This is one of those phrases that get tossed around a lot on the Internet and so many have become so accustomed to hearing it, that they don’t really listen anymore. However, this is probably one of the single most important concepts that you need to adopt in your quest to understand how the Internet and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) works. Content truly is king. Keep that in the forefront of your mind as you develop your marketing and SEO strategies and you will be well served.
To really understand the vital role that content plays, you need to first change the way you think. You need to think as if you were Google. What is Google’s primary goal? (As Google is the largest of the search engines, this article will refer to it extensively, you can, however, substitute “search engine” in general each time that Google is mentioned.) Well, the primary goal is to make money. That one probably caught you off guard because most will say their primary goal is to provide an “enhanced user search experience” or something equally obtuse. But the reality is that they, like any other corporation, are first and foremost trying to make money. They do that by building up a loyal following of users. That user base grows as users begin to trust what Google serves them in the search results and based upon how relevant those results are. There are many, many search engines out there. Rest assured that if Google were serving up poor quality search results, users would migrate away from it towards Yahoo or one of the other search engines in a heartbeat. Sure, the big three are Google, Yahoo and MSN, but there are dozens more to choose from. For Google to continue to grow its popularity and user base, it must continue to deliver better and better high quality and targeted results to those users.
Content, is ultimately what every user is searching for – in some form or another. It may be video, articles, wikis, blogs, or other social media, but it is all content, and the more of it you have, the bigger your slice of the Google pie will be. If you have more content than your competitors for a given search keyword, which site do you think Google is going to send its traffic to if its desire is to give the user the best results and experience possible?
All Content Is Not Created Equal. Sure, there are different types of content, as elaborated on above, but what is more important is to understand that just having “something” is not necessarily good. Google wants to see three particular aspects of content – quality, uniqueness and relevance. Quality is pretty self explanatory – good, well written copy or well produced videos that exude professionalism and authority. Relevance is also pretty straight forward. If the user is searching on “cars” and you’re your site is about “boats”, clearly it is not relevant. Now obviously that example is oversimplified, but you can infer that the more specifically relevant your content is to what the user is searching for, the more success you will have in bringing those users to your site via Google. Uniqueness is a bit more esoteric.
There are many sources on the web for purchasing quality content; most are known as PLR databases. PLR stands for Private Label Rights and it means that it is content for which, once purchased, you have the right to modify and use however you want (there are some restrictions, such as resale rights and others, so make sure to verify the licensing of any PLR content you purchase). Many people trying to build up the content on their site will turn to PLR as a source. It can be very effective, but you need to understand its limitations as well – the principle issue is that of uniqueness. Let’s say you purchase a set of PLR articles on a topic like “debt consolidation” for example. The fact is, if you did your research right and found a very good high quality PLR site, you will likely have very well written content (beware though, not all PLR sites are the same and many have poor quality foreign-written content full of grammatical and factual errors).
So, how do you address the issue of uniqueness? There are two primary methods, and each of them has its associated costs in terms of financial costs and time. Method one is simply to create your own well researched, relevant and unique content or pay someone else to create it. Keep in mind that if you do this yourself, it is not quite as simple as you might think. You need to be very cognizant of SEO tactics and strategies in the creation of your content. Think of it like this. You’re building a football team and you go out and hire the quarterback with the best arm in the field, problem is, he’s blind. Content is the same way. You can have incredibly good quality and even relevant content, but if it is not crafted in a manner which obeys some of the basic laws of SEO your results will be mediocre at best. If you pay someone to create that content for you, you need to ensure that they understand how to apply SEO principles to the content creation process as well. The second approach is to take a quality PLR source and use it as a “baseline” to generate new unique content. Again, this is not as easy as is implied, so you really need to make sure you fully research this approach or hire someone who fully understands the proper ways to repurpose quality PLR and ensure uniqueness while preserving quality, relevance and optimizing for SEO.
There are many rules of content creation, but if you stick to these three basic principles – quality, relevance and uniqueness – your site popularity within the search engines will continue to grow. More users and traffic means more to your bottom line and ultimately that is the goal of any business.
