Are Fluff-Filled Pages Driving Your Visitors Away?
Compliments of Flickr
It’s a common SEO copywriting strategy. Create pages that are built around keyphrases you want to rank well for. But there’s a problem that’s just as common as the strategy: creating keyword-stuffed pages filled with fluff that have no real purpose. This is what I found recently on a travel site I visited and it left a very amateurish impression.
Keep in mind I said this was a travel site. The site catered to one part of the world that is a huge tourist destination for the rich and famous: Dubai. It was obvious that the site was gearing its primary SEO copywriting campaign toward search terms centering on Dubai apartments and other such phrases. But incorporating those keywords into every area of its site was causing confusion.
When I write SEO copy, there are two questions that are constantly on my mind. The first is will the copy help the site visitors? The second is will it contribute positively to their rankings? Let’s see what the answers were in this case.
Did the Copy Help Their Visitors?
One place to use keyphrases is in your navigation. This site, however, went overboard. Looking across the navigation bar, I found link text that read “Dubai apartments,” “Dubai apartment,” “apartments in Dubai,” “apartment in Dubai,” “Dubai hotel apartments” and other such terms. What’s the difference I wondered. They all seemed to deal with the same thing: Dubai apartments.
So, just out of curiosity, I began to click from one page to the next. What information did I find? Not much. It was mostly fluff. The pages served no purpose other than to drive me away. If I had been searching for a Dubai apartment rental, I would have continued my search on another site. The poor SEO copywriting and lack of solid information gave me the impression that this site was not very credible.
Did the Copy Help With Their Rankings?
Apparently not. I searched Google for many of the phrases they used on these fluff pages and the individual pages themselves did not rank in the top 20 in most cases. Even if they did, would it be worth it to have this type of SEO copy on your site? Think about it.
If these pages ranked well, visitors would click from the search engine results pages (SERPs) to your site. And what would be the first thing they saw? Not-so-great copy that delivers no information. Would they stay? Would they search? Would they book an apartment? I wouldn’t. So why bother? What good are pages that bring customers in and send them packing at the same time?
It’s all about balance. SEO copywriting does you little good if it doesn’t attract the attention of the engines and your customers. Bottom line? If you’re going to go to the trouble to create pages that potentially rank high with the engines, look at both sides of the equation. Then write pages that rank well while also hooking and converting your visitors.
See Karon live in the Boston area April 2-3, 2009 at High Rankings’ Search Engine Workshops. Visit http://www.highrankings.com/seo-workshops for more details and to register.
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4 Responses to “Are Fluff-Filled Pages Driving Your Visitors Away?”
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[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onAre Fluff-Filled Pages Driving Your Visitors Away? | Marketing …Here’s a quick excerptIf these pages ranked well, visitors would click from the search engine results pages (SERPs) to your site. And what would be the first thing they saw? Not-so-great copy that delivers no information. Would they stay? Would they search? … [...]
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