You Mean I Need GOOD Content?
SEO isn’t a real complicated game. Aside from your creative use of keyword phrases in the title and content, SEO really boils down to a popularity contest. Not just between you and Google, but your readers as well. And how do you win? Easy – good content, and lots of it.
I can hear the groans just reading that statement. A few of them from myself, even. That thing you’ve been told all along – create unique content- actually has some merit. Even Google says it’s true, so it must be. All those “automated content creators” and “free article directories” really aren’t going to help you out here. If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.
Here’s the two main reasons why it’s an absolute MUST to have unique content if you want to get anywhere with SEO:
1. Expands Ranked Search Terms
Unique content, with keyword phrases weaved NATURALLY into your content, brings in the visitors. Not just a short 100 article, but 500-1,000 words on your page topic. The shorter the content, the less terms your going to pop up in the search engines for. Plus if you have a copy that’s just pure crap and includes lines such as “[keyword phrase] is important. You’ll need a lot of [keyword phrase].” you aren’t going to rank for anything but [keyword phrase]. If your lucky even.
2. Links back
If your content is pure junk and an obviously your just trying to get a handful of visitors in to click on the Adsense links, no one will want to link back. No links back and you’ve lost the popularity contest with Google. Simple as that, really. Even if we don’t like it, Google puts a lot of emphasis on how many people are linking to your pages and site as a whole. What’s more, you can’t force that, and NEED to rely on others linking to your content or site. The only way to do that is with unique content.
Now of course, there’s more reasons why you need good content, some of them specific to why your writing in the first place (example – gain subscribers, gain credibility, accurately describe products, etc). But since I’m talking from an SEO perspective, those are the two most important. It’s also proof that us little guys working hard behind the scenes are always going to beat out the big boys with the automated systems. 
Your fellow WAHM in success,
Kara
Topics: SEO - Search Engine Optimization | 10 Comments »
February 9th, 2010 at 12:16 am
You mean earning money while I sleep doesn’t mean I can make my content while I’m asleep? I should be paying attention to what I’m doing?
Seriously, it amazes me when people think that any old content will do the job. Success takes effort. Your classic “overnight” success generally works hard for years before suddenly succeeding, and they probably have figured out that quality matters. That’s the way business works.
February 11th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Good content that is updated frequently and relevant to your industry is a great way to build your site up. Not only will your readers enjoy it, but the search engines like it as well. Winning on multiple fronts taking this approach.
February 13th, 2010 at 9:14 am
Yeah, sure good content is very important for the website and gaining trafic on it.
February 16th, 2010 at 6:34 am
Hi its my first comment but felt I had to say a few words on this subject. I have recently become involved in on line marketing and have been taking in so much information my head hurts ! The overriding theme I keep getting, is that the most important factor is fresh original content if you want your site to get ranked. I do believe content is very important, however, I could give examples of sites that rank on the front page of Google with NO content. Not just a bit of poor content but with absolutely nothing ! This one site is in direct competition with me (keyword wise) and all it is, is a one page WordPress blog page. A domain name with wordpress installed and thats it, and its number 3 on Google for the keyword phrase. I am working hard to constantly improve and update my site with new content, articles, products for sale etc and its a bit annoying (to say the least) when I am outranked by something which could be done in literally less than a minute. So to keep happy and contented followers content is king, but just to get a ranking the domain name and correct optimization is more important.Get the domain name right and you will find yourself on the Google front page in record time. I also have another site which is number 3 on Google (different keyword phrase) and it was there in less than a week of putting the site live. It has very little content at the moment, but I am working on it and it will be updated with good stuff in the near future. So content is the key to keep people happy but the domain name and correct on page optimisation is the key to get a ranking quickly. Great site by the way !
February 20th, 2010 at 5:49 am
Excellent information,good content is the best. it helps generates traffic on your site.
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:02 am
I agree with you on your the reasons you advance for having a unique content.The reasons are quite good, but i must say here that for that to succeed, the content needs to be updated often, if not it’ll get outdated
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:09 am
When you talk of creating a unique content, are you saying your site should be only on a particular aspect say AIDS on health issues, or health issues in general?
February 22nd, 2010 at 1:07 pm
I think you hit the nail on the head with that one. The most important part of SEO is that good content. Content that is not written for google to read but your visitors. If you do that you will bo much better in the rankings.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Gary, I totally feel your pain, frustration, anger – the whole nine yards!
Just a few thoughts/questions here …
You mentioned that you’ve recently become involved in online marketing. May I ask just how recent we’re talking here? Remember, time is an important key here too.
I’m assuming by the number of posts it looks like you have on your site that you’ve not been doing this for a real long time? (That’s just an assumption.)
Having the perfect domain name – yep – certainly a plus but you can still outrank someone who has the perfect domain name. Don’t feel out-won there just yet.
