Thu Dec 27 12:03:16 PST 2018

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? low-quality content reflects poorly on you and wastes your link equity
that could be going toward getting unique content pages ranked.
? Many people add unfocused garbage to their site, which loses the
interest of their visitors.
? Some unscrupulous parties copy the contents of other websites
without asking. Tools such as CopyScape make this easy to detect,
although legal enforcement is cost prohibitive and too time consuming
for most publishers.
? Many tools scrape various RSS feeds and mix them to create many
content pages. Content generation tools such as these will require
search engines to place even greater trust on linkage data.
Some people also clutter up the Internet with search result screen scrapers and
other auto content generation crap. I am generally against generating low-quality
automated content, as I feel it lowers the quality and functionality of the web as a
whole, though I suppose some people may find it effective for generating traffic (at
least until their sites get banned
.
Comparison Content
Many times, people are interested in the difference between two similar or
competing products. I created pages comparing Overture (now known as Yahoo!
Search Marketing
to Google AdWords, and many people search to find the pages
comparing and contrasting those two systems.
Content Format
Sometimes the format of information is as important as its quality. By distributing
information in different formats, it might become easier to pick up inbound links.
For example, good blog posts are often viral marketing link magnets.
Radio is not very competitive in many markets. SEO Rockstars and SEO Radio
are a few SEO-related radio programs that pick up many inbound links. There is
one quarterly print magazine about search marketing; as such, it is easy for them to
gain links because they are the only people distributing content in that format.
Ideal Content
If you can create something that becomes a well-cited authoritative work in your
field, it is worth far more than creating dozens of low-quality pages. The authority
granted by one well-referenced document will help boost the rankings of every
page on your site.
It is a good idea to create day-to-day content, but it is smart from a business
perspective to also try to create a few industry-standard pieces of work. Some
examples of well cited things I have done:
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