Spider Mush Content

[Fortune Hunter]

I was reading a post on SEO and the poster said one of his strategies was creating a steady diet of "spider mush" content. I was assuming this meant this was optimized web copy, but he didn't really explain what spider mush actually was.

I was hoping some of you that are good at writing SEO content can tell me what this stuff is. Now I figure it is content based around your topic, but what other traits does it need to contain to be good "spider mush"? I have heard key word density is not really important anymore so what types of items need to be in there.

FH

[jtara]

I've never heard of spider mush, but I can guess what it means - and it doesn't sound like something good.

I'd imagine that "spider mush" is content that is intended to look good to spiders, but is useful for little else.

Concentrate on satisfying your users. Spiders aren't your users.

[dragsterboy]

true. spiders are not the users. That is why you don't need to know about that "spider mush" crap thing. Concentrate on creating a newsworthy user oriented content that will provoke the user to read your site from cover to cover if i can put it that way.

[Fortune Hunter]

I hear what you are saying and please don't misunderstand my post. I am not looking for ways to trick the spiders into indexing garbage, which to be honest I think they may be too smart for these days anyway.

My question is based around the idea that the content is already good content that a user would want to read, but having said that is there things you need to do to that content to also make it beneficial to the spiders hence making it into "spider mush"?

My thinking has always been that you can have the greatest content in the world and on a incredible web site, but if nobody knows it is there then it is a waste. So having said that I think it is necessary to create some type of stuff the spiders will be attracted to and index well so that your actual users can find the content and read it cover to cover as you say.

FH

[jtara]

some type of stuff the spiders will be attracted to

That would be = "good content".

Sure, there may be some tricks that might work today. But the search engines are constantly working toward filters that identify good content and reject garbage. Eventually, they will succeed.

Perhaps you can figure out what the spiders like today, and constantly tune to keep up with changes that they make in the future.

But think about the fact that they probably have the entire history of your site on file. The one thing you CAN'T do is go back and erase a history that shows that your site has been trying to game the system.

In the long term, it would seem prudent to focus on your users and forget the spiders.

[Fortune Hunter]

the fact that they probably have the entire history of your site on file. The one thing you CAN'T do is go back and erase a history that shows that your site has been trying to game the system.

It never occurred to me that the history of the site plus the changes were there as well to track what you are really trying to do with a site. If nothing else the fact that I have been trying to create great content for 3 plus years should earn me a little goodwill from the SE.

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

FH