MediaMustard

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Offer quality content and services

Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site's reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.

A blogger finds a piece of your content, likes it, and then references it in a blog post While the content you create could be on any topic imaginable, here are some recommended best practices:

Tips

  • Write easy-to-read text - Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.
  • Avoid:
    • writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes
    • embedding text in images for textual content (users may want to copy and paste the text and search engines can't read it)
  • Stay organized around the topic - It's always beneficial to organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends. Breaking your content up into logical chunks or divisions helps users find the content they want faster.
  • Avoid:
    • dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation
  • Use relevant language - Think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece of your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to the topic. For example, a long-time baseball fan might search for [nlcs], an acronym for the National League Championship Series, while a new fan might use a more general query like [baseball playoffs]. Anticipating these differences in search behavior and accounting for them while writing your content (using a good mix of keyword phrases) could produce positive results. Google AdWords provides a handy Keyword Tool that helps you discover new keyword variations and see the approximate search volume for each keyword. Also, Google Webmaster Tools provides you with the top search queries your site appears for and the ones that led the most users to your site.
  • Create fresh, unique content - New content will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in new visitors.
  • Avoid:
    • rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users
    • having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site (more on duplicate content)
  • Offer exclusive content or services - Consider creating a new, useful service that no other site offers. You could also write an original piece of research, break an exciting news story, or leverage your unique user base. Other sites may lack the resources or expertise to do these things.
  • Create content primarily for your users, not search engines - Designing your site around your visitors' needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.
  • Avoid:
    • inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying or nonsensical to users
    • having blocks of text like "frequent misspellings used to reach this page" that add little value for users
    • deceptively hiding text from users, but displaying it to search engines

Optimize your use of images

Images may seem like a straightforward component of your site, but you can optimize your use of them. All images can have a distinct filename and "alt" attribute, both of which you should take advantage of. The "alt" attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason.

Why use this attribute? If a user is viewing your site on a browser that doesn't support images, or is using alternative technologies, such as a screen reader, the contents of the alt attribute provide information about the picture.

Another reason is that if you're using an image as a link, the alt text for that image will be treated similarly to the anchor text of a text link. However, we don't recommend using too many images for links in your site's navigation when text links could serve the same purpose.

Lastly, optimizing your image filenames and alt text makes it easier for image search projects like Google Image Search to better understand your images.

Tips

  • Use brief, but descriptive filenames and alt text - Like many of the other parts of the page targeted for optimization, filenames and alt text (for ASCII languages) are best when they're short, but descriptive.
  • Avoid:
    • using generic filenames like "image1.jpg", "pic.gif", "1.jpg" when possible (some sites with thousands of images might consider automating the naming of images)
    • writing extremely lengthy filenames
    • stuffing keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences
  • Supply alt text when using images as links - If you do decide to use an image as a link, filling out its alt text helps Google understand more about the page you're linking to. Imagine that you're writing anchor text for a text link.
  • Avoid:
    • writing excessively long alt text that would be considered spammy
    • using only image links for your site's navigation
  • Store images in a directory of their own - Instead of having image files spread out in numerous directories and subdirectories across your domain, consider consolidating your images into a single directory (e.g. brandonsbaseballcards.com/images/). This simplifies the path to your images.
  • Use commonly supported filetypes - Most browsers support JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP image formats. It's also a good idea to have the extension of your filename match with the filetype.

Except as otherwise noted, the main content of this document is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Source: Google.