Food For Tought: High quality content doesn't mean it's going to be seen
Hi everyone, I would like to give you some "Food For Tought" based on my personal experience hoping for some feedback: The quality of your content has much less correlation (than initially thougt) with the probability of people to actually see this content. – my personal Statement I often find very good content (Text, Infographics, whatever) on Google page 3,4,5 .. It's often way better (especially in small niches) than what I find on Page 1 or 2. Since we all know, people are very unlikely to go to Google page 2 or even 3 or 4 this content ist very unlikely to be seen by many people. This is due to the fact that the content you can find on page 1&2 is pretty much always published on high authority websites. But if you have no access to publish your content on a high authority website you won't be able to compete with this content. Your content can be way better, keyword optimized as hell, unique and up-to-the-minute, you won't be able to rank high because you don't publish on a high authority website. Of course there is always a slight chance that you go viral or some journalist finds your content, but let's be honest, that's nearly impossible. So here is the point: I don't think that Google is able to keep their promise of organizing the internets information to give people the "best" results. It's more like the real world: if you are someone, people will listen to what you are saying. If you are small, you will need a lot of luck (+hard work) to make oneself heard. Hence a lot of very good content won't be seen, while a lot of mediocre content takes the place which should be reserved for the best content due to Googles promise. Pretty provocative post, isn't it? 27 💬🗨
ykevin Simple answer: Google does not consider those contents you say "good content" on Google page 3,4,5 as a "good" one, compared to those contents on the first page. Longer one: How did you define about "good content"? More precisely: how did you calculate those contents on Google page 2,3,4 as a good ones? We, humans, can think a content as a "funny" or the content give us the information we needed, and we say the content is "good" – unfortunately Google can't feel or think like us, humans (or maybe not yet?) As of now, Google is search engine and it works with its own algorithms. Those algorithms takes many factors to rank all of those contents on their SERP. I heard there are at least than 200 factors to determine the rank. And remember, those factors can be quantified. Some examples are how many of words in that content, how many of links to that content page, how many minutes the users stay with your content, and other quantified factors. Yes, Google is smarter than the old days, but it's still not yet reached the point like us, humans. And yes, you said it yourself:
So here is the point: I don't think that Google is able to keep their promise of organizing the internets information to give people the "best" results. It's more like the real world: if you are someone, people will listen to what you are saying. If you are small, you will need a lot of luck (+hard work) to make oneself heard. Hence a lot of very good content won't be seen, while a lot of mediocre content takes the place which should be reserved for the best content due to Googles promise.
As I observed so far, Google decide a site as authorities one by counting the number of links to that site, how many its followers, how many searches for that site, and etc etc.
[deleted] Good point. By good content I mean well structured, detailed but not over the top, well designed, proofed and so on.. but I'm glad you got my point. Only because people follow/like/share ur content it doesn't mean that it is the best/good.
ykevin Yes. The best one or the good ones does not always win.
cheddarben I don't know if it is provocative. Even if an individual piece of content is awesome, if it is surrounded by crap on a sketchy website, Google is less likely to pay you attention. If you gain notoriety (shares/clicks/visits) for that shiny nugget in an otherwise giant pile of crap, Google will reward that piece of content. You still, however, are in a pile of crap and people don't like putting their hands into crap. It isn't only about the individual unit of content, but the entire body of work and also the source of the content. If Hemingway came back from the dead today and started a blog, he would rise to the top of searches for him pretty quickly. Not only because of what he was writing, but the authority and trust that everything else would give him very rapidly. Even if the whole 'being undead' thing made him a bad writer, I still think he would go all the way up. I am a food blogger. Google doesn't have the time to subjectively read my article on a "white russian recipe" and say "AHHHH!!! GOOD SIR, you have written the opus of White Russian Recipes!!!! Bring this fine recipe TO THE TOP!" Nor do they want to. They try and listen to all the signs of what everybody else is saying. People trust liquor.com and Kahlua and all these other places and THAT ultimately is why their recipe is at the top. As an SEO practitioner, it is my job to use whatever skills I have to first select my battlefield (keywords) and then to execute. While vying for control of the board, I work to see the chinks in the armor of everybody around me and if there is a way that I can take advantage of that. Liquor.com maybe doesn't have the time or resources or even care about this little battle I am fighting. Suzie blogger who is above me might have stopped blogging or doesn't know about Google's switch to mobile first or about the new fields in the rich cards. I will work to jump on that and take advantage of a weakness to my benefit. In general, I think Google does exactly what it intends and it works fairly well. The "best" result is often more than the unit of content, but also a matter of the source and subject.
