Best-of-the-web content: Graphical Tips
-
This question is for EGOL (if he's willing) and anyone else who wants to partake.
EGOL is the best content writer I've ever run into, really. I'm wondering what his top 3 to 5 tips are on how to use graphical layout (font, images, graphics, organization, menu, etc) to make content irresistable.
A couple of assumptions: The content is written really well from a perspective of authority. Also, we're not including video on this one.
Again, anyone is welcome to answer this.
Thanks!
-
And the legend grows.......
-
Lots of my writing is done from a NordicTrack elliptical. I put a shelf in front of it, added a computer, two monitors... then put a keyboard on top of the display. Any post to Moz that I make between 7pm and midnight is from that elliptical.
-
For, long-tail traffic, definitely worth a try! Thanks
-
**you speak further on this? **
It's a personal opinion . I believe that when I have these on a page I get more long-tail traffic.
Add them to your pages and then you can have an opinion too.
-
And bank account deposits.
-
"on-page anchor text links, in my opinion, have on-page optimization value that is exceeded only by the title tag"
Pretty big statement can you speak further on this? or provide a link if you have addressed this before?
To the best of my knowledge its not included in the http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/services/ranking-factors-2013/ that's what I am referring to by a big statement...
How in search engines' eyes are these links unique to Headings that divide the content accordingly?
Thanks
-
Sorry to burst your bubble Bob, but EGOL is a hobbit.
He drums up his ideas for best of the web content while riding his unicorn across the shire.
A sighting of this hobbit is more rare than reports of run-ins with a sasquatch, the Loch Ness monster and ET in area 51.
It doesn't help that his avatar is actually a photoshopped headshot of George Will.
To make matters worse, the only footprints he leaves are pages of kickass content across the web.
-
Hi Vadim,
EGOL is very active here at the Q&A, and he simply responded to some of my questions early on in my content writing. He gave advice that was over the top in usefulness, and it stuck with me more than anything else anyone has told me about content - mostly how to write best-of-the-web articles. EGOL doesn't even do content marketing. He writes such absolutely fantastic content that lots of people come to and link to his content without him promote it
-
Thanks EGOL! I will contemplate and apply. Priceless advice as usual.
-
Thank you for the quick advice sir!
-
3 to 5 tips on how to use graphical layout (font, images, graphics, organization, menu, etc) to make content irresistable.
My first reaction to this is... Don't expect to put lipstick on a pig and have people line up to kiss him. If you don't have great content to begin with the graphical layout will probably not make much difference.
**Font... ** Use lots of subheadings. These break up the reading and allow marginally interested people an opportunity to scan your article for topics that are personally interesting
Organization... I use a two-column layout. Left column is text and the right column is photography, graphs, data tables, references, videos, related content menus. Sometimes I have way more right column stuff than text so I mix the images, data, etc in with the text column.
Images... I make it a point to have one really nice image at the top of each article. I really like spanning the page with a wide image but if I can't find a good one I find or create a kickass image for the top of the right column.
I often spend good money on images. A staff member here takes great photos and makes great line graphics. I often license photos or pay a graphic artist to make illustrations. We often spend a lot of money purchasing props for photos.
I have lots of articles that are accompanied by hundreds of dollars worth of photos, images, data, videos. A few that have over a thousand dollars worth of this media. I can also have a week or two spent on research and writing. Good content can cost a lot of money. Collecting the data needed to make one graph can require days of labor.
You need to be really careful because.... It is easy to lose money on this type of content. It is easy to lose money on this type of content. I said that twice for emphasis. I have spent a lot of money on content that has bombed.
If you are producing expensive content for low volume or low value audiences then you will probably lose money.
Photos, video, data, graphs, and art will not be successful if you don't present it well. They are not magic bullets. So before you spend a lot of money on lipstick be sure you have a princess instead of a pig.
**Menu... ** If you go to wikipedia you will see that most article of substantive length have multiple subheadings and near the top of the article there is a small box listing those subheadings as on-page anchor text links. Those on-page anchor text links, in my opinion, have on-page optimization value that is exceeded only by the title tag.. and that is the most important tip of this post - in my opinion.
