Creating Worthwhile Content

Creating Worthwhile Content
Filling up your pages with fluff and self-promotional clichés may be the stuff of TV commercials and print advertisement but is not useful for a search engine or human consumption. The fact is, creating worthwhile content, is a very important part of effective SEO.

If your website content is unoriginal, auto-generated, “spun” (taking the same article and having it rewritten to basically say the same things with a few minor changes) or otherwise devoid of real value – not only will it not do well in search results, your website might also be penalised by search engines.

Useful, original, well-written content is becoming a more and more critical component of a web page and a website as a whole. There are several reasons for this:

• Original content, with chosen keywords used naturally and modestly, is given higher value in search results. As mentioned before, search engines give low rankings to sites that try to cheat with the overuse of keywords, also known as keyword stuffing.

• Worthwhile, updated and regularly added content is also another SEO strategy. Websites that regularly update and add good content to their site will rank higher in search results than old, stale content that has not been revisited or updated by the writer.

• The more informational, useful, well-written and otherwise valuable content a website has the more opportunities to receive inbound links from other sites, which is an extremely important ranking factor.

• The more content a website has, the more opportunity for deep links – which are widely accepted as one of the most important factors in SEO. Deep links are backlinks that link to internal sections, subsections of your website. It serves to prove to Google et al that specific and targeted information has been found, read and linked to by another site that finds this content valuable.

If you own a business or are monetising a blog, then obviously you have expert information about a particular subject.

The more valuable content you provide your visitors, the better it is for your website.

Essentially, you must put your audience ahead of conversion rates, sales, or other typical business priorities. Your sales and other business goals must result from offering expertise, valuable information and insight; not from content that is “sales forward”.

This really works both for the search engines and your targeted audience.