I can’t count the number of times while working on a website, the business owner has uttered the words “SEO is important but I want to cut most of the text and just use a few photos instead.” What?
As soon as I hear that, I start into my SEO 101 lecture. SEO is a broad and complex subject so I do not expect business owners to understand everything there is to know about it. If they did, people like me would be out of a job. That being the case, my job is to teach them so they have a basic understanding of SEO.
Content is king when it comes to great SEO
Over and over I preach the most important component in SEO is content. If you take a minute to think about it, it makes perfect sense. If you have little or poor content, how do the search engines know what your website is about? If our page on web design only contained a few paragraphs, it doesn’t give the search engine much information and therefore, we will rank poorly on that search.
If, on the other hand, we have loads of unique and detailed information about our web design, the search engines see that as being valuable. We will rank higher as the search engine will see that information as being helpful to the person searching for “web design.” After all, the purpose of ranking results is to present websites which offer the best solution for the searcher.
When I explain that to business owners, they quickly see the connection and I can almost see the light bulb going on above their heads. This isn’t necessarily their fault as many SEO companies do not seem to focus on content building, which is something I’ve never understood (and a topic for another post). Likewise, many web developers seem to overlook the content of the site as well. Content seems to be the last thing people are concerned about when it really is just as important as the design itself.
The whole purpose of a website is to have information about your company available to customers and potential customers. How do you do this without content? People don’t know anything about your company and its services/products unless you spell it out on your website and that’s what content does. Yes, I know people don’t like to read and they scan BUT you do need great content or your website will not get results.
The better the content, the better your rankings
Again, common sense tells us the more content you have, the better your chances of ranking. Along the same lines, if you have more text, you can rank for more keyword phrases. Of course, you need unique and well written content. Search engines will know if you’ve simply duplicated content from another site (there are many problems with doing this as well as being unethical) so you need to write original content.
The better your content, the more information you have available to visitors. If you have done your job well, the text will answer their questions, educate them about your services and/or products and ultimately, sell them on your company or at least, convince them to contact you.
If you remember nothing else about great SEO, let it be this-
Content is king.
