In the Early 2000’s it was a lot easier to optimize a website for certain keywords and rank in search engines. Nowadays, search engines are very smart and they can actually tell you when are trying to game system.
Search engines know a lot by just crawling the web. Search engines know and can figure out:
- when you copy content from another web source
- over optimize a webpage for a certain keyword
- have a terrible website or user experience
- buy backlinks to try and increase your rankings
- and a TON more
Because of this, it is important to follow SEO best practices when it comes to optimizing your website. This topic can get pretty technical and nerdy, so I am just going to keep it pretty high level.
If you are not a very technical person, I would recommend reaching out to your webmaster to make sure your website is following best practices.
I have already covered how to research your niche in another blog post, so for this post will go over a category of number two on the SEO Services page, quality content.
Quality Content
A good place to start when looking to optimize your website is the content. Your website content is one of the most important parts of your website when it comes to SEO. This is how search engines determine what your website is about and what services you offer.
It is important that the content on your site is unique. This means you or someone that knows about your business should write 100% of the content. Keep in mind that if you copy or duplicate content from another site, you will be penalized and not rank as high in the search engines.
This point needs to be stressed. Content is very important when it comes to SEO.
Think about why people use Google for a second. People use Google to find information about all kinds of things. Whether it be about some widget or a local Fort Worth business.
If Google provided crappy results or information that the person searching didn’t want, then people would stop using Google. This means it is in Googles best interest to serve the best search results it can so people will continue to use their service. The real reason is so they can serve you paid ads, but that isn’t important to the point I am trying to make..
So if Google is trying to serve the best results, why would they list a site that has duplicate content or very little content? The answer is they wouldn’t!
Google wants to list the best sites that have content and media that its users are searching for and want to read. Read Googles philosophy and think about this idea.
What this all comes down to is you have to provide good, unique content. Period.
This doesn’t mean write one or two sentences about one of your business services. This means write everything you know about that service. Create separate pages and blog posts about those services. Show the visitor that you are the expert in your niche.
This is the type of content people want to read. This is the kind of content people will share. This is the kind of content that make people think, “Hey, this person knows his/her stuff and I want to do business with them”.
I hope this drives the point home for you. Content is very important for SEO.
Here are some tips to provide good content:
- no page on your website should be less than 500 words
- no duplicate content
- use related video and images throughout your content when appropriate
- add alt tags to images
- internal link to other pages on your website
- link to authority sites
- keep content fresh and updated
- use keywords and related keywords throughout your content
This post gives on overview on why content is important for SEO. There are a few points throughout the post that we can dig deeper into in future posts. Stay tuned!