You know, a situation SEOs face when working on a site (that isn’t content-based) is the justification to have content on the site – content in the form of Copy.
The question of why does SEO require content is brought up time and time again.
Let’s address this question, looking at it from a unique point of view.
What is Google’s mission?
They aim to serve users (searchers) with the most relevant information they seek, and present it to them quickly.
In order to do this, they must find the most relevant information to any query requested by the user – the searcher.
Now, imagine, for a moment, that you’re Google.
Imagine you aim to serve users within one space – let’s say the movies space.
So, whenever someone searches for movies-related queries, you want to present them with the best, most appropriate sites about movies.
In order to do this, you need to find websites about movies.
You come across the IMDB website and understand it’s all about movies. Cool!
You come across hundreds of other sites about movies and understand they are indeed about movies. Great!
And then you come across a site, that is just one page – one landing page.
The body of this page has one word – ‘movies’.
Below this word are a never-ending list of image posters of movies.
That’s it!
That’s all the information you, as Google, have.
Now, as Google, are you able to find this site? Yes!
Are you able to determine it’s a site about movies? Yeah!
When someone searches for the word ‘movies’, would you be comfortable suggesting the site is the best, most appropriate one about the topic ‘movies’?
You most likely would not!
Why? Because you do not have enough information to determine the site is more appropriate than IMDB and the other hundreds of movies related sites you’ve come across.
This right here, is why SEOs always suggest having content on one’s site.
It’s because it provides search engines with sufficient data to analyse the site in order to rank it. Not necessarily to find and index the site, but to determine where it ranks compared to the other sites that’s found and indexed.
The difference, you see, is when the element of competition comes into play.
And for websites, that rely on traffic acquisition from search engines, there is always an element of competition.
This is why there is a need to provide search engines with the appropriate amount of information to determine your site is indeed the best.
Content is information.
You can have the best technical set-up to make it easier for search engines to process information.
Not having content, however, is like making information accessible without actually having information to access.
This is a necessary element!
And when you bring in the element of competition, not having content makes organic traffic acquisition hindered.
And to be frank, this is because search engines will simply consider other websites as more appropriate.
If you want to acquire organic traffic you have to convince search engines that you have the best website for what searchers seek when they search with a term that is relevant to your website.
Content is so important for SEO that even websites that have adopted a subscription-based model, and have blocked most of their content from being read by search engines have a portion of their content open to search engines.
The more information you show to search engines the better you’re able to convince them that your site is the best for the potential users you want visiting your site via the search engines.
Now, a question that comes up often is around the type of content a site should have.
Your ideal situation will be to go with variety.
Having different types of content means you’re able to show to search engines, in a variety of ways, that you are an authority on your chosen topic.
What you need as a base is the content-type of text.
Why?
Because this is still the simplest form of content for search engines to understand.
This is, fundamentally, what search engines use to understand a website.
Ideally, your content-type will be text (or Copy), plus other content types – images, videos, etc.
The content type you choose, really depends on the information you want to present.
This would sort of, jump out to you once you know the type of information you want to provide – not to search engines, by the way, but to your targeted audience.
And again, this is where you can utilise the element of competition.
If you have a piece of content in mind and choose to have a page for it that’s only text-based – a 1,000 text for example – and see the competition ranking the best for the content have videos, guess what you would need in order to compete? A video!
Do you see how integral SEO is to your marketing efforts?
Engaging with SEO is not just a case of having keywords, or injecting keywords into your website Copy.
There’s a lot more to it than that!
Good SEO goes deeper than that! Much deeper!
Good SEO will help shape the content production – not the content publication, the content production.
This is why every department in your business, that has an impact on your website, requires a certain level of understanding of SEO.
Let me leave you with this –
Have a look at your content team. How close are they to SEO? How familiar are they with SEO? How do they collaborate with SEO?
You want to improve your SEO traffic…?
Aim to improve the collaboration between SEO and Content, and this optimisation will result in an increase in organic traffic.
