Striking it rich

Some years ago, I was asked by an online recruitment agency to write copy for their home page. The job came with strict instructions: I had to make sure that the agency's name was repeated at least eight times. The agency owner was adamant that this was the way he wanted his website to go.

Why? He believed, as many did, that this would ensure that his website would come high in the results from Google's search engine. But I felt, even back then, that this was definitely not the right way for any website to go.

The decline of content farms
Websites known as 'content farms' used to churn out tons of low-quality articles – one of them, Demand Media, actually produced the equivalent of four English-language Wikipedias a year! All that mattered was that the articles contained the keywords – search words and phrases – that people put into Google.
The only goal for these websites was to appear high up in Google search results where they would be clicked on by unwary users. They earned money from advertising, affiliate programmes and other offers, not from anything they actually created or did themselves. This was search engine optimisation (SEO) at all costs.
Users found it almost impossible to discover good-quality content among all that online 'pollution' or 'noise'. So, two years ago, Google announced it was adjusting the rules, or algorithm, it set for its searches to 'provide better rankings for high-quality sites – sites with original content and information'. Traffic to content farms dropped steeply and many of them disappeared.
Nevertheless, quite a few companies, web developers and web designers are still wedded to idea that the simple repetition of keywords is the most important thing you can do to achieve SEO.
If this isn't how websites should be constructed to be successful in terms of search, what are the alternatives?

Rich content
Search terms are not enough - what a website needs is 'rich content'. According to Google, web best practice is to have 'original content, original research, authoritative information, or other compelling ways of adding value for users' – content that sits comfortably within the context of your website and your business or organisation.

Google goes on:
A site that users love or mention to their friends is the sort of site that Google typically wants to return in our search results. A good litmus test is to ask 'What unique or compelling value does my site offer that other sites don’t?' (Search Engine Land)
Google is now keen for websites, through their rich content, to attract links from other sites – the more authoritative the better – and to be more shareable via social media such as Twitter and Facebook. That way, they attract more traffic simply because they are interesting, readable and relevant.
Google also says that 'low-quality pages on one part of a site can impact the overall ranking of that site.' So those in charge of websites have to keep trying to attain, if not perfection, then something damn close to it.

Rich content with elements of SEO
Now imagine that you have all the benefits of rich content and you add a few – but only a very few – of the tactics of the content farmers.
For instance, when you're creating your headings, use the Google AdWords keyword tool. This will give you guidance on what words and phrases users are actually putting into search engines to find your kind of content.
A little heading tweaking may not push your website way up the results, but in a world when there are millions of internet searches a minute, every little bit helps!

Nancy Duin of The Thing Itself is part of Cypres' ecosystem.