However, that said, having a one page website with very little content is definitely not what I would call “correct on page optimization”.
Keep in mind, a big part of “correct on page optimization” is having quality content, well-placed keywords, title and meta tags, etc. etc. etc.
Maybe I’m wrong here but from what I’m reading out of your reply, you’re not considering creating quality content as part of the optimization process? If I’m correct, may I ask what you feel optimizing a website entails?
If I’m misunderstanding, please by all means correct me.
I took a quick look at your website and I did notice a couple things that it appears as though you’re kind of “hit and missing”.
Your pictures/graphics:
Your site has a lot of graphics and with the type of site you have, it should have a lot of graphics. I’m seeing some graphics that you’re using “ALT” tags on to describe them but I’m also seeing some tagged “image”. Make sure you’re using ALT tags on all your images.
Your text linking:
You should have title tags on all your links – especially when you’re linking to another page on your own site.
Title Tag Example:
Your Post:
What is a Computer Drawing Tablet?
You should have title tags on all those links. For anyone who doesn’t know what I mean, hold your mouse/cursor over the above link for “What is a Computer Drawing Tablet?”
Notice how the words What is a Computer Drawing Tablet? pop up? That’s from the title tag. The actual code looks like this:
So, for each of those links you have on that post:
They should look just like mine do above (mouseover the links). All your links linking to another page of your own site should be doing this.
The only difference of course would be if you have a better keyword than I used. For example, maybe you’d want the last one to say “Digipro Products” instead of just “Digipro”
Image Alt Tag Example:
The first graphic on that page has the alt tag of images2 and the second one is images.
Using alt tags for your graphics kill two birds with one stone.
First, search engines do not read pictures – they read text. So, by giving it an alt tag (essentially one of your keywords) its giving the search engine spiders a tiny piece of food.
Secondly, for those who have graphics turned off on their computers – they see the words of what the image really is instead of the word images.
For my next suggestion, I see this is kind of a “hit and miss” thing on your site as well. For example:
For this one I’ll point out something good you did (for others reading along too). Here you linked the text computer drawing tablets to your other articles. That’s exactly what I was going to suggest. Just make sure you’re doing this with all your links to other pages of your site.
Too often many would have simply linked that entire sentence. You want to be sure that when possible, you want to link your important words or even better, link your keywords.
I don’t see that you necessarily needed to do the other link – linking the words other articles but this certainly isn’t hurting you and if need be, this could actually help some of your human readers.
The only thing here I would suggest to do differently is again, add your title tags making the code look like this:
Come to think of it, by adding the alt tag to the other articles link, you’ll actually be giving it some keyword weight. Then you’ll be doing something to help your human readers and giving a little nibble to the search engine spiders.
May I also ask what you’re doing as far as “off the page” marketing goes? Are you writing articles and submitting them? Are you working on getting backlinks?
While yes, quality content is king and necessary, it’s by far the only thing necessary. And while I’m talking about this again … it’s also good to note that as you said yourself: quality content is good to keep happy and contented followers but keeping those followers happy and content can help you in your rankings too. How? Those happy and content followers are often happy to link to your site. Great way to get some inbound backlinks.
And on a side note, yes information overload can and will hurt your head in a hurry. The important thing is don’t let it overwhelm you and take it one step at a time. We’ve all be through the same issue.
Hope some of that helps you! You’ve got a great site and if you keep up the hard work, I’m sure it’ll pay off. I believe you’re competing in a pretty tough, competitive market, yes?
March 14th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Wow Anita thanks for the in depth critique of the site. This site is actually my first attempt at what I would call a ‘proper’ site. It is a site which is really only acting as an Amazon affiliate portal. I am using this as a bit of an experiment actually to see how well I can rank on Google for only one keyword (the domain name) and hopefully some anchor text links also. I was on the first page within a week but have since dropped off to who knows where ? I will take on board your advice regarding the tags, even though some of it completely lost me remember I am a beginner
I very much appreciate your input and help and would hope someday to understand what I am doing. I am going to be putting up many more sites in the future on a variety of topics so I need to have practiced on one or two before I become proficient, but hopefully in time it will come.
I know your site is full of content but there are also millions of small sites on the web with very little content which people make a very decent living from. So my principle with my sites is basically going to be lots of little pieces make up one big piece.Rather than building ONE massively informative huge site to try to make an income from I intend to spread my risk thinly and have lots of smaller niche sites hopefully earning a dollar or two from, and all those little pieces will hopefully add up to a decent size piece.
I am writing articles and submitting to directories as well as the obvious places (ezine etc) so any help and guidance I can get from someone like you is greatly appeciated. I am always willing to learn from someone who knows more than me – thats a lot of people then
Regards
Gary