Everyone is working to keep their blogs regularly updated with content. Content is a must. It’s all about content, content, content.
Because of this, everyone does whatever they can to post to their websites on a regular basis:
- People write their own posts
- People buy content from freelancers or content mills
- People buy PLRs (Private Label Rights)
- People accept guest posts
- People reprint the content of others from article directories
- People use content curation
- People use newsjacking
- So on and so on
But, again, is all content the same? Is all content acceptable?
In other words, whether it’s your own content or you’re accepting a guest post, if the article is NOT useful and quality content, if it’s poorly written, if it’s linking back to a spam site, should you use it?
For example: Maybe you agreed to be a hosting site for a service that provides virtual book tours. The content provided by the service’s authors is poorly written and is primarily promotional. Is it okay to use?
The simple answer is to these questions is NO.
In case you’re wondering what constitutes fluff or ‘poor quality’ content, you need to determine if your content is valuable.
To determine if your content is valuable, you need to answer a few questions:
- Does the content offer the reader useful information?
- Is it engaging or thought provoking?
- Is it controversial (the good kind)?
- Is it entertaining?
- Is it shareable?
- Do you think the content is ‘quality’ enough to appear in the results of a Google search query?
If your content doesn’t hit one of those targets, then it’s most likely fluff or poor quality.
Okay, what if the content is fluff, but it has ‘good’ keywords in it? Is it okay to publish it then?
Well, it depends on five things:
- Are you blogging to sell something?
- Are you blogging to increase website traffic?
- Are you blogging to increase your mailing list?
- Are you blogging to increase your authority in your niche/industry?
- Are you looking to ‘please’ Google and improve your ranking?
With Google’s latest algorithms, keywords don’t pack the same punch they used to. Search engines spiders can get the gist of the entire content. They base ranking and ‘whether they’ll use that post’s link in the results of a search query’ on the overall content, not just the keywords.
In other words, Google can detect fluff and garbage, even if you have great keywords.
So, back to the title question: Do you really want to publish that content on your website?
If you’re blogging to sell something, increase your mailing list, gain authority, and boost your ranking, then you should definitely AVOID posting fluff or poor quality content to your site.
Poor quality content can easily lower your Google ranking, which will reduce your authority, which will make people think twice about signing up for your mailing list, which in turn will put a damper on your sales.
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