Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important for any website. If the search engines can’t find your site, or don’t index it very well, your traffic won’t be near what it could be. For many sites, this can translate into thousands, or even millions, of lost dollars. Conducting a full scale SEO campaign can be a daunting task. Simply put, you can never do too much work when it comes to SEO for your website. However, it is often the most basic and effective SEO technique that is often overlooked the most…good content.
By putting good content on your site, and doing it consistently, you will give your website a huge advantage over most other websites. Why? Because most sites are garbage. This is especially true with blogs. How many blogs do you come across that haven’t been updated in months, or even years? Probably a lot. Readers don’t like outdated websites and neither does Google. Sites that consistently post good content almost are looked on by Google and the other search engines. This has a direct impact, for the better, on your site’s SEO.
And what is good content? Good content is first and foremost original. If you’re just copying and pasting stuff from other sites to post on your site, that’s not good content. That’s called regurgitation and it’s to be frowned upon. Second, your content should be written for people, not for Google web crawlers. Some people think that by loading up a blog post with key words, the more the merrier, they are conducting SEO. They are not. Google and other search engines aren’t stupid and neither are their web crawlers. They use algorithms to identify keyword abuse and punish, severely, those sites that engage in such behavior. Finally, good content does not link to bad content. What this means is that your website should not, in any way, associate itself with the “bad parts” of the Internet. Link exchanges, sites that illegally distribute copyrighted material, sites that make heavy use of re-direction, etc. are all examples of web sites that you should avoid.
So why is good content so important to SEO? Well, it’s important for several reasons. First, if your site is cranking out good content, as described above, other websites will eventually begin linking to your site. They will do this because the content you are providing has value and that type of thing rarely goes unnoticed. Will it lead to a million links overnight? No, but it will, I can almost guarantee you, lead to several high-quality inbound links being built for you across the Internet. One of these links is more valuable than a hundred of those spammy links that some SEO “experts” will encourage you to crank out.
Also, consider this: If your goal is to get as many people coming to your site as possible, you had better have good content waiting for that traffic when/if it arrives. What’s the point of going to all this work if people only visit your website once, staying only long enough to realize that it’s stupid and a waste of their time. It would be like a retailer spending all sorts of time and money cranking out sales fliers and commercials, only to have nothing in stock when the customers show up at the store. If you don’t have good content, don’t engage in SEO.
Producing good content is only one aspect of SEO, but it is a damn important aspect. Is this all that your website needs to do to gain a Top 10 Google ranking? No, not by a long shot. However, it should be where your efforts start and finish at the end of the day. Good content and Good SEO are not two separate things. They are one and the same and should be treated as such.
If you would like the experts at Laser Burn Media to help you with your SEO needs, feel free to contact us directly. We can help.
See also: How to Write Great Blog Content (ProBlogger.net)
How to Make (And Keep) Your Blog In Demand (TheFutureBuzz.com)
-Dan Cheek
www.LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com
