
Content Marketing
Succeeding in the search engines means giving people what they want when they type a search into their favorite search engine or get Siri to look it up. That’s what content marketing is all about. When content marketing is done correctly, your site will get more traffic from more sources than ever before! The best websites on the Internet are those that inform visitors, not just ask for their money.
Content Volume
The volume of the content is vitally important. Generally speaking, a website with 80 pages will outperform a website that has 8 pages by far more than 10x the amount of traffic. Adding volume allows you to generate search engine success in keywords that don’t generate a ton of traffic, but cumulatively, they will help to generate a lot of traffic over the course of a year. Actually, the 5 or 6-page “brochure” website that populated the web in the early days are long gone. There was a point (the 90s?)
Quality of the Content
If you are planning to enhance the content of your website, then the most important idea to keep in mind is to make your website a true resource for potential customers Focus on long-tail keywords.
Other Measures of Quality
The content you provide can’t all just be boring, dull stuff about things in general. Your website will be much more successful if the pages of your site are on-topic and interesting. There has to be a focus to the theme and there have to be multiple themes in each website. Concentrate on the topics most likely to inspire questions about your type of business. Do keyword research to find what people are looking for and find where people performing those searches are currently not being well-served. If your content is not original content, then don’t even bother. Search engines will not reward a page or a website that uses duplicate content. You can’t get away with changing a few words either. However, be creative! It is entirely acceptable to take an existing article and rewrite it in your own words. Expand on an existing article or concept. Take the opposite point of view of a controversial article. “Why” or “How” articles are great. There are lots of ways to make your site more interesting with quality unique content without reinventing the wheel each time. Just don’t duplicate content or your site will be penalized.
Social Media Can Help
I don’t want to contribute to the feeling among many (most?) business owners that they are falling behind when it comes to social media. There is strong resistance to social media in a lot of areas. It’s not essential for your success, but it can help. One important measure of the quality of the content of your website is the amount of times it has been shared, commented on, or liked in one way or another. You are not going to generate a viral post every time you bang something out on your keyboard, but getting people to share your content helps tell the search engines that it has value. Search engines look to social media for clues about content quality.
Finally…
Often, it is said that Search Engines have ever changing requirements, and are generally in a perpetual state of flux. One thing that never changes, and really never has changed is the basic premise that if you supply content that people like (or need!), your website will be successful on the Internet. The search engines exist to connect people with content they need or want. Create that content and the search engines will like you a lot.