We have all heard the saying “Content is King”, but this phrase has done more harm than good in the eyes to search engine ranking and SEO.
According to WordPress, users create a total of 74.0 million posts every month along with 49.0 million comments. That is close to 2.4 million posts every day, and that’s just on WordPress alone. I would like to say that most of these posts are valuable, but according to my insights it is easy to say that most of these are junk.
Google’s goal is to provide the best solution to the users at the fewest clicks. As the search engine bot crawls the internet looking for content which has the best value and meets the end user’s expectations. Content is part of the top three ranking factors in Google’s Search Algorithm, so content plays an important part in successful SEO strategy.
Good content will not only help you get quality backlinks but will also help Google’s Algorithm RankBrain better understand what it is that your site provides to the users. Even though the content is such an important factor in ranking, most marketers do not consider its value seriously.
More doesn’t mean better
Just by putting out more content will not make it magically rank. SEO has magically evolved in the past few years and most search engines are smarter than ever. I’ve seen many publishers putting all their expectations on hitting the publish button, all to see their work come to naught. Lousy content will only deliver lousy results.
So what makes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ content?
Bad content is content which is created for the sole purpose of self-promotion and adds little to no value to the readers. Bad content is usually “thin” and does not solve the goals of the users.
The question about what makes a content ‘good’ depends on several variables. Ultimately, good content comes down to serving your audience. What may work for a bakery will not likely work for a law firm. So, when creating content, it’s essential to know who you are writing for.
Some experts know exactly what good content stands for:
- Serves the customers intent by providing answers to questions asked by readers and help complete their goals
- Delivers an easy, pleasurable and interesting experience on any browser and device
- Gets the information and experience to the users fast
- Does all the above better than any of the competitors in the space.
Lets delve into these top factors on each one separately:
- Serves visitor’s intent
SEO is more than just ranking; it’s about educating the users. Its about providing information and solving the problems and move towards a connecting with a site or brand.
This is where good keyword research comes in handy, but knowing what interests your target audience and providing information, you can begin to generate some ideas of content they would be interested in.
- Provides a good user experience
A well-designed and user-friendly website will have a positive impact on your SEO strategy. When your website attracts someone, and provides a good user experience with good content and engages them, Google takes notice. So good content needs to be accompanied by a good experience.
- Serves content quickly
People love a fast loading website. If you provide content to a user to solve their questions, and the site takes too long to load, your rankings could be adversely affected. So make sure that your website loads quickly and provides the goods on time.
- Beat the Competition
You need to work in such a manner that you do all the above things better than the competitors. So, visit your competitor’s website and look at things they are doing good and get better at it than them.
Practice makes perfect
Content is the lifeblood of SEO. Having a good content strategy behind the SEO will help you build more links faster. It will also help Google better understand your site contextually. Good content doesn’t happen by accident. It takes planning, research and time.