When browsing the web through searching different topics on google, you may wonder how it selects web pages to put at the beginning. The answer may be clear that it's based on "hits" or number of visits to the page, but how does a web page acquire this? Based on the likability of the content, users will often utilize social networking, blogs, etc to link these web pages, giving them more and more hits, working their way up to search engine popularity. The opposite of this will also be the result of bad online content.
According to How to Create Compelling Content that Ranks Well in Search Engines, two important factors a web page needs to have are "flair for writing content that's inviting to share and link to" and also the right keywords. The writing content should be everyone's purpose for creating a web page. While people's ideas of "good" and "bad" content may be subjective, there's more to this. Good content also grabs one's attention with how it's laid out on the page and something a reader will find interesting. In my experience, even if I didn't like the content particularly, if I thought it was "out of the ordinary", I would still link to the page. Since most people utilize search engines when looking for specific information, keywords become very important. A specific headline and how often the keywords are used both provide importance to search engines. This gives an idea to the search engine what the page is about, and along with people linking to the page as feedback, the page will rank higher.
Going more in depth with linking good content, How you will Change the World with Social Networking gives insight on various ways to share information. One specific example was the "16 & Loved" campaign that Zandt participated in. This was an outlet to help women who were 16 and had abortions. While social networking can be used for recreation, it also serves as a good outlet for activism. Proven through this campaign, many positive messages were sent, to the girls whom participated. There are many more young women who deal with this issue and have to cope with this choice. By bringing it to light, support was gained and the campaign was spread. A major reason for this was the content.
Now for some examples of "good" online content:
A website I visit frequently for various reasons is the East Coast Collective page. One could be curious to know, what is an East Coast Collective? The name is very specific to any other pages, but also peculiar. You are given a general location and the word "collective", meaning a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest. The interest of this page is primarily talent buying to have bands play shows on Long Island. When first stumbling on the page it goes write to a message board, giving news about their shows, events, and music in general. There are also ticket buying links, online forums, a photo gallery, and a little resume. They're also clickable links to facebook and twitter to follow East Coast Collective and spread their link around. The content has much variety and is great for people who love music, like myself.
IMDb also has good online content. For anything movie or TV related, this is definitely the site to use. It also gives point of views from viewers rather than just the critic (you know how misleading those can be). Whether it's movies that have been released, opening in theaters, or news on up and coming works, it can be found here. There's also an app tab so you can take this entire movie database with you when you're on the go.
And some bad:
I personally dislike About.com. The entire layout of this page in my opinion is not user friendly and very overwhelming. There's just way to much content to sift through and find a story I'd be interested in. They even put an advertisement mixed in with topics on the homepage, you could easily click this and get an annoying pop-up. The quantity seems to be great, considering there's many topics to explore through, but good online content also requires quality. Something this website seriously lacks.
Despite how entertaining it may be to read Yahoo Answers, it makes for bad online content. It's open for anyone to answer questions people ask, which can easily lead to "trolling." Some questions are also ridiculous. Just looking now I came across one asking "Do atheists believe rocks are alive?" (really?). My advice is if you have a question, ask a parent, friend, guardian, teacher, boss, even annoying in-laws, just avoid Yahoo Answers.
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