Content is King for SEO

Why Content is Essential for SEO Success

One of my first recommendations to clients and friends alike who ask for SEO advice is “create great content- content is king.” Content is the reason the visitor is seeking out your site regardless of the type. Visitors to e-commerce sites want great product information – it’s your job to draw a picture in their minds of the product with your content. Visitors to business sites want to get to know your company and what you can do for them – this may be your one and only chance, so make a good first impression and deliver. Visitors to informational sites obviously are seeking out great content!

Will great content alone get you into the top 10 sites for your keyword(s)? Probably not. But, one thing that I keep running into today is poor or duplicated digital media in at least 50% of the top 10 sites for a good portion of the searches I do, which is pushing me to page two, and sometimes beyond, looking for answers to my questions. Chances are good that you will be ranked on pages 2-4 without having fully SEO optimized your site. Here is where you have a major advantage over the other sites: you have good content which can be SEO optimized and they don’t.

So what makes great content? It’s essentially telling the visitor what they want to know using the terms/keywords they are expecting in an easily consumed manner. Think photos, details, examples, options, reviews, comments, links, timeliness, and presentation.

1. Title Tags – Make each page have a unique title that includes keywords. You have 70 characters maximum before the title is truncated, including spaces and punctuation, that will display in the search results for Google. Yahoo allows you 120 characters. Bing allows 65. So write titles that will work for all of them and don’t just not take advantage of those extra 50 characters! The closer to the start of the tag the keywords are, the better.
2. Heading Tags – Make sure heading tags are unique, contain keywords, and differ from the title tags.
3. Page Content – Provide high-quality content that is specific to each page. Make sure keywords and phrases are near the top and sprinkled throughout in a manner that reads well. Pages need both text and images that contain keywords and phrases. Restructure your page templates and navigational structure accordingly.
   1. Product pages need content – give them specific specs for each product and some solid marketing text to draw them a picture of how/where to use it. Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression!
   2. Optimize images and media for SEO.
   3. Link related products, services, and solutions to each other within page content and navigation. Product pages on a WordPress site may benefit from a related posts plugin such as Yet Another Related Post Plugin. https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/. Link to other high-quality websites when appropriate and relevant.
   4. The home page needs content beyond a testimonial or navigation. This is the single most important page on the site and it needs keyword content. Make sure rotators/sliders have keyword content and each time it transitions you give the visitor more information. Include at least a paragraph that tells the visitor what they will find on your site.

Once you have created great content, make sure you have completed the other SEO optimization suggestions found on my site. Then submit your site to the search engines to be crawled. If the results are not as good as you hoped, consult with a professional, reputable SEO to identify other issues that may be causing your site to rank poorly and to have your site further optimized.