Quality Content is King to Creating an Effective SEO Strategy
Search engine optimization is a field in which success is a constant battle because Google – generally the key focus for SEO – is an ever-moving
target. The simple fact is that Google has different views than most SEO companies on what should cause the cream to rise to the top of the rankings. This means website owners and SEO professionals are constantly looking for new and creative ways to stay ahead of the curve – and at the top of the search results.
One nagging question that often gets an answer based on past performance is whether it’s better to try to focus on-site SEO efforts on a large number of keywords, seeking quantity or on a small number of keywords, aiming for quality. In the past quantity often outperformed quality at the expense of the users experience.
What about now? Should you create a smaller amount of very high quality content or a larger amount of lower quality content?
Use the Method that Leads to Success – More Sales and More Revenue
The sheer amount of websites that go for quantity might lead you to believe that it’s the way to go, but it isn’t. The idea behind the quantity strategy is that having a lot of content is more important than having good content, and getting as many pages as possible up, indexed, and ranked, is the path to success. While it’s true that this strategy can work for traffic generation, in the end game where revenue is what matters, it has serious flaws.
The key mistake that many SEO professionals and website owners make is to view search engine optimization as the end rather than the means. They make optimization the goal, rather than focusing on optimization as a tool to drive revenue. Consequently, everything that happens after the website gets returned on a search results page and selected by a user goes essentially ignored.
Remember that just because your website has ranked first in the search results, and just because a user has clicked on the link to visit it, does not automatically mean that once on your site that user will take the action you wish them to; whether that be viewing multiple pages, clicking an ad, filling out a contact form, or making a purchase. That same content that you used to get indexed in Google and earn that top spot in the search results also has to be able to move the end user to take whatever action you intend them to.
This is why the quality-based strategy is king and the path to creating an effective seo strategy. When you consider the fact that at the end of the line, the content on your website is intended for human beings rather than just bots and algorithms, the importance of quality over quantity is clear. A large amount of low quality content might give your site plenty of opportunity to show up for a great number of keywords, but once the user gets to your site, it won’t be strong enough to keep them there and do the real heavy lifting of driving that user to action.
High Quality Content Builds Trust , Authority and Results in More Sales
High quality content has all the same search engine optimization benefits but also has the power to build trust, establish authority status, and move readers into and through a sales funnel. So while your website might not rank for as many keywords as it would with weaker, mass-produced content, the keywords it does rank for will be the start of a much stronger process, leading to more page views, clicks, sign-ups, or sales.
The key is to remember that the phrase content is king really is true, and that while the content plays a huge role in a website’s search engine optimization, its main purpose is to serve the end reader. By keeping that in mind, and treating content as an important investment towards a website’s long-term success, website owners and SEO professionals alike can be sure that their efforts will be rewarded well past that initial search engine click, and with the end readers happy, the revenue will follow.
