Posted on April 20, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |
Image: kk+
When too much is not
enough: optimized balance
Recently a reader on Problogger posed some interesting questions on optimized publishing, in particular - how do you know when you’ve posted enough? and what’s the best strategy for generating traffic, without jeopardizing quality content?
One of the sweet things about blogging is that there are no universally correct answers to how much content is right? If you utilize your blog as an online diary, chances are, you’re not considering your audience or search engine optimization. If however, you’re aspiring to maintain problogger status two things must be factored into account before publishing a post:
• optimizing copy length and quality for search engines
• optimizing copy length and quality for reader experience
Jeopardize one, and it will be detrimental to your business. Optimization is a way of providing customer service and satisfaction, and search engines seek to provide this for the customers utilizing their search tools. We, as online publishers, must view the reader and the search engine as our customers and aim to please both!
It’s worth investing some time considering the following points before you hit the ‘publish’ button because, with write skill and blogging balance, there is no need to sacrifice optimization for either customer.
The latest general search indexing trends suggest that longer copy content is better than short, as search engines seek to index rich content. The obvious reason behind this, is the competitive business between companies like Google and Yahoo, for example. Greater depth and quality content provides them with the means to keep their search customers coming back. Like off-line publications, on-line media seeks to satisfy their customers by giving them what they want.
Google algorithms look for natural writing styles, which is generally achieved with longer word count, rather than small hyper-focused content. In fact good copy content gets as much traffic, for long tail keywords, as small meaningless hyper-focused pages. So, increasingly, search engines are pushing publishers toward well approached, lengthier content rather than short pages filled with hyper-linked text that doesn’t deliver.
Having said that, DON’T add words for the sake of increasing length. Useless rambling and optimized self-opinion ie. content that does not allow a space for the reader to draw their own conclusions, will severely jeopardize your users experience.
Each word and sentence structure needs to carry the weight of meaning and purpose. Consider these factors for optimizing reader experience:
• Does your copy provide meaning and purpose - is it going somewhere?
• Will your reader be better informed if they invest time on your post?
• Do you aim to entertain or enlighten your reader - have you achieved this?
A problog will usually have the reader better positioned as a result of investing their time reading the content; and it will do so, without long endless rambling. Put bluntly - if you bore the crap out of your reader or dont’ give anything of value, they won’t come back.
While some ideas take more words to express than others, strike a balance between lengthy copy for search engines and word count that holds the attention of the reader. Consider why word length is important when an editor commissions articles for a magazine: it has less to do with budget and more to do with the attention span of the reader, and their available time for reading.
Before publishing, edit your copy several times, omitting useless words and pointless ranting and raving. To help you achieve this, read Editors tips: blah blah blah … no one cares what you think! and Cut the fat. Stick to short, snappy posts that inform without the reader being required to think too much.
You will either hook or loose your reader within the first two to three paragraphs of your post, so it’s vital to make sure you have a good intro to your article. Ideas on how to achieve this can be found at … are you leading me on?
A problog usually strikes a good balance between optimizing search, whilst avoiding boredom, by posting between 500 - 1000 words. While this is not a hard and fast rule, large media publishing companies have invested a lot of time and money into research on word count that works.
How do you determine the length of your post. Do you set a word count before you blog?
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Good Layout and design. I like your blog. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. .
Jason Rakowski
Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor
Allen and Jason are both probloggers and masters in their field respectively, read and see how they have optimized their sites in the latest post: Free SEO plugin on the Features page of this site.
Thanks guys your sites are great value!
cheers
Kazi