The 10 Essential Rules for High-Quality Content Creation
Content creation is one of the biggest factors today that can make or break your website. For truly high-quality content, stick to these must-know guidelines.
For those who are new to the process of website management, creating good content can feel like running a maze: confusing, frustrating, and nearly impossible.
Here are 10 guidelines for what you shouldn’t do in the process of content creation (and what you should do instead).
#1 Automatically Generated Content
Content is king. The problem is, it’s hard to come up with new ideas every single week for months or years on end.
In this sense, automatically generated content can seem like a godsend. But Google doesn’t look kindly on automatically generated content, particularly if it’s been designed to manipulate search rankings instead of helping users.
This includes things like:
- Text that makes no sense to the reader but contains search keywords
- Text generated through Markov chains and other automated processes
- Text generated using automated synonymizing or obfuscation techniques
- Text generated on an automated tool without human review
- Stitching together content from various sites without adding sufficient value
If Google sees that you’re engaging in any of these techniques, they will take action against your site.
What to Do Instead
The answer is simple: create original content.
That is, create content that is more than someone else’s ideas rehashed. The content should be your original ideas, in your own words, answering the most pressing questions your customers are asking.
It should be useful, engaging, and relevant.
#2 Sneaky Redirects
Sneaky redirects are pretty much exactly what they sound like.
Let’s say you click on this link about why a title tag is valuable. You’re expecting a page about title tags.
Instead, you get a product page.
This is bad SEO for one simple reason: you’re deceiving search engines and users alike about what your page offers and ranking for searches that aren’t actually relevant to your page.
What to Do Instead
Instead, give your users what they ask for.
If they click on a link to your old dog page and you redirect them to your new dog page, that’s fine. If you redirect them to your horse page, that’s a sneaky redirect, and Google won’t be happy about it.
#3 Link Schemes
Google’s stance on link schemes is pretty clear: any links intended to manipulate PageRank or your site’s ranking is viewed as a link scheme and is thus in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
What to Do Instead
There are no two ways around it: you have to earn the links you get.
That means building a strong internal and external linking structure while creating high-quality content. You should be creating high-value content that acts as a resource other sites will want to use when creating their own content.
#4 Cloaking
Picture this.
You’re searching the web, minding your business. Let’s say you’re doing some research on API encryption. And let’s say you find the perfect result on Google.
You’re excited. You click.
The site you get isn’t anything like the site you were promised.
This is what happens when a search engine lists a cloaked site by accident-they think the site is something different too. The whole technique is about tricking search engines to achieve short-term search ranking results.
What to Do Instead
However you frame it, cloaking is about tricking search engines. Eventually, search engines will figure out what you’re doing and you will get blackballed.
Use your common sense instead and work on ranking for search terms that are relevant to you.
#5 Hidden Text and Links
Some site owners will keep their sites readable to humans while hiding keywords and links on the page in order to rank for them, as web crawlers can’t always tell the difference.
One way to do this is to make keywords or links the same color as the background of the page. Humans can’t see it, but web crawlers can, so they rank the site for those terms.
Search engines will figure it out pretty soon after all.
What to Do Instead
If you’re going to rank for keywords or links, do it the right way.
Naturally incorporate keywords into your content, as if you’re having a conversation with someone. They shouldn’t feel shoehorned or unnatural if you’re working with keywords that are relevant to your content, this shouldn’t even be that difficult.
#6 Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are sometimes called gateway pages, portal pages, jump pages, or entry pages.
It’s an SEO technique in which the door is designed to capture the attention of a web crawler using relevant keywords and phrases, often in the hidden text so only the spider can find it.
So a user clicks a link thinking they’re getting one page and winds up somewhere totally different.
What to Do Instead
Google doesn’t like doorway pages, as they don’t look kindly on this type of trick.
Not only does this drain your site’s link popularity, but it also redirects potential customers to a page that may have unsavory (or illegal) content.
Don’t fall into the trap of doorway pages. Give your viewers what they signed up for right from the beginning.
#7 Scraped Content
Scraping content is when you illegally take content from somewhere else on the Internet and present it on your site as your own content. Some sites will copy entire websites and present them as their own.
It’s like plagiarizing your high school English paper, except instead of a paper, it’s your web page and your business that will be docked for it.
What to Do Instead
As with your high school English paper, the answer is simple: stop copying other people’s work. Put in the time and effort required to craft your own.
If you’re struggling to come up with original ideas, work with an SEO agency that will help you plan ahead. Whatever you do, don’t fall back on copying the work of others.
#8 Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs aren’t automatically a bad thing for your website.
In fact, they can be fantastic for your SEO…if you and your affiliates are both following good ranking practices and performing well because of it.
Bad affiliate programs, however, fall back under the category of link schemes-you’re exchanging a backlink for money.
What to Do Instead
Offer quality affiliate links to your partners and only pay them when a customer buys a product or service through their link.
This should not be a link exchange, but rather a solid affiliate program that rewards both sides while abiding by search engine guidelines.
#9 Irrelevant Keywords
Irrelevant keywords are at the heart of most underhanded SEO programs.
You see, a human can tell whether a complete webpage is reliable and relevant to their search, but web crawlers don’t read a website the same way. They have to rely on keywords as their first clue about how to index a website.
It may be tempting to rank for any keyword you can think of in order to game the system and get your site ranked highly.
However, it doesn’t do your customers any good to rank for keywords that aren’t relevant to you.
What to Do Instead
In the long haul, ranking for irrelevant keywords will hurt you.
Instead, focus only on keywords that are relevant to your offerings. If you’re a law firm specializing in traumatic brain injuries, then you want to rank for search terms related to personal injury.
# 10 Creating Pages with Malicious Behavior
As a rule, web pages with malicious intent don’t qualify as a good customer experience.
According to Google guidelines, this includes things like:
- Including unwanted files in a download requested by a user
- Injecting new pop-up ads on a page
- Changing a user’s browser or homepage information without their consent
- Installing trojans, malware, spyware, or other viruses
- Manipulating the location of the content on a page so that a user’s click registers somewhere else on the page
What to Do Instead
Does this really need an explanation?
If you’re in the business of helping your customers, you should be in the business of giving them the best possible experience on your website.
That means giving them a webpage that provides genuinely helpful information without any hidden tricks, underhanded techniques, or harmful practices. They’re your customers, so take good care of them.
Better Content Creation from the Start
The key to good content creation is to keep your customers in mind. Good SEO, after all, is all about giving your customers the best possible experience. That’s where we come in.
If you want to find out more about what we can do to help, get in touch with us today.
Originally published at https://zimamedia.com on January 3, 2019.
