Quality Content: What It Is and How to Get It

Posted on December 6, 2006

Content: substantive information or creative material viewed in contrast to its actual or potential manner of presentation

Content is one of the most important factors that search engines use to catalog your website. In fact, it’s the only way search engines have any idea what your website is about. I can’t count the number of times clients tell me that they don’t want to have content on their website, but they want it to rank well. This doesn’t happen, at least, not organically.

Quality content is also one of the most important factors that make other users link to your website. Constructing quality content is a lot like link baiting - essentially, writing content that is so juicy other users can’t help but link to it. Many SEO firms believe quality content is the best way to achieve organic search results. But how do you write quality content?

All too often people write their content to appease the search engine gods in order to rank well. Quality content isn’t written for search engines, it isn’t blocks of text bloated with keywords and targeted phrases; quality content is well thought out content that actually applies to the user. When brainstorming your quality content ideas think about these factors:

  • Your audience, what do they want to know?
  • Research various forums on specific topics to see what questions are being asked
  • Organize your content into primary groups that are easy to scan
  • Be creative when writing titles. Would you click on the link if you read your title?

In the search engine ranking race, too many companies do not write content for the long run. Many companies will chase various search engine algorithms that will provide results this month but next month their site is nowhere to be found. Google alters their algorithms on a regular schedule just to keep SEO’rs on their feet, so to be successful over the long-term you must remember to think about the big picture. But one fact remains constant: content that is written for and useful to the user will ALWAYS be rewarded. To obtain good, consistent search engine rankings, you must compose quality content that serves the needs of the user.


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