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Google’s Good writing Content Filter

Al the web pages at the top of Google have only one thing in common: good writing. The importance of good content should not be distracted by the impact of frames, JavaScript, etc . The top-ranking web pages on Google are consistently much better written than the vast majority of what one reads on the web.

Common On-the-Page Website Content Success Factors

Google is doing a good job of identifying websites with good content and rewarding them with high rankings. The web pages that contained written content all shares the following features:

1) Updating: Frequent updating of content, at least once every few weeks, and more often, once a week or more.

2) Spelling and grammar: Few or no errors. No page had more than three misspelled words or four grammatical errors. Spelling and grammar errors are identified by using Microsoft Word’s check feature, and then ruling out words marked as misspellings that are either proper names or new words that are simply not in the dictionary.

3) Paragraphs: Primarily brief (1-4 sentences). Few or no long blocks of text.

4) Lists: Both bulleted and numbered, form a large part of the text.

5) Sentence length: Mostly brief (10 words or fewer). Medium-length and long sentences are sprinkled throughout the text rather than clumped together.

6) Contextual relevance: Text contains numerous terms related to the keyword, as well as stem variations of the keyword. The page may contain the keyword itself few times or not at all.

SEO “Do’s” and “Don’ts”

A hard look at the results slaughters a number of SEO bugbears.

1) PageRank. Page rank is most important criteria. It is a kind of measurement scale in which it rates your website vis-à-vis other websites based on the number and types of backlinks your WebPages are getting. The median PageRank was 4.

2) Frames. Frames may still be a bad web design idea from a usability standpoint, and they may ruin your search engine rankings if your site’s linking system depends on them.

3) JavaScript-formatted internal links. Most of the websites use JavaScript for their internal page links. Again, that’s not the best web design practice, but there are worse things you could do.

4) Keyword optimization. The keyword optimization is must from the Search engine point of view. Many of the pages do not contain the keywords at all. That may just demonstrate the power of anchor text in inbound links. It may also demonstrate that Google takes a site’s entire content into account when categorizing it and deciding what page to display.

5) Sub-headings. On most pages, sub-headings were either absent or in the form of images rather than text. That’s a very bad design practice. But again, Google is more forgiving.

6) Links: Most of the web pages contained ten or more links; many contain over 30, in defiance of the SEO bugbears about “link popularity bleeding.” Moreover, nearly all the pages contained a significant number of non-relevant links. On many pages, non-relevant links outnumbered relevant ones. Of course, it’s not clear what benefit the website owners hope to get from placing irrelevant links on pages. It has been a proven way of lowering conversion rates and losing visitors.

7) Originality: A significant number of pages contained content copied from other websites. In all cases, the content was professionally written content apparently distributed on a free-reprint basis. The reprint content did not consist of content feeds. However, no website consisted solely of free-reprint content. There was always at least a significant portion of original content, usually the majority of the page.

Recommendations

1) Make sure a professional writer, or at least someone who can tell good writing from bad, is creating your site’s content, particularly in the case of a search-engine optimization campaign. If you are a SEO, make sure you get a pro to do the content.

2) If you write your own content, make sure that it passes through the hands of a skilled copyeditor or writer before going online.

3) Update your content often. It’s important both to add new pages and update existing pages. If you can’t afford original content, use free-reprint content.

4) Distribute your content to other websites on a free-reprint basis. This will help your website get links in exchange for the right to publish the content. It will also help spread your message and enhance your visibility.

Thus, in summary, if you have a mature website that is already indexed and getting traffic, you should consider making sure that the bulk of your investment in your website is devoted to its content, rather than graphic design, old search-engine optimization, or linking campaigns.