algorithms, you need to make your web content shareable.

In other words, if your content isn’t good enough to make people want to share it through social media, you’ll be at a real disadvantage.

So...what is the 30-day cure?

Simply sign up for Web Content Cafe membership, and spend the first 30 days going through our archive of almost 250 content ideas.

Then use those ideas to increase both the volume and quality of the content on your site.

After the first 30 days you can decide whether to continue your monthly membership, or cancel.

Either way, access to those 250 ideas will be well worth your first month’s subscription.

Learn more and sign up for Web Content Cafe membership...

 

Reasons to write a lot more long-tail content...

As you undoubtedly know, the term “long-tail content” describes those pages on your website which are optimized for keywords that don’t get searched for a lot - but for which there is even less competition.

In other words, even though a long-tail content page may not bring in a ton of visitors, it’s relatively easy to get it showing on page one of the Google search results.

The key here is to publish a LOT of pages optimized for long-tail keywords.

Here are some interesting figures from a post I found at the Junta42 blog.

- 18% of search traffic arrives through the fat head

- 11.5% of search traffic arrives through the chunky middle

- 70% of search traffic arrives through the long tail

Put simply, if your website doesn’t have a long tail, you are missing out on that 70%.

On top of that, long tail traffic almost always converts better.

Here are a couple more interesting tidbits from that post:

- The fastest growing type of keyword search is a length of eight words.

- The type of search that converts at the highest rate is the four-word search.

What’s the takeaway here?

The takeaway is that you need to be creating a lot more long-tail content, to maximize that 70%.

And if you’re not sure where you’re going to find enough ideas for all those new pages...

You guessed right...it’s time to sign up as a member at Web Content Cafe.

At Web Content Cafe I publish a new content idea or insight every day, five days a week.

Learn more about Web Content Cafe...

 

The Google double-whammy – and what it means to your web content strategies.

Whammy #1: The recent Farmer update from Google has devastated thousands of sites across the web, particularly those with thin content, scraped content and low-value content.

Whammy #2: At the same time, Google’s growing interest in social signals means that a lot of perfectly good content is falling in the rankings, simply because it isn’t being shared enough through social media.

For over a decade, the practice of delivering quality content has been pretty stable. Thousands of companies have grown and prospered through the application of consistent and reliable content marketing strategies.

But right now, we are in the throes of huge upheaval.

Those old, reliable strategies are no longer working as well.

Today, you not only need to deliver high-value content, but you also need to enrich it by making it shareable through social media.

In other words, content that gets shared the most has a big advantage.

This is why the focus on the daily content ideas I deliver at Web Content Cafe is focussed on these two essential factors:

- Content with high value

- Content that generates strong social signals

If you are not yet a subscriber at Web Content Cafe, today would be a very good time to make the leap.

The world of web content is changing fast, and if you’re not riding this wave of change, you’ll be left behind, treading water, and going nowhere.

Learn more, and sign up for Web Content Cafe membership here...

 

What you have been missing on Web Content Cafe...

Everyone get’s free access to the articles I publish each week at Web Content Cafe.

But unless you are a member, you don’t get to read the daily posts.

Here’s just some of what you have been missing lately:

- 7 different headline approaches for your content pages

- Using Wikipedia to find interesting sub-topics

- A free and feature-filled widget to help you collect feedback from your readers

- Searching different country domains for new topic ideas

And coming up this week:

- An excellent video on how to become a content curator, and use that position to find new content and extend your influence

- An interesting statistic on how expressing your personal or company values helps engage readers and increase sales.

And more...

If you have been reading about Google’s Farmer update, you know how critical it is to generate quality content that is both useful and engaging.

This is the focus of the Web Content Cafe daily posts – to give you the ideas, tools and inspiration you need to come up with quality content for your own website.

Learn more about Web Content Cafe membership...

 

 

Over 200 web content ideas and, finally, an affiliate program.

Two piece of news this week for Web Content Cafe.

First, there are now 202 web content ideas on the site. That would make for a nice, thick book...packed with quality content ideas that attract new search engine traffic, engage readers and lead to increased revenues.

Even if you subscribe for just one month, you’ll get immediate access to all these ideas.

In addition, I have now added an affiliate program.

So if you have friends, colleagues or a larger audience of people who are involved in web content creation, you can make some extra income by referring them to Web Content Cafe.

For each new member you refer, you’ll receive a one-time payment of $8.50.

Refer just two members a month, and you’ll have more than paid for your own membership.

Sign up now and add your affiliate link to your website, e-newsletters and social media pages.

Here is the Web Content Cafe Affiliate sign-up page...

 

 

Content, frequency - and my big, fat long tail.

Content is the foundation, and the heart of just about every monetization model online.

Without a growing body of web content, you’ll fail to compete.

Yes, quality matters. But frequency matters too.

Here are the two reasons why frequency matters.

First, frequency drives volume.

The more often you add new content to your website, the faster you’ll build a significant volume of pages. And the more pages you create, the more entry pages you’ll have for the search engines to find.

As an example, on one of my sites I have recently lost page one positions for two of my most important keywords. But the overall volume of visitors to my site is growing, and those visitor numbers are way higher than those achieved by the sites which now hold top positions for those “top keywords”.

I beat them because of volume. I have a big, fat long tail.

