Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Correlation of Rankings with Personal Pronouns?
-
Has there been any tests or studies that associate writing in the first person or using "emotional" feeling phrases to higher rankings. More specifically to a blog structure.
I'm trying a blog option with a local telecommunications company, however I'm having flashbacks of writing those 5 paragraph essays when taking the SATs. The owner decided he should take on the responsibility and it's like he just can't bring himself to write from a personal perspective. He's a bit stuck in the "professional" mindset and worried about appearing unprofessional. I empathize with his perspective, but I know it's not going to work..or maybe it will? it's just not going to be interesting to readers, but perhaps google will appreciate the fresh content. I don't think letting an employee takeover will be an option as he's very protective of the company's image.
So would you ditch the blog? or continue with the dull posts?
-
Thanks Ben. I hadn't heard the idea of using Amazon turk before. I'll give it shot.
-
I'd work at him from the angle that it is possible to be both professional and personable. If you pull out editorial from a high quality newspaper or even cite some influential blogs in a space he follows you should be able to put that point to him pretty convincingly.
Alternatively I think Will Critchlow recommends hiring people on Amazon Turk to answer a Panda-style questionnaire. You could compare the current text with that written in the first person and see which one real people prefer. Or pitch the two versions of the text head to head in an A/B test and see which has higher user engagement statistics.
If you're only doing the blog to generate links/shares etc. and he insists on using his own writing style then it sounds like it would just be a waste of his time.
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
-
Huge ranking flux that we cannot explain
Hello, SEO experts from around the world. We need your help; we have seen massive ranking flux across our website and others. We cannot explain what is causing this ranking flux. The content marketing is top quality, so we don’t know why we are moving from 25 to 50th on Google and sometimes even beyond that. Can any SEO experts explain why our agency is moving so much within Google’s rankings? We don’t know whether to make changes or possibly wait. Any help would be fantastic; thank you all.
Algorithm Updates | | sarahwalsh0 -
Do you think profanity in the content can harm a site's rankings?
In my early 20's I authored an ebook that provides men with natural ways to improve their ahem... "bedroom performance". I'm now in my mid 30s, and while it's not such an enthralling topic, the thing makes me 80 or so bucks a day on good days, and it actually works. I update the blog from time to time and build links to it on occasion from good sources. I've carried my SEO knowledge to a more "reputable" business, but this project is still interesting to me, because it's fully mine. I am more interested in getting it to rank and convert than anything, but following the same techniques that are working to grow the other business, this one continues to tank. Disavow bad links, prune thin content.. no difference. However, one thing I just noticed now are my search queries in the reports. When I first started blogging on this, I was real loose with my tongue, and spoke quite frankly (and dirty to various degrees). I'm much more refined and professional in how I write now. However, the queries I'm ranking for... a lot of d words, c words (in the sex sense)... sounds almost pornographic. Think Google may be seeing this, and putting me lower in rankings or in some sort of lower level category because of it? Heard anything about google penalizing for profanity? I guess in this time of authority and trust, that can hurt both of those... but I wonder if anyone's heard any actual confirmation of this or has any experience with this? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | DavidCapital0 -
Safari and IE killing our mobile ranking
My client's website does fairly well on mobile in a Google Search. So one day, my client is in a staff meeting and everyone does on search on their phones. The client’s website is nowhere on the 1st three pages. I get a call asking why. I tell the client that Google has maybe as high as 90% market share on mobile. Of course, their phones have the factory installed Safari and IE. Client says lots of people don’t change the factory settings on mobile . Question: How do we rate higher on lesser search engines?
Algorithm Updates | | jgodwin0 -
Ranking drop after sub domain to sub directory migration. Usual?
Hi all, We had our help articles on sub-domain help.website.com. Then we moved it to sub directory website.com/help/. We expected ranking improvement of website.com as there is a wide saying of benefiting from sub domain to sub directory migration. We have noticed that ranking improvement of new sub directory pages (website.com/help/) but not for any main website pages (website.com). I presume that link juice from main website has benefited new sub directory pages but main website lost ranking due to the page rank dilution. Do you agree? Any ideas? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google ranking impact: Returning visitor vs New visitor
Hi all, If a website's traffic increase in "New visitors"; will this impact rankings? Do the website overall traffic affect rankings? How much this is related with ranking improvement for main keywords? Just because thousands of visits increased for website, will it count as a strong ranking improvement signal? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Is user engagement a ranking signal?
Read something about user engagement might be a signal that Google uses, along with links and on-site optimisation, to decide if a search result goes up or down. What should I believe and what are the developments in this field?
Algorithm Updates | | MozzieJr0 -
Ranking For Synonyms Without Creating Duplicate Content.
We have 2 keywords that are synonyms we really need to rank for as they are pretty much interchangeable terms. We will refer to the terms as Synonym A and Synonym B. Our site ranks very well for Synonym A but not for Synonym B. Both of these terms carry the same meaning, but the search results are very different. We actively optimize for Synonym A because it has the higher search volume of the 2 terms. We had hoped that Synonym B would get similar rankings due to the fact that the terms are so similar, but that did not pan out for us. We have lots of content that uses Synonym A predominantly and some that uses Synonym B. We know that good content around Synonym B would help, but we fear that it may be seen as duplicate if we create a piece that’s “Top 10 Synonym B” because we already have that piece for Synonym A. We also don’t want to make too many changes to our existing content in fear we may lose our great ranking for Synonym A. Has anyone run into this issue before, or does anyone have any ideas of things we can do to increase our position for Synonym B?
Algorithm Updates | | Fuel0 -
Rankings changing every couple of MINUTES in Google?
We've been experiencing some unusual behaviour in the Google.co.uk SERPs recently... Basically, the ranking of some of our websites for certain keywords appears to be changing by the minute. For example, doing a search for "our keyword" might show us at #20. Then a few minutes later, doing the same search shows us at #14, and then the same search a few minutes later shows us at #26, and then sometimes we're not ranked at all, etc etc. I know the algorithm changes a lot, but does it really change every couple of minutes? Has anyone else experienced this kind of behaviour in the SERPs? What could be causing it to happen?
Algorithm Updates | | d4online0