ayhme With a domain like Liquor.com your SEO would take care of itself. :) BillyBob_Mor Nice work and I agree. ekcunni Well said.
wordswithmagic Ah! I always get on a fight with my SEO friends over this (I am a Content Marketer). I believe, that in 2018, we need to take a holistic approach toward Digital Marketing. We need a combined, collective force to push visibility. Here is the process I recommend (which works as well) • Publish the blog. The Great blog (greatness, quality is a subjective matter) • Spread it across social media to get that initial push • maybe spend some dollars to get some targeted traffic. $5 budget per blog on FB can give 2000 views in some countries. • And then, wait for the SEO magic, which will happen gradually. Add few 'quality' backlinks, and keep on the momentum. Few internal links after a week, few edits in the content body, and boy. High chances that it shall rank.
Success_Chemistry I agree ☝️ ddh85 I agree with this too. The key to gaining rankings with content is to find the niche and be so good with your own content in that niche that the other copy-and-pasters cannot compete. Once those niche rankings have been established in the top 3, move onto the broader keywords and keep up the same strategy that helped you rank for the niche ones. After some time, getting some natural backlinks help with the slowly generated rankings.
superfli Not enough attention is given to promoting content. A lot of people think content will automatically be found. There's need to be a plan to get it out there. Building an email list is important of course. You own it and can reach out to people when appropriate. With regard to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and getting on the 1st page I can appreciate its difficult and especially when you are up against bigger players in the market. I'm guessing they won't be easy to topple unless your content outperforms their content over time. If a site with more authority and links performs worse than your website (eg more pages viewed, lesser bounce rate, etc) I'm assuming Google will pick up in this and eventually show your content higher and on page 1 eventually. Am I correct?
kepler456
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You are correct, but when this good content is on page 5 or so, almost no one ever clicks through, and so Google never gets this data to be able to rank you higher. You need to somehow get to the first page before you can hope that Google would begin to rank you better just because the content you got is better. I see this failing quite a lot though, some spammy sites rank well and are never overrun.
Jortsftw Agree with you re: good content not necessarily making the first page. Authority does seem to be the name of the game, and authority doesn't equal quality. The stuff on TechTarget's blogs, for instance, ranks well, but I find it to be low information and low quality. I'd argue another part of this is that so much written content is mediocre. There's plenty of garbage on major vendors' blogs, ditto a lot of news sites. I wrote a few painfully introductory pieces about Machine Learning (ML)/Artificial Intelligence (AI) at work, and remember being frustrated with the uninformative quality of a lot of journalism about ML/AI. I mentioned this to a programmer friend, who said "yeah, programmers make fun of tech journalists all the time for their ignorance." Yet, the programmers aren't writing the content that gets seen, so…ignorance breeds like rabbits. To go out on a less bleak note, keep in mind that Animal Farm got rejected, multiple times. T.S. Eliot, of all people, was one editor who rejected it. The best political novel of the 20th century barely got into print. IgorAMG Google cares about brands. The bigger the brand, the more consideration it'll receive. Its content will rank higher for a reason – they are trustworthy and authoritative. It doesn't mean their content will be better, but certainly they will have earned more "cred" than the dozens of competing bloggers who are nobody. This is in line with how things work in real life. There are many talented artists out there whose creations go unnoticed because they're not established. It's not until they receive promotion (push their work to galleries/studios/publishers/etc) that their work gets noticed. After they reach a certain level of popularity they can put out medicore (or straight up shitty) work and it'll still get exposure. Harsh truth, but the point is to underline the importance & value of promotion. Content by itself isn't enough until you grow your credibility.