My numbers are down for those pages which I optimized for those top keywords, but I more than make up for the loss with traffic to over a thousand long-tail pages.

Frequency also drives attention and engagement.

You can have thousands of pages on your site, but if you haven’t added new content recently, you are giving both the search engines and potential visitors little reason to visit you.

Google likes fresh content. Social media likes fresh content. People like fresh content.

One way or another, the success of your site or sites in 2011 will be driven by the frequency with which you publish new content.

Frequency gives you the volume of content your need to compete. Frequency gives you the freshness you need to attract attention.

And if you ever find yourself falling short of enough new ideas to keep your content hopper full, sign up for Web Content Cafe.

Web Content Cafe is fast becoming the primary source online for new web content ideas.

Some days I write about a topic idea that is seasonal, another day I might write about a new tool I'm using to identify hot or trending topics.

I write about how to write great content, how to mix up different types of content, content that works best with the search engines, content that works well with social media...and a whole lot more.

Whatever the daily topics, subscribers get access to five new web content ideas each week.

And if they act on just one of those five ideas, they will more than pay for the modest monthly subscription fee of $14.95.

In short, Web Content Cafe membership helps deliver frequency.

Learn more about Web Content Cafe membership...

 

 

Do freelancers need to add a large number of content pages to their sites?

Good question.

It all depends on how you are planning to attract new clients.

If you find new clients through phone calls, direct mail or some other direct sales medium, then you don’t need a huge number of pages on your freelance website. The site is there as a brochure, to reassure your hot prospects.

But if your client acquisition strategy includes having prospects find your site through the search engines, or through social media, then yes, you need a ton of content on your website.

Why? 

Because tens of thousands of freelancers are optimizing their websites for phrases like “freelance copywriter” or “online copywriting”.

But there are only ten available spots on the first page of Google’s search results.

And you are not going to get on page one if your site has only ten pages, however well you optimize them.

If you want to attract prospective clients to your site through the search engines, you’ll be working to the same rules followed by every content-based website – he or she who publishes the highest number of quality pages wins. (Ho-hum pages won’t cut it, because to win with the search engines, you also need plenty of inbound links from quality, related sites. And other sites will only link to quality content.)

If you want significant search engine traffic coming to your website, you need to have dozens, and then hundreds of pages.

Some can be blog posts, articles, case studies, tips, and guides.

Others can be multimedia – video, slide shows, infographics, and so on.

Each page or post should, of course, be optimized for one particular keyword or phrase. Or be optimized for social media.

For many freelancers, this will means an upgrade to their site, and many more hours devoted to content creation.

If you feel you might fall short of having enough ideas for your site content, sign up for Web Content Cafe membership – where I publish a new web content idea daily, five days a week.

 

 

Quality web content is becoming more and more important. And you don’t have to take my word for it.

Interesting article at eMarketer.com this morning – 2011 Trends: Content Marketing Is Critical.

As I have been saying for a while, the rise of social media is creating pressure for companies to create more and more quality content.

Here is the eMarketer chart.




As you can see, companies which are engaged in social media are using a variety of content types as fuel for their social media campaigns.

Take note of the fact that the #1 position is “branded” content. Not scraped content, not content-mill content.

And the #2 position is Expert Content.

In other words, companies realize that the social media environment demands quality. Without quality, nothing is shared, and your company’s reputation is damaged.

Garbage content may do the trick, for now at least, when attracting traffic from the search engines. But it won’t cut it with social media.

I also really like the questions they asked later in the under the chart:

Marketers should ask themselves five questions about the magnetic content they are seeking to create to determine whether it will be truly attractive to their audience:

1. Is the content unique?
2. Is the content useful?
3. Is the content well executed?
4. Is the content fun?
5. Does the content make good use of the channel in which it appears (e.g., social, mobile, video)?

I agree, absolutely.

If you want to create magnetic content to feed your own social media campaigns, and are sometimes stumped for ideas, learn more about my site, Web Content Café.

Web Content Café’s core purpose is to deliver ideas to help you create quality content in a variety of forms, with particular emphasis on content that gets shared through social media.

How social media engagement makes you improve your website, fast.

I wrote a guest post for the SiteSell Blog last week (Thanks for the invitation to contribute!). Here is a short excerpt from what I wrote:

“When I created the Facebook page, I realized I would have to start working on the page, and on my site, every day. If you want to do well with social media, you have to remain engaged daily.

The result? Traffic to my site has significantly increased over the last few months. A small part of that can be attributed to traffic coming in directly from my Facebook page. I imagine there have been some SEO benefits too.

But I believe most of that new traffic is arriving because I am doing a lot more with the site itself. I am adding a lot of new pages, updating old pages, and generally being more active with the site.

In other words, social media is working well for my site primarily because it is forcing me to work harder on the site itself.

There are plenty of good reasons to get involved with social media, but for me, this has been the most beneficial of them all.”

(Read the full post, and the comments it attracted.)

I find it interesting that it took a commitment to engage through social media to force me to pay closer attention to my main website.

And I don’t think I’m alone.

I think thousands of companies are getting into social media, and at the same time realising that they need to start adding a lot more new content to their sites as a result.

Which, of course, brings us to Web Content Cafe – your source for new web content ideas, with a fresh content idea being posted daily, five days a week.

Learn more about Web Content Cafe membership here...