High-Quality Web Content: The Centerpiece of Your SEO Strategy

High-quality web content is the centerpiece of your SEO strategy. At least, it should be. All of the other aspects of search engine optimization (meta tags, keywords, link building) are secondary. Without quality content, you will never achieve your Internet marketing goals. In this lesson, I’ll share some tips for writing quality web content to support your SEO campaign.

Create In-Depth Articles Instead of “Puff Pieces”

Once upon a time, there was a commonly held notion that web content had to be short. “People don’t like to scroll down the page,” the argument went. “So make it short and snappy.” This kind of logic is outdated and downright harmful to your Google rankings. Google engineers have frequently stated that web content should be useful to the reader. They often use the phrase “in-depth” when describing such content. Snippets and puff pieces need not apply.

Your web pages should be as long as needed to achieve the intended purpose. If you examine some of the well-known websites that suffered under the Google Panda update, you’ll notice they have certain things in common. One of those commonalities is short content. Many of these sites are full of articles that offer “10 quick tips for [blank]” — articles with an average length of 300 – 400 words. This is a flawed strategy, and it certainly won’t work in the post-Panda world.

This doesn’t mean you should ramble. Your content should be tightly focused around a specific topic. At the same time, it should offer a wealth of information that serves the reader and helps them accomplish a goal of some kind. It should explore the topic with as much detail as possible. Later, I’ll explain how in-depth web content helps with SEO, as well.

Generally speaking, a longer article is more useful than a shorter one. By the nature of its length, it can include more information. It allows the author to be more specific and thorough. It gives the reader a better grasp on the subject matter. These things will serve you well in the long run.

Give Your Content a Specific Purpose

Before you sit down to write a new blog post or web page, you should think about the specific purpose for that content. This purpose must relate to the reader in some way. SEO comes later. The reader is your first priority. Here’s an example of a good and bad purpose for web content:

• Bad: I am writing this article to pull in traffic for a certain keyword or phrase.
• Good: I am writing this article to educate my readers about this topic. I want to help my readers understand this subject by explaining it clearly and thoroughly.

The first person is writing for search engines. He suffers from SEO tunnel vision, and his content will suffer as a result. It’s hard to create quality web content with such a shortsighted approach. This is the kind of thing Google staffers have warned about for years.

The second person has the right mindset. She is focused on helping her readers achieve a certain goal. This kind of content will be more useful. Thus, it will keep people on the website longer. It also supports the broader goals of an SEO campaign (see “snowball effect” below).

By serving the reader, you are also achieving SEO success. People will stay on your website longer if you give them purposeful content. This sends a positive signal to the search engines. Remember, when someone clicks through a search engine results page (SERP) to find your website, the search engine can track them through browser cookies. They don’t do this for Orwellian purposes. They do this to see how people react to your website. This is sometimes referred to as usage data.

Search engines are increasingly using this data to measure website quality, as they should. If most people hit the back button immediately upon finding your website, it suggests that your content is not very useful.

On the other hand, if the average visitor spends a few minutes on your site and reads several pages of content, it sends a positive signal. This is the starting point for SEO success. Nothing else matters if you fail to engage your readers.

So before you write a single word of that blog post or web page, think about your purpose. Who is your intended audience? What do they need from you, in terms of information? How is your web content going to help them achieve a certain goal? Answer these questions before you start writing.

This is the beauty of using a content-management system (CMS) or a blogging program. These tools simplify the publishing process so you can create more content in less time. By simplifying the technical side of things, you can spend more time on what really matters — developing quality web content. This keeps your readers happy. And when your readers are happy, the search engines will eventually find out about it. Remember the “usage data” we talked about earlier?

Think about your readers. Think about the information they need, the problems they have, and the solutions they seek. Help them solve their problems. Answer their questions with detailed information. Put the search engines out of your mind while you are writing your web content. Focus on the reader first and SEO second. This is the path to creating quality website content.

High-Quality Web Content Creates an SEO Snowball Effect

Creating quality web content is hard work. It takes time to research, write and publish new content on a regular basis. So what’s the point? Why should you spend so much time and energy on it? There are plenty of benefits we could discuss — branding, positioning building trust, etc. But let’s focus on the SEO benefits for a moment.

If you publish useful information on a regular basis, you will eventually create an SEO snowball effect. Here’s how it happens…

Internet publishers who find your content interesting will be more inclined to link to it. Maybe there’s a blogger who covers your industry and stumbled cross your website one day. He is so impressed with the quality and quantity of your web content that he links to the site. He does this to share it with his own readers. You’ve just acquired an inbound link that can help you improve your search engine rankings over time.

As your visibility improves, you will naturally attract more readers. Some of those readers will be Internet publishers, like the blogger we just talked about. If they find your web content useful, they may link to your website as well. This improves your search engine rankings even more (“link popularity” is a key element of an SEO campaign). Additionally, you are keeping people on your website longer by providing useful information. This sends positive signals to the search engines in the form of usage data. Again, this can result in higher rankings and more website traffic.

You can see how this has a snowball effect over time. But it all starts the quantity and quality of your web content. You’ve heard that phrase many times throughout this article. There’s a good reason for this repetition. It is absolutely crucial that you understand the importance of writing quality content. This has always been necessary for SEO success. But now, in the wake of the Google Panda update, it’s more important than ever.