Five Reasons Why Search Engines Love Onsite Content
You might think that that article directory writing is more popular than on-site content, which is the content that you publish on your website. However, that’s not always the case. In fact, major search engines love onsite content, perhaps even more than article directories. Consider five reasons why.
1. Onsite Content is usually of better quality than directory articles.
Once you get past all the company bragging, you’re going to have to reach your audience and convince them to make a purchase. In order to do this, you will have to produce some effective writing. You not only “sell”; you educate. Many webmasters save the best content for the website and write “leftovers” for article directories (hence the emergence of Google-detested “content farms”).
2. Blog writing tends to produce expert and in-depth commentary.
It takes a special talent and a great wealth of industry knowledge to write a blog that’s worth visiting time and time again. Major search engines are capable of differentiating longer articles, and articles with a greater vocabulary, from articles that are relatively short. Also, blogs are often strongly opinionated, and very often controversial (which means lots of comments), and this also tells the search engine that this content is worth revisiting.
3. You can link like crazy with web content!
Most article directories only give you a few links per post. However, when you publish your own content, you have more freedom over links, and get to create your own anchor text. Search engines actually rely on anchor text and relevant links to help discover and index new information. You can index your own pages, your “sister” websites, or even other websites and help spread your site to the worldwide network.
4. You can take advantage of CMS technology.
Article directories have site popularity going for them, but when you publish web content, you have full control over CMS technology and this technology is always search engine friendly. You can count on clean, standardized code, a permanent page and URL that doesn’t disappear or change, META content, auto site maps, robot control and, simply, the current popularity of community-created content.
5. With Google Panda, and other algorithm updates, search engines now trust content-rich websites over crowded article directories.
Recent algorithm updates actually penalized many directory sites, due to their excessive advertising, huge number of pages and authors (and thus questionable editorial standards), as well as the negative reputation of content farms.
The search engines love on-site writing because it’s statistically better than what you find on directories. Don’t prove them wrong…publish only your best work and enjoy the high ranking!
