Saturday, February 5, 2011

AboutUs Weblog

AboutUs Weblog

Good Content: The Holy Grail in a Spam-Filled Web

Posted: 04 Feb 2011 04:09 PM PST

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen lots of discussions on SEO blogs about search engines turning their attention to keeping web pages with “scraped” or low-quality content out of search results.

It’s certainly frustrating to wade through pages of copycat “articles” when you’re looking for specific information. But it’s not a trivial task for search engines to figure out whether content is any good. Blekko, which allows people to mark specific search results as spam, has chosen to block all content from 20 different sites that have been repeatedly marked as spam.

That’s a pretty drastic measure. Google says it’s altering its algorithm to eliminate content from “scraper” sites that simply copy information from other websites, adding no value. But that still doesn’t take care of the web pages that have hand-written content that simply isn’t very useful – articles like the one pictured above, for example.

All the talk about blocking low-quality content from search engine results can make a website owner wonder about his or her own content. Is it good enough to escape the “low-quality” designation? What’s good enough, anyway? How can you create enough of the good stuff and still run a business?

We’ve addressed these issues in a new article, Good Content vs. Spam. In it, we discuss content farms and why they’re a problem, what good content is and why it matters for people and search engines.

Have you had problems with spam in search engine results? Are you puzzled about how to create good content for your website? We’d like to know what you want to learn about. Tell us in the comments section below.

AboutUs Newsletter Hot Off the Press

Posted: 04 Feb 2011 01:48 PM PST

Thanks to everyone who read our recent monthly email newsletter!

In this issue we're announcing several new features on AboutUs.org.

Perhaps the biggest news is the launch of our Redirectory in the Website Visibility Report. There are benefits to redirecting other domain names to your website.

Also, our library of Learn articles is growing thanks to the wonderful contributions of our expert guest authors. Check out the online marketing section to find a complete list of topics:

We welcome everyone’s thoughts. Let us how we can help you and your website in the future. Give us a call at 1.800.AboutUs ext. ext. 2, or email us at: visibility@aboutus.org.

Didn't get our newsletter? Click to see it — or sign up to receive our next issue.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)