If you are an SEO, it doesn't matter if it's your first week or years into the practice, you probably have a blog or a site to publish articles to get more visitors and, hopefully, customers. What kind of content should you create?
Jakob Nielsen Speaks Out
In case you are new to SEO, or haven't bothered to touch on usability, Jakob Nielsen is widely recognized as a knowledgeable website usability person, though occasionally sneered at by practitioners for his condescending tone and occasionally peculiar advice.
Recently, Jakob posted an article (or was it a newsletter entry?) about creating content for your website. In it, he states that you should focus on investing more time in your writing and creating the very top, expert articles in your niche. He also advises against writing short, shallow blog posts, which contribute little to the Web and diminish the value of your brand.
The article is backed up by graphs, which summarize that more in-depth content draws more paying customers and that much more in-depth content generates more income (citing his report sales as an example).
What Jakob Got Wrong
In my very, very humble opinion, what Jakob got wrong is that he equated expert writing with articles and shallow writing with blogs.
While this may be true in general, there are many more instances of quality blog posts and plenty of shallow articles (article directories for instance.) It doesn't really matter what software you use to create a piece of content, be it a static page or a blog post, but the amount of value you put in it.
Speaking of value. Jacob seem to be considering that the more time you put in your post, the better it is. Generally, this is true. But if you are an expert in your field and have spent a lot of time on some specialized area of your practice, you'll be able to write plenty of solid posts in a much smaller amount of time.
Also, Jakob seems to think that luxury item sellers don't need great content. That makes little sense. The harder it is to sell the item, the more authority (brand, expertise) you need to sell the item. Quality content in any form, be they articles, blogs, newsletters, forum postings, comments, etc. will help you to increase your authority.
This point of view shouldn't contradict to Jakob's, it is just for various products and services different types of content will get different benefits. For example, on a nuts selling website, creating expert articles will still get relevant links and visibility, albeit little direct customers (for a nuts seller, a social media piece of content seems more worthwhile).
What You Need to Know
Inaccuracies aside, however, Jakob did get a couple of things right:
By creating great content, you:
Of course, as mentioned earlier, you shouldn't limit yourself to rigidly producing articles. You can run a blog, communicate with other bloggers and industry people by writing about some noticeable events in the industry, share opinions and tips with others. This all will help build relationships with the people you are interested in, as well as assist in making your great content noticeable.
An Example
A good example of such practice would be SEOmoz itself. First of all, Rand not only publishes expert articles, but also:
Rounding up
Though listening and following the advice of the experts seems easy and error-proof, you should find your own way. Creating expert articles or blog posts, or discussing important topics on your blog, it is your own way to build authority in your field. Sooner or later, you'll find the most suitable way to go, if you keep on learning, anyway.
p.s. Read a great discussion of Jacob's article at Cre8asite Forums.
31 Comments
I really appreciate you writing about Nielsen's post. I wanted to follow up on it, but just couldn't stomach linking to the guy :) Now I've got a scapegoat!
Only kidding - this is very good material and I'd say "bravo!" for being able to look past his biases and ridiculous contempt for all things blog related to find some value therein.
1
0
Thanks, Rand.
Sometimes it helps to be objective and force a link or two (though I'd not link to another J guy, of course).
1
0
Good post - I wouldn't normally do this, but to save me repeating myself, I'll just point anyone who's interested (Anyone? Anyone? Fry? Fry?), to the post, sorry - I mean article, I wrote about Mr Nielsen's comments.
Essentially, Mr Nielsen is both wrong & right, but he's certainly a tiny bit pompous...
2
1
What kind of air would you expect from a man, who's been in usability for a while, has a long success record and is preaching to the unenducated? Of course, he seems pretty arrogant, but that's from the background of solid expertise, not from personality.
You may seem a little pompous to your less educated audience after jumping on him, too :)
Not that I am saying that we are uneducated, but some of us certainly lack the decades of research and study background.
Btw, it doesnt excuse Jacob from putting great blog posts and shallow blog posts in one pile, though.
1
0
If I do seem pompous, then I would hope that those around me would give me a sound slapping - but one of the things I always try to do, is explain things in a clear, simple manner, without recourse to alienating jargon & terminology.
I think I do a reasonably good job on it as well - the biggest (and most frequent [or should that be only]) compliment I get, is when people say that they now understand the basics of seo/social media after I've spoken to them. (and it normally only costs me a fiver to get that feedback!)
;)
I admire Nielsen's work on usability a great deal, but do feel that there is some basis to the suggestion that he is living off of his reputation to a certain extent; and his tone/manner doesn't help to stop this perception.
There's a great comment on the Guardian blog about this:
Do you think that guy is a Nielsen fan?!
;)
1
0
ciaran, I apologize if my comment sounded accusing, but my intent was to point out that any expert will publish anything on his site with an air of confidence. Otherwise, how that person is supposed to be an expert?
Nielsen probably has more authority than some of us, so this air of confidence is more noticeable. Perhaps he allows some remarks that some wouldn't allow, but it isn't a sign he shouldn't be confident in his studies.
As for the Nielsen fan comment, let's think about it for a second. You have conducted your own research and present results in the article. Is there any other source to link to, if the research topic is relatively new? Don't think so.
Though statistics may be considered evil, he does use more trusted sources, such as Hitwise, Forrester and so on (I think).
And lastly. As he admitted in this article, he writes the content to sell his knowledge (reports). That's why it sounds like an ad and the links are mostly to his own stuff - especially to his reports (I don't particularly adore this either).
It doesn't make him any greater for not embracing the blogosphere like UIE have done, though.
Maybe the only reason we dont like his writings is because we are not experts of the same level. If we were, we'd just compare his ideas to ours and move on. Instead, we argue about someone being confident in his findings and linking patterns.
2
0
Those are all fair points (and get a thumb from me) - I just always get a feeling of emperor's new clothes with Nielsen's more recent pronouncements. Which could well be my loss.
No worries on the accusing tone thing - it wasn't really - tone is very hard to judge online - maybe I should give Jakob a bit more slack!
;)
1
0
Also, I just thought that I would post the full comment from the Nielsen 'fan' as I don't think my excerpts do his logic justice (i.e. its not that he uses stats from Hitwise etc.., it's the fact that he just doesn't say where he gets his stats from etc..). I don't necessarily agree with all his comments, but they're pretty thorough.
2
0
ciaran, if you have some experience in any field, you have some knowledge of the industry that others don't have. Which is why, you can make quite precise guesstimates pretty easily.
Jacob Nielsen can do that. Rand, as any other SEO Master, does that too.
Here's a quote from the recent paid links post:
"To my mind, it's a game of cat and mouse that will play out for at least the next 5 years, if not far longer. " (Rand)
If I cared about this more, I'd find more more or less precise guesses from Rands from anything from conversion rates to how much the Web is ridden with spam and paid links.
Not to mention such a mind-shattering idea, that
"The most you can hope for is to leverage your site's existing link weight and trust and point your internal links to those pages. When this fails to rank you, it's only natural to turn to paid links - which everyone else and their dog is using."
Normally, you'd blast the heck out of Jacob for such a generlizing thought, because: