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.

 

 

What the Bing plus Facebook relationship means to you and your sites...

As you may have heard, Bing is starting to feature Facebook “Likes” in its search results.

This means that a search results page on Bing will start showing which of the pages your Facebook friends like, and how many of your friends like them.

What Bing is doing is just the beginning. It’s the first step in using social media to give popular site pages more prominence in search results listings.

This is huge, because until now, the position of pages featured on any given search results page has been determined by the relevance of the page, and the authority of the page, as determined by inbound links.

Google in particular relies heavily on inbound links to help it figure out how good a site page is, and where it deserves to be placed on its search results pages.

So here is the question...

Which is the more reliable indicator of page quality – inbound links, or social media “likes”?

Only time would tell. But my guess is that the use of social media, as a means to help determine which pages get listed on page one of the major search engines, is going to grow very quickly.

So what does this mean for you and your own site or sites?

It means you have to become seriously engaged with your readers through social media. It means having a Facebook page. It means having a Facebook Like button on your content pages.

But it also means creating plenty of new, fresh, social media friendly content. The days of occasionally adding a new evergreen content page are over.

You need to add more pages to your sites, more often...and you need to make them shareable.

OK...now we come to the part where all roads seem to arrive at me recommending Web Content Cafe.

Well, there is a reason for that. I created the site earlier this year because I could see how social media was becoming more and more important, across the web. And I knew that social media needs feeding, with fresh content, regularly.

That’s why the promise of Web Content Cafe has always been to provide you with a new content idea daily, five days a week.

Bing is just the first to integrate social media likes in its search results, but it won’t be the last.

You can no longer hope for high listings just with strong SEO and inbound links.

Now you need to appeal to social media sites too.

And that means adding fresh, shareable content to you sites daily.

If you want some help with that, sign up for Web Content Cafe membership...

 

 

Different ways to profit from Web Content Café membership...

Different people profit from their Web Content Café memberships in different ways.

Some are freelancers, and use the daily content ideas to add value to their relationships with their clients.

Some are small business people and use the ideas to attract and engage new visitors to their websites.

Some use the ideas as inspiration for new pages on their own, money-making websites.

And others, like Jana Picou, work for organizations and use the ideas to inspire a group of internal writers.

Here is how Jana leverages her Web Content Café membership:

“I like to start every morning at work by setting aside the first half hour or so reading the day’s content idea. If it’s helpful–which most posts are–I write a short summary or jot down the main ideas and log them in a Word doc.

Some of the ideas I can immediately implement. Others I spend a few minutes brainstorming about how I can use them for my organization’s site in the future. It’s a quick reference for me as well as for sharing new ideas with my boss.

I’ve found the Web Content Café to be one of most efficient ways of getting relevant and current info to web writers – something I appreciate in a fast-paced work environment!

Thanks!”

Jana Picou, Joycemeyer.org

Whether you are a freelancer, are employed, or are writing your own website – you can quickly profit from the daily content ideas you receive as a Web Content Café member.

Learn more about Web Content Café...

27 Web content ideas so far - and the next one coming at 6:45AM EST tomorrow.

At web Content Café I add a new web content idea every day, five days a week.

That means you can sit down each morning and find the inspiration to write a new page for your website.

- Some of the daily post link to tools you can use to identify page topic ideas.

- Some make suggestions as to the type of content you should be adding to your site.

- Some focus on a content best practice to apply.

- Some help you build strength in new areas, like social media, SEO, content marketing etc.

What is the value of adding a new page to your website each day? Well, you don’t need me to answer that question if any of the following apply to you:

- You want more search engine traffic coming to your site.

- You want your readers to come back to your site more often.

- You monetize your site with affiliate programs.

- You monetize your site with contextual ads like AdSense.

- You want to engage your readers until they are ready to buy.

Quality content is the lifeblood of pretty much every website. You need more pages. You need to attract new readers. You need Google to love your site. You need to engage your readers more frequently.

You know all this. But you also know it’s not always easy to keep coming up with new ideas for quality pages.

Well, that’s what Web Content Café is about.

Learn more about Web Content Café here...

Do websites do better than blogs in achieving high rankings in search engine results?

This is a question under discussion in a private forum I belong to.

The thrust of the thread was suggesting that you are more likely to find websites on page one of the search results, and less likely to find blogs.

I felt compelled to contribute the following (slighly edited since posting)...

I think the fact that Google search results deliver theme-based websites more often than blogs has very little to do with the platform, and everything to do with the quality and content of the website or blog.

As every webmaster knows, success depends a great deal on staying the course. The tortoise beats the hare. And as every successful webmaster will tell you, you have to get over the hump and keep adding more and more content.

To succeed, you have to be stubborn, hold the faith and keep writing and improving.

I think the reason why so many blogs fail to do well is that blogging platforms attract people who are impulsive and want a fast result. They want an inexpensive, easy to use platform that allows them to get started right now. They don’t want to do the hard work.

Blogging services attract people who want the easy button.

Those same people would likely also fail if they wrote a theme-based website.

It’s not the platform, it’s the people.

Let me give you an example.

