Magnetic content improves your standing with search engines and users alike.
While search engines have always stressed the importance of building and maintaining a quality website, with its Penguin 2.0 algorithm update, Google is ready to seriously enforce it. Websites that don’t fortify themselves with relevant, optimized content can no longer compete with those that do, and low-quality tactics used by black-hat search engine optimization companies will no longer benefit anyone’s ranking. To develop an effective SEO strategy, you need to focus on creating new content—and here’s why.
Taking search engine optimization out of the equation for a moment, fresh, quality content on your website benefits its visitors. Case studies, for example, demonstrate for your leads what your business is capable of. Blog entries give you an opportunity to show some personality, share the latest news and establish your expertise. The people who visit your website are looking for information, and by continually adding new and more-relevant content to your site, you’re giving them exactly what they need.
Search engines determine your site’s value partially by monitoring the links that lead there. The rationale is that the more links that lead to your site, the more popular and relevant it is. In the past, black-hat search engine optimization companies have skirted the rules by investing in large numbers of low-quality links—Google’s latest algorithmic update, however, has made links like those effectively worthless.
The links that lead to your website need to come from reputable, relevant sources, and one of the best ways to build links like that is by adding fresh, interesting content to your site. When your site features compelling content, your visitors and brand evangelists are more likely to share it on your behalf, creating links, sending you traffic and boosting your standing with search engines. A social media strategy that includes promoting your own content makes it even easier for the users who “like” and follow your business to share your links and increase traffic to your site.
Search engines like Google don’t just comb through your site to see it there is new content—they interpret the value of that content. This is the guiding principle behind search engine optimization, because it isn’t just what you say, but also how you say it that matters.
New content that’s optimized with meta data, proper interlinking, effective keywords and more makes it easier for search engines to find your site and to interpret it as a relevant, quality destination for users.
What independent businesses and search engine optimization companies alike are discovering in the post-Penguin 2.0 world is that content alone is no longer king—high quality content is. By adopting a more focused strategy and continuing to add high quality SEO content to your site, you make it more and more appealing to both your visitors and the search engines that guide them there creating opportunities for higher volume, higher quality web traffic and conversion.