This past year, there were a number of major Panda and Penguin updates from Google that caused many website rankings to plummet. The Panda updates are intended largely to target and evaluate website content. It might have come as a shock to those whose rankings dropped, but the reality is that the focus on better content has been a long time coming. Search engines have always strived to provide their users with the best and most relevant results, and these recent updates are a continuation of this trend. What made these updates a surprise to many is that many techniques used to bolster rankings in the past (such as keyword stuffing and other types of spammy content) can now actually have a negative impact on a site’s rankings. To improve your local online marketing and avoid any problems, it is important to make sure that your site has quality content.
Create Interest
When considering how to improve quality, remember that the primary purpose of any and all content is to engage the person viewing the website. This may seem obvious, one of the most common mistakes made by website owners is to compromise the quality of their site’s content in order to enhance the website’s SEO value and design. Having an aesthetically pleasing site is important, but site owners should always give priority to the information that their target market wants to see when they visit the site. In order to have a more successful site (both in terms of SEO and general business), you should provide your audience with the content that they want. Make people genuinely want to spend time on your site. When you create content with this purpose in mind, it becomes more natural and interesting and less spammy, which will ultimately mean higher rankings for your site.
Add Variety
Keep it Real
One of the most important things to avoid is the overuse of keywords. Of course, keywords are an integral part of the SEO process, but it is critical that they are used and not abused. When used incorrectly, they can be very damaging to your website, especially after the recent Panda updates. When keyword density is too high or keywords are used repetitively, the content becomes unnatural. People do not want to read spam and neither do search engines. To prevent spammy content, do not use a keyword more than once in a paragraph, and try to use more variety. Every time a keyword is used, it should always make sense in context. When used with care, keywords will yield a lot of benefit; when they are abused, Google recognizes that you are more concerned with SEO than with producing content of value, and your site’s rankings will plummet.
Make it Unique
The last aspect of quality content is that it absolutely must be unique. We all know that plagiarism is against the law, but “borrowed” content also has serious implications for your website. Any form of duplicate content (even if it is used legitimately) can potentially hurt your rankings. Even using the same content repeatedly within your own site can be detrimental. Bottom line: duplicate content should always be avoided or eliminated. Each page on your site should contain unique information that is purposeful and relevant to that page. This improves the perceived value of the content and the quality of the website as a whole.
Creating quality content is as simple as understanding its function: it should be engaging, unique and purposeful. By following these basic principles, your website can be made more search engine friendly and appealing to the people viewing your site. Improving the quality of content can make your website not just easier to find, but something that people actually want to see.
