The Content Myth: More Pages can be Bad Business

If you've read any sort of information on getting your website seen by search engines such as Yahoo, Google, MSN etc, you might have found yourself being told that one of the ways to get your search engine ranking up is to have loads of pages on your website, all of which are filled to the top with keywords, and text that barely makes any sense.

The concept is that these pages are big traffic lures, and despite the fact that the content is bogus, at least people are coming to your website.

An example of this kind of content can be seen at Sebastian Rossi Diamonds, a website I worked on for a friend of mine who had employed a 'search engine guru' to help his new business along. This guru claimed he could have my buddy's search engine ranking off the charts in mere weeks, and all he would need would be pages and pages of senseless, keyword-heavy content.

The only problem? It doesn't work that way.

Well, okay, scratch that, it works in as much as that tactic brings people to the website, but once they get there, what they see looks like crap - so they leave.

Here's a sample of the 'guru' content, from a page titled "find your loose diamonds online":

If you are in the market for loose diamonds, you’ve come to the right place. The simplest way to shop for loose diamonds and save yourself time and money is to buy them online. It will give you the best selection for finding a variety of prices according to quality. A diamond is made up of carbon buried deep within the earth under intense pressure and heat. They became popular because they are the hardest known substance and therefore don’t break easily, crack or chip. India began mining them over a thousand years go.

Now, this, of course, is absolute rubbish. It tells you nothing, it's hastily written, meaningless twaddle, and if you spend any sort of time online you find these sorts of pages all over the place, and you probably lunge for the 'back' button whenever it happens.

What the 'guru' does is repeat "loose diamonds" as many times as possible, including in the title of the page itself, and even in the domain name. He says "loose diamonds" twice in two sentences, throws in 'quality', 'selection', and 'online' and he repeats that same mantra on dozens of other pages, all similarly devoid of actual information, eventually rolling into diamond history just to fill space.

Now, in contrast, I wrote a few pages for my buddy after the 'guru' had finished, to help him make the site seem more professional. Here's a sample of what I wrote for him:

Sebastian Rossi Diamonds doesn’t sell precious stones at the cheapest price around. We don’t undercut everyone to find new customers. We don’t mass market to bring the hordes of bargain hunters to our website. We simply do one thing, and we do it very well – we sell top quality diamonds for a fair price. You may find other companies who’ll sell you a VS2 diamond for less than we sell ours. You may well find companies that sell S1 diamonds for less than you’ll find them selling for on our site. But we guarantee you that if you compare their VS2 diamond with our VS2 diamond, and have them appraised by an independent valuer, the Sebastian Rossi diamond will be clearer, higher quality, and worth a lot more.

And that’s how we keep our customers coming back – by giving you more than you paid for. Sebastian Rossi Diamonds – call us today and tell us how we can help you.

Hola! Now there is some custom-written copy that presents the business in question as professional, reliable, honest and trustworthy. And what's more - it's LOADED with keywords!

"Top quality diamonds", "independent valuer", "higher quality", "precious stones", "cheapest prices", "clarity chart"... all thrown into the copy without ever once making it appear as if the object was to lure search engine hits to that page - when that was the object from the outset.

Now, what's most impressive about this copy is not that it reads so well, or that it sells without the client realizing they're being sold to - it's that this page is the single most hit page on the Sebastian Rossi website. In fact, if you do a Google search for Sebastian Rossi diamonds, you'll find this page ranked higher than even their HOME PAGE!

Can you imagine the results if the owner of the website had paid to have my company write content for fifty pages, rather than five? Traffic explosion!

But - and it's a big but - that kind of content doesn't run cheap. Right now, in online freelance marketplaces, you'll find job after job being offered to freelance writers that asks for 300 pages of content written about Florida hotels, or 80 pages of content written about organizing a wedding, or 200 pages of text on new home loans. And the client doesn't want good stuff - they don't want well-written text - they want some guy in India who speaks English as a second language, to crank out endless streams of keywords.

And when that's done, they'll pay maybe $2 per page, and they'll put them all up, all connected to a well-disguised 'sitemap' link, and for the next few years, whenever someone does a search for that topic, the site in question will be highly ranked. But once that person gets to the site and sees endless lines of jibberish... then what?

My clients have, for years, reported massively better results with content written well, with a view to raising rankings but also informing the customer of the advantage of doing business with your company, rather than the usual garbage content that gives a first impression of fraudulent behavior.

One client I recently did a job for told me that the last guy that wrote for him did "a great job", touting that his content had raised traffic numbers by 400%. The problem was, nobody was buying. When my company looked at the server logs and the content, we quickly realized why; the traffic was being tricked into coming to the site, and once there they quickly left without buying anything because they weren't getting what was promised.

For some websites, that's not an issue. They just want you to come along, decide to move on, and click on an ad. But for others, like the diamond merchant mentioned earlier in this piece, professionalism and trust is key to getting the sale.

So I took that client's job, trashed 200 pages of garbled text written about coffee, and replaced it with 20 pages of well-researched, detailed, interesting, keyword-loaded text on the same topic. The results, a month after relaunch, were a slight drop-off in traffic, but a 220% increase in sales, and that figure has risen every month since as we've added new content on an ongoing basis.

The lesson to this story, if you even needed it explained, is that good, solid editorial content is essential, not just to bring peopple to your website, but to keep them there, to get them coming back for more, to persuade them to spread the word for you, and to make a sale.

This is a business, after all. Would you want people with sandwich boards standing outside your company trying to convince random strangers to walk in your door? No, neither would I.

Shameless plug time: If you're looking for purpose-written content for your website, we at Unreel Media are happy to talk to you about your needs. We've been in the content business for over ten years now, and have a list of over 200 clients that have enjoyed our services. No pressure, no hard-sell, just drop us a note, or give us a call on 604 874 4777, and we'll be glad to explain to you how strong content can turn your website around, and on a budget that will surprise you.

posted by Oz @ 12:48 AM