What is Fat Content and Why Does Google Like It?
Google makes a lot of changes to their algorithm and everyone tries to keep up. It’s like a game. Google makes a move. Then it’s our move. But there are some things like great content really never changes.
The problem comes in with everyone wanting to do as little as possible to achieve the most results. Everyone wants a shortcut or a magic pill.
So, when they see someone say; “We’ll build you 1000 backlinks for $20” or “We’ll spin your content and make 5 articles out of one” or “This automated tool will do all of your SEO for you” there is a group of people willing to believe them.
So, what is Fat Content?
Thin content is posts are pages with little or no valuable content and/or content that isn’t structured properly to make it easy for the search spider to categorize and index the page properly. Fat content follows certain rules.
- Fat Content means content with a high crawl efficiency and direct data messages is important to ranking your content well.
- Fat Content also means a lot of content. When structured properly that fat content will help you rank higher in the search engines.
- Fat Content also means content that actually gets people to stay on the page long enough to read it and that results in them interacting with the page by clicking links, filling out forms, commenting, etc. This is also the key to making more sales or generating more leads.
- Fat Content is also shared by more people on social media. For example; Longer blog posts get shared more than short blog posts
Click here to get fat Content written for your blog or website or call us at (512)515-0119 to tell us exactly what you need.
What does high crawl efficiency and direct data messages mean?
That means following best practices when writing content. For instance;
Use 1 H1 tag in a page. In a blog post, that’s the title. Don’t make a second one. it confuses the search spider as to how to properly categorize your content.
There are those who are telling people it’s okay to use more than one because of certain elements in HTML5 that allow you to wrap content around elements. Don’t listen. If you feel you need more than one H1 tag, create a new page for that content.
Use multiple H2 or H3 tags throughout the page to separate topics and sections. This tells the crawler to categorize that content differently and helps you target related keywords and phrases with your header tags.
You can also use an H2 tag at the top of the page and multiple H3 tags throughout the content. The idea is to have the proper hierarchy on the page. An H1 never goes below an H2 or below. You can use multiple H2s with H3s below each of them or multiple H3s with H4s below them.
Make sure the content below each header tag is really related to what the header tag says. Each of those header tags can match what a user searches for.
Google Rich Snippets and Schema Markup Language
Here’s a tip you might not know. Let’s say a user types in; What is fat content?, which is in the header tag of this section of my post.
Google will look in the meta description of this post and if that phrase is not in the description, but it is in the header of this section, it may use the content directly under that header as the description in the search results rather than the one you wrote for the page.
Google does this to improve the click through rate of your listing in the search results page because that description is more relative to the search phrase typed in by the user. You can read more about Google Rich Snippets here.
So when you create a header, think about the text you write immediately after it. That may be the description people see in the search results for that phrase.
You should also learn more about using the schema markup method for writing your content. You can read more about that here.
There are no shortcuts to great content writing
- No. You cannot spin one article into five and be successful with that content.
- No. You can’t buy someone else’s articles, known as PLR, and be successful.
- No. You can’t hire someone and pay them next to nothing to write your blog and be successful.
- No. You can’t hire someone to do your content marketing for next to nothing and be successful.
- No. Most website designers don’t also know how to write content that converts sales.
- No. You can’t just have articles written and throw them into your website and be successful.
- No. The number of keywords in the article or post is not the most important thing.
Content writing is an art
And content writer is a general term. Not all great bloggers can also write your press releases and web page content. Not all great press release writers can write your blog and website content.
Articles – Informational content not meant to be authoritative and not to generate interaction besides sharing it on social media.
Blog Posts – Meant to be more conversational in nature, to encourage comments besides prompting people to share it on social media.
Landing Page Content – There are 2 types; 1. Those intended to get people to share their personal information like their name and email address in return for something you are offering. 2. Those meant to close a sale. And believe it or not, some content writers can do one or the other very well and the other not so much.
Press Releases – These are news. They were not meant as an SEO tool. Google has updated their algorithm to make sure they aren’t an SEO tool. They should be written and distributed when you have some actual news, not “Look at our new website”. A great press release writer knows how to write like a Journalist.
Website Content – Totally different from all of the above. Meant to be more professional than a blog post and meant to help you close more sales. Knowing where to put calls-to-action and more is important to writing great website content.
There are writers who know how to do more than one type of writing, but take it from someone who has hired 100s of writers. Most are great at one type and okay in maybe a couple of more. There are a few that can do all of the above, but very few.
Hiring Great Content Writers is essential to your success
Here at AO Design, we hire different types of writers for different types of content. Our bloggers write blog posts. Our press release writers write press releases. Our conversion optimization specialist writes content for websites and landing pages that converts sales. We put the best person on each project to make sure you get the best possible content. Click here to tell us what type of content you need for your project.