-
I am just curious how you ran into EGOL, and two why you consider him the best content writer? Just curious, Thanks
-
Personally i am a big fan of EGOL so I would love to hear from him and some tips to craft an irresistible piece of content.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate content. Competing for rank.
Scenario: An automotive dealer lists cars for sale on their website. The descriptions are very good and in depth at 1,200 words per car. However chunks of the copy are copied from car review websites and weaved into their original copy. Q1: This is flagged in copyscape - how much of an issue is this for Google? Q2: The same stock with the same copy is fed into a popular car listing website - the dealer's website and the classifieds website often rank in the top two positions (sometimes the dealer on top other times the classifieds site). Is this a good or a bad thing? Are you risking being seen as duplicating/scraping content? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bee1590 -
Search Causing Duplicate Content
I use Opencart and have found that a lot of my duplicate content (mainly from Products) which is caused by the Search function. Is there a simple way to tell Google to ignore the Search function pathway? Or is this particular action not recommended? Here are two examples: http://thespacecollective.com/index.php?route=product/search&tag=cloth http://thespacecollective.com/index.php?route=product/search
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Penalty for adding too much content too quickly?
Hi there, We released around 4000 pieces of new content, which all ranked in the first page and did well. We had a database of ~400,000 pieces and so we released the entire library in a couple of days (all remaining 396,000 pages). The pages have indexed. The pages are not ranking, although the initial batch are still ranking as are a handful (literally a handful) of the new 396,000. When I say not ranking - I mean not ranking anywhere (gone up as far as page 20), yet the initial batch we'd be ranking for competitive terms on page 1. Do Google penalise you for releasing such a volume of content in such a short space of time? If so, should we deindex all that content and re-release in slow batches? And finally, if that is the course of action we should take is there any good articles around deindexing content at scale. Thanks so much for any help you are able to provide. Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveW19870 -
Responsive Content
At the moment we are thinking about switching to another CMS. We are discussing the use of responsive content.Our developer states that the technique uses hidden content. That is sort of cloaking. At the moment I'm searching for good information or tests with this technique but I can't find anything solid. Do you have some experience with responsive content and is it cloaking? Referring to good articles is also a plus. Looking forward to your answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maxaro.nl0 -
What is considered duplicate content?
Hi, We are working on a product page for bespoke camper vans: http://www.broadlane.co.uk/campervans/vw-campers/bespoke-campers . At the moment there is only one page but we are planning add similar pages for other brands of camper vans. Each page will receive its specifically targeted content however the 'Model choice' cart at the bottom (giving you the choice to select the internal structure of the van) will remain the same across all pages. Will this be considered as duplicate content? And if this is a case, what would be the ideal solution to limit penalty risk: A rel canonical tag seems wrong for this, as there is no original item as such. Would an iFrame around the 'model choice' enable us to isolate the content from being indexed at the same time than the page? Thanks, Celine
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A_Q0 -
Duplicate content question
Hi there, I work for a Theater news site. We have an issue where our system creates a chunk of duplicate content in Google's eyes and we're not sure how best to solve. When an editor produces a video, it simultaneously 1) creates a page with it's own static URL (e.g. http://www.theatermania.com/video/mary-louise-parker-tommy-tune-laura-osnes-and-more_668.html); and 2) displays said video on a public index page (http://www.theatermania.com/videos/). Since the content is very similar, Google sees them as duplicate. What should we do about this? We were thinking that one solution would to be dynamically canonicalize the index page to the static page whenever a new video is posted, but would Google frown on this? Alternatively, should we simply nofollow the index page? Lastly, are there any solutions we may have missed entirely?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Duplicate Content Question
Hey Everyone, I have a question regarding duplicate content. If your site is penalized for duplicate content, is it just the pages with the content on it that are affected or is the whole site affected? Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Duplicate content on the same page--is this an issue?
We are transitioning to responsive design and some of our pages will not scale properly, so we were thinking of adding the same content twice to the same URL (one would be simple text -- for mobile and the other would include the images, etc for the desktop version), and content would change based on size of the screen. I'm not looking for another technical solution (I know google specifies that you can dynamically serve different content based on user agent)--I am wondering if any one knows if having the same exact content appear twice on the same URL will cause a problem with SEO (any historical tests or experience would be great). Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0