Most people know the basics of SEO, and the story about keywords and profiling of your website to get the best search results. What people often don’t realize is that the next phase is to have something of value there on the site for the people searching. This is critical, and it’s the difference between success and failure for most websites.
Content and searches
In practice, searches are just the start of the process. How often have you taken one look at a site, and decided it wasn’t worth looking at? There are various reasons for this, but the main reason can be summed up in one word- Content.
There’s a very good reason for this situation. Searchers may have been looking for something for a long time. They’re highly motivated, and they’re also very focused on specific information. If that information isn’t there, they won’t stick around.
In marketing, this is called “engaging” the market. It’s a point of contact, and it’s also the fundamental basis for website visitors to be there. Some of the best websites in the world have huge amounts of useful, targeted information for site users. This actually isn’t a marketing trick; it’s good business practice. The value to the site user is drastically enhanced by this information.
Content values, SEO and site structure
Content value is actually no great mystery. For example, if your site is about gaming, your content would naturally include:
- Games by name
- Games by manufacturer
- Forums
- External links
- Reviews
- Blog
- New releases
- News about games and game developers
Content can be structured to be very easy to use, and if done properly, it’s like finding a goldmine for searchers, an instantly bookmarked site with everything the user needs. This is also best practice search engine optimization, providing a very large amount of search-relevant information while also making your site very easy for search engine spiders to explore and retrieve data.
Simply structuring your content well can lead to a lot of “conversions” (click throughs, downloads, sales, links, etc.) and improve your page ranking instantly. This is also good website management, making your site extremely easy to maintain, and keeping all your information well organized and easy to work with.
Maintaining your content quality
Content standards are particularly important to successful websites. The most successful sites are those who attract their core audiences with content which is in high demand. Many of the tech sites, for instance, are as much news sites, as well as technical sites. They have all the news about new software, new technology, and industry news.
Sites like PC World, Tech Crunch and others are typical examples. These sites have a user base which is comprised largely of experts and people having better than average knowledge of the subject matter. The standards set for content quality are therefore extremely high. Content is the core business of these sites.
The moral of the story is- “Get your SEO and your content right, and success will follow”. It’s never missed yet.
