Content - Content - Content
Tips and Suggestions for writing your content and deciding what should be on your website.
Information from CowboyUp Websites and Google Webmaster Central™
Offer quality content and services
Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.
Good practices for content
Write easy-to-read text - Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.
- Avoid:
- - writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes
- - embedding text in images for textual content (users may want to copy and paste the text and search engines can't read it)
Stay organized around the topic - It's always beneficial to organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends. Breaking your content up into logical chunks or divisions helps users find the content they want faster.
- Avoid:
- - dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation
Use relevant language - Think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece of your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to the topic.
Create fresh, unique content - New content will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in new visitors.
- Avoid:
- - rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users
- - having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site
Offer exclusive content or services - Consider creating a new, useful service that no other site offers. You could also write an original piece of research, break an exciting news story, or leverage your unique user base. Other sites may lack the resources or expertise to do these things.
Create content primarily for your users, not search engines - Designing your site around your visitors' needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.
- Avoid:
- - inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying or nonsensical to users
- - having blocks of text like "frequent misspellings used to reach this page" that add little value for users
Promote your website in the right ways
While most of the links to your site will be gained gradually, as people discover your content through search or other ways and link to it, Google understands that you'd like to let others know about the hard work you've put into your content. Effectively promoting your new content will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested in the same subject. As with most points covered in this document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your site.
Good practices for promoting your website
Blog about new content or services - A blog post on your own site letting your visitor base know that you added something new is a great way to get the word out about new content or services
Don't forget about offline promotion - Putting effort into the offline promotion of your company or site can also be rewarding. For example, if you have a business site, make sure its URL is listed on your business cards, letterhead, posters, etc. You could also send out recurring newsletters to clients through the mail letting them know about new content on the company's website.
Know about social media sites - Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content.
- Avoid:
- - attempting to promote each new, small piece of content you create; go for big, interesting items
- - involving your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the top of these services
Add your business to Google's Local Business Center - If you run a local business, adding its information to Google's Local Business Center will help you reach customers on Google Maps and web search.
Reach out to those in your site's related community - Chances are, there are a number of sites that cover topic areas similar to yours. Opening up communication with these sites is usually beneficial. Hot topics in your niche or community could spark additional ideas for content or building a good community resource.
- Avoid:
- - spamming link requests out to all sites related to your topic area
- - purchasing links from another site with the aim of getting PageRank instead of traffic
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