30 replies to this topic

[Jill]

Thought some of you might be interested in my article, You Can't Fake Real Content which was partially inspired by this thread.

If you read SEO articles and forums, you've surely read over and over again how important "good content" is for your SEO efforts. You've heard how you need to write lots of informative articles about whatever it is you offer. Some SEO types even say to write an article a month or a week or even a day—all for the sake of the search engines. They'll often tell you to start a blog, and encourage you to post in it often. "Become an expert!" they'll advise with glee. "Or at least make it look like you're one."

The problem with all of this is that not everyone is an expert, nor should they be. And not every product or service needs articles written about it.

What say you?

[cfreek]

Great article..
I've heard too often of exactly what you are referring to......

[qwerty]

Well, I'm absolutely aghast.

I guess you're not familiar with the rich and fascinating history of door stops. So you don't care that there was a time before the age of the door stop, when doors simply wouldn't stop. They just kept going on their own, endangering anyone who dared attempt to pass. You know the expression, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here"? That was about every door back then. And if it hadn't been for Helmut von Türenhalt, we'd still be living in a world of non-stop doors.

But hey. You don't care. Whatever

[DanThies]

Well, I'm absolutely aghast.

I guess you're not familiar with the rich and fascinating history of door stops. So you don't care that there was a time before the age of the door stop, when doors simply wouldn't stop. They just kept going on their own, endangering anyone who dared attempt to pass. You know the expression, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here"? That was about every door back then. And if it hadn't been for Helmut von Türenhalt, we'd still be living in a world of non-stop doors.

But hey. You don't care. Whatever

Author's Bio:
Norbert Gladstone is the "Door Stop Guru" and owner of "Door Stops Door Stop doorstop doorstops" where you can learn more about buy door stops online.

[1dmf]

So what is the truth on this , I also have read about starting a Blog, writing articles, running RSS feeds, posting in forums.

I web master 15 websites and am IT admin for a group off companies full time. I run a record company as a hobby, I write tunes and produce , infact i'm just about to release my 6th album, I DJ, I support some internet radio stations. I'm SEO and marketer for all domains.

I write all internal systems and members area....... I already don't have enough time in the day, so when am I meant to be doing a blog and such like!

should i stop making [url=http://searchengineland.com/070531-115312.php]Real[i][/i] Content[/url] (my music / albums) etc.. just to write a blog instead, that would defeat the point of my music site, great blog NO MUSIC!

is a blog really necessary and worth the time if it's purely for SEO , and ahh wait a minute, I would be doing it purely for search engines, so therefore it's a bad thing isn't it?

[Jill]

should i stop making real content (my music / albums) etc.. just to write a blog instead, that would defeat the point of my music site, great blog NO MUSIC!

Of course not!

A blog is NEVER necessary. If you want to do one and like to do it because you have stuff to say, well then that's cool. But if you are doing it for SEO, that's just dumb (IMO).

[Carps]

OK. I buy the whole "you can't blog about doorstops" theory - even if an extreme example like this goes to prove very little. The doorstops example is, I assume, meant as a stand in for small, single-product focussed B2B setups.

But even so, I think articles can add value to a business all ways up. Documenting stupid/brilliant customer requests, talking about moves in the marketplace, company events, top tips for your product - even comment on ostensibly dry stuff like legislation, the economy, manufacturing processes - can be fairly decent grist to your mill (assuming you've got a good, imaginative writer). Articles is just a name we give to delivering that content: where else does it go? "About us?" "Products?"

Assuming the content is all relevant to your product or service, I think there are 2 benefits: firstly you increase your chances of picking up some of those long tail searches that you never saw coming rather than focussing on a narrow, perhaps very competitive keyword list. Secondly, it turns your attention to how your business works and why it is interesting: something that too many business owners forget when penning that "about us" page.

All of that assumes a sense of when to stop. I quite agree that any website with 300 useless "articles" about toilet seats is adding nothing to likelihood of me buying a toilet seat.

[1dmf]

But those loo seats made out of plastic with encased sea shells and dolphin pictures are so worth blogging about!

[copywriter]

Nobody is trashing the idea of writing articles. What Jill and others are saying, including myself, is that writing articles because everybody else is writing articles or writing articles solely because somebody told you it would help your SEO is not a good idea. Same goes for blogs and press releases. Like my mother always used to ask, "If your friends jumped off a 10-story building, would you do it?"

I just had a phone call with a client yesterday who asked me how often he should have me write press releases for him. My answer was "how often do you have news to distribute?" Just making up a bunch of fluff when you have nothing relevant to say is always a bad idea whether you're writing a brochure, a postcard, a web page, an article, a press release or anything else.

People scream about content, content, content but they leave out one very important word: relevant.

I think it all boils down to the fact that most webmasters want a cut and paste formula for success with SEO and there just isn't one. It is very much an individual process and what works for one may actually hurt another.

Test and track... test and track... test and track... test and track.

Edited by copywriter, 01 June 2007 - 10:35 AM.

[Carps]

As Smokey Robinson once said (although presumably not in this context): I second that emotion

[jehochman]

I think the title should be "Faking It!"

[torka]

But those loo seats made out of plastic with encased sea shells and dolphin pictures are so worth blogging about!

--Torka

[SERPico]

Thankfully, the pages currently showing up in the top results at Google for laminating machines are actual product pages and not some crazy fake "content" articles written for SEO purposes only.

Thankfully?
So in other words there was an expectation in the back of your mind something may come up? An article that doesn't ad any value to the visitor? But still shows in the SERP?

That article brings in the traffic and if you have a good way of diverting the visitor by adding a notice or displaying your product, in this case a laminating machine then that's mission accomplished in my book Jill

Even though the page has instructions how to insert the laminate and at what angle and so on...If it's informative how trivial it may be and it ads in having content that shows up for specific keywords in the SERPs then writing articles is a good option for a newly born website.

Having descriptive products descriptions is not an edge you can use when you have pages that are out there for years with the same type of products and which has product descriptions just as descriptive as yours.

A blog dumb for SEO? I have to strongly disagree, what if someone picks up a published blog entry and it catches on?
Having feedback from the visitors who comment and create backlinks to your blog and website because they start to feel connected?


For a large part i have to respectfully disagree with the points you have made in your article.

If the overall message was not to create automated jibberish content then i agree.
If the message was not to create content that is trivial allthough it has a good chance in appearing in the SERPs i have to disagree respectfully.

Not being in the SERPs is not to be regarded as being in a better position when you are.

[qwerty]

The idea is to think about it from the user's perspective as much as you can. If they're searching for X does that mean they want to buy X, they want to learn about X, they want to go into business selling X, or what? If your article actually answers their question, great. If they clicked through just because it was at the top of the SERP, but it doesn't even resemble what they're looking for, then have you really accomplished anything?

You got the clickthrough, but you probably won't get the conversion, and the user got a few extra clicks to make in order to find what they want.

[Jill]

SERPico, the point of the article was to let people know that there are a whole slew of dumbass SEOs out there telling every client the same things...they have to be an expert in their field, they have to write articles and they have to have a blog.

What I'm saying is they don't.

Especially when they haven't even fixed what's wrong with their site first.