Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Great Web Content Inspires Both Readers and Search Engines


Here's #5 of a 10-part series on the "The 10 Hallmarks of Great Web Content." Read the full white paper, or view all the blog posts in the series.

Hallmark of Great Web Content #5:
Great Web content is search-engine friendly--while communicating effectively.

Recently I've blogged about how marketers are being tempted to crank-out content to satisfy increasingly voracious search engines. At the end of the day, people, not search engine spiders,
are the ones reading your content. Market leaders know this, and place a premium on content that doesn't just rank, but communicates.

Search engine marketing specialist Todd Miechiels writes: “Companies everywhere want to throw money at search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) in hopes of getting their share of the new, less-costly-to-acquire customers that Internet marketing has promised.

“The truth is, without content—and I mean good content that clearly communicates, persuades and inspires—a good amount of search marketing dollars are wasted. A lot of companies get lazy on the content development side, which turns a pretty low risk marketing channel into a pretty sure bust.”

Also check out the advice of Aaron Wall in his article, “If People Hate Your Writing, Google Hates Your Website.” He writes, “Content without links only works if you operate in an undiscovered or uncompetitive niche. … If you point a few more quality links at a real content page, it will rank far better and be far more profitable than a hand-crafted page that was created exclusively for bots.”

In other words, it’s important for content to be spider-friendly—but that is a secondary objective. It’s far more crucial that your content is written for people and packaged for people.

For more hallmarks of great web content, read the white paper.
illustration credit

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