Check out SingleServeCoffee.com. It’s a blog, built on a rather old and unsophisticated custom platform.

The subject is single serve coffee. It was started by a fellow call Jay Brewer a few years go. His site is number one for dozens of very profitable keywords. In fact, he did so well with this blog, he created a work-from-home company called Blogpire.com. He now publishes ten or more theme-based blogs, all on the same, rather clunky platform. Does it work? It works well enough for him to have several remote employees and pay their salaries.

His secret? The same as ours. He works hard and never gives up.

Another way to check out the fact that blogs are perfectly capable of dominating page one of the search results is to explore some specific topic areas. Go to Google and search for “technology gadgets” or “high tech gadgets”. The blogs win hands down. Not because they are blogs, but because they are really good blogs and better than the competing websites.

I could go on and on. (And often do.)

But I’ll just restate my main point. There is nothing about a good website that gives it an advantage over a good blog when it comes to search results. The Google algorithm doesn’t care whether it is looking at a website or a blog. It doesn’t give one platform more gold stars than the other.

The differentiating element is not the platform. It’s the people or person behind the platform.

Read Chapter One of my new book, New Path to Riches.

I have been busy again, and have just published a new book, New Path to Riches.

New Path to Riches is on the same topic as my full course, How to Write Your Own Money-Making Websites.

So why did I write a book, when I already have the course?

The reason for writing the book is simple...

Buying the course and spending the time to write a website is a big commitment.

For each person who has already purchased the course, I think there are probably hundreds of others who are intrigued by the idea of writing a money-making website, but not yet ready to fully commit.

The book is designed to be a stepping stone between feeling intrigued...and making that bigger commitment.

Reading New Path to Riches is just a small step. But it does paint the full picture. It tells the complete story, and shows how various elements in the business world have converged to open the way for people to write quality websites which can make good money.

What are these converging elements?

1. Traditional sources of information are struggling. Newspapers are shutting down. Magazines are closing their doors or getting really skinny. Why? Because advertisers are taking their money online. There is just less information to be found in print these days.

2. Big media and big websites don’t do a very good job at providing information on very narrow topics. Big websites are there for you when you search with the word “coffee”. Websites created by enthusiasts are there for you when you search with the phrase “organic coffee pods”.

3. More and more we are faced not towards big media, but towards each other. We spend less time on big company sites, and more time interacting with each other, via blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so on.

4. We prefer to learn from the “expert next door”. Trust in big media is declining, interest in learning online from other people like ourselves is increasing.

You can probably think of other trends which are also pointing in the same direction.

The point is, there has never been a better time to create your own website on a topic that interests you. There are a mass of tools available to help you build the site, attract visitors and make some money.

Reading New Path to Riches is the first step.

Get it for yourself. Or for your son, your aunt, your neighbour, your mother, a colleague, a friend, or a group online.

You can get the first chapter of New Path to Riches free here...

How many keywords should you optimize for across your website?

I was asked that question recently by someone who had been told he should optimize his website for no more than 14 keywords in total.

Horrible, terrible advice.

Maybe I might optimize the homepage and second level pages for a total of 14 keywords or phrases. But what about the other pages on your site? What about those hundreds of third and fourth level pages?

Hopefully you do a good job of optimizing your home page and major category pages. But the dozens or hundreds of pages beneath those categories all offer wonderful opportunities to attract new search traffic.

Every page on your site should be optimized, and those third level pages give you the chance cast a wider net by addressing the long tail of minor keywords.

As an example, let’s look at the first five days of this month for my site CoffeeDetective.com.

My top 14 keywords accounted for 25.3% of my traffic.

The rest of my traffic, 74.7%, arrived via all the other keywords for which the major search engines found a relevant page on my site.

Guess how many keywords people used to find my site during those first five days of the month alone.

2,513.

14 keywords won’t cut it. You need a bigger net than that.

Big companies don’t answer your questions very well. Experts next door do.

If you type the word coffee into Google, the first result is usually Starbucks. My own site, CoffeeDetective.com, is listed on page twenty of those results.

This isn’t so surprising. We expect the big guy to be number one when we type in any single-word search that describes a broad topic area. Coffee. Money. Travel. Gardening.

But what happens when you type in a question that is far narrower in its meaning?

Go to Google and type in the phrase, “is coffee fattening?”

In this case, CoffeeDetective.com comes in at number one or two, and Starbucks is nowhere to be found.

Big company websites focus on what they do and what they sell. But they don’t do nearly as well when addressing the specific questions that people actually ask.

Try again with “organic coffee pods”.

Again, CoffeeDetective.com is in the number one spot, and Starbucks is nowhere.

The fact that big companies focus primarily on what they do and what they sell provides individuals who are writing their own websites with a wonderful opportunity.

As experts next door, we don’t try to compete on that primary topic description – like coffee, money, travel or gardening. Instead, we find out what people really want to know. What are the real life questions that people are asking? What information are people actually looking for?

By taking the side of people who are asking specific, narrow questions, people writing their own information websites can beat the big guys in search results.

Don’t compete with them on what they do and what they sell. Compete with them on the narrow sub-topics which address the information searchers are actually looking for.