Writing good content for the web, by Ian Jensen.

           blogs.msdn.com

     Brian Clark’s article “How to create compelling content that ranks well in search engines” is a terrific guide to good search engine optimization for what a person writes on the internet. I enjoyed his technical approach to content and who the content will attract based search engine priorities and people’s interest. I remember reading an article that said if your content doesn’t come up on the first page of results it’s as if your content doesn’t exist. I find it incredibly true. I can count on my fingers the amount of times I went to the 2^nd page of my search results in Google.

     Deanna Zandt in her article “How you will change the world with social networking” talks specifically about having an online presence. She states that good content should create empathy with your target audience or at least for those that would be interested in your content. Combining these two authors and their points of view creates a very good technical and philosophical balance. It’s interesting how their ideas overlap. Brian points out that search results rely on how your content is used outside your site (through links and references to other content online) Deanna’s approach of building online relationships and a solid online presence does exactly the same thing. No one would link to your content if they didn’t respect you are at least know you exist.

     I think Deanna’s ideas illustrate an opinion leader concept in media. People who don’t have a stance on a social or political topic will more likely follow the opinions of someone who they respect and feel is informed rather than watching campaign ads or speeches of a particular politician. Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken who come from opposite political points of view have well designed web sites with very clear article titles that invite you to read further.

        Rush Limbaugh

             Al Franken

     Rush Limbaugh uses links within his articles to point to different web sites. Al Franken gives you a preview of the article on his web site but provides an outside link to read the full article. Rush Limbaugh uses many images and illustrations but Al Franken gives you short and concise introductory texts and links that invite you to click on the outside source for the full article. Both of these strategies are constistent with Brian Clark’s ideas of creating high ranking content by using links to the outside.

     Providing other media appaels to our other senses. Although silentday.org uses photos and colors to enhance their front page, their content is unclear and has a variety of distracting elements that makes it difficult to understand the information. When I look at their front page the first things I see are large red and white icons that say Submit your story or photo here. It takes me longer to comprehend the red and black text. It took some time understand the text because it had very little structure. The statistics and sentances had no discernable formatting. There were no links to any outside content which could explain their 4^th page ranking in my Google search results.

     Medicalcannabis.com at first glance looks like a serious web site until you review its content. It contains many links to external web sites but the content has no clear title, each sentence is on a separate line and all of them are centered on the page. There is little distinction from article to article. All of them seems to run together. The titles as well as the external links are underlined using the same color and font size. There is little media and very poor organization. The content also seems to overuse the word “marijuana”. Brian Clarks definition of “Keyword stuffing” would apply here and could explain it’s very low ranking in the Google search results.

Here are some other examples of good and bad content on the Internet.

Good:
http://www.manwomanmyth.com/
http://www.hawking.org.uk/
http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/how-to-be-a-writer/

Bad: WARNING: These web sites can cause migrane headaches.
http://art.yale.edu/AboutThisSite

http://www.pennyjuice.com/htmlversion/whoispj.htm
http://www.umich.edu/~ac213/student_projects05/cf/history.html