In the Internet world, content has always been the undisputed king. Long before SEO became a “household” name among Internet users, content has always driven the Internet. Search engine optimization (SEO) and content go hand in hand. For organic SEO that offers long-term results, content is at the heart of the strategy. While SEO involves much more than content, the fact remains that you cannot have an effective long-term strategy without quality content.
In the past, there was a lot of confusion about SEO and content marketing. In fact, major online magazines including The Guardian ran articles claiming that content marketing has almost surpassed SEO and that SEO will soon be a thing of the past. However, we beg to differ. SEO is content based, but content marketing alone will not get you the results you want from your digital marketing campaign.
SEO requires content
Keywords
SEO is all about getting your website to rank high in search engine rankings. These complex operations require the use of keywords. While before, websites used random keywords on their pages, Google has now tightened its rules to give priority to quality sites. So, keywords need to be embedded organically into content so they can be used in multiple places. Without content, SEO is impossible.
Link building
Another very important aspect of SEO is link building. It involves linking related links so that target customers can be redirected from one related website to another. Keywords usually form link routes. Since, links need keywords and keywords need content, SEO needs content.
Traffic generation
Generating traffic is one of the main functions and goals of SEO as more traffic implies better search engine rankings. However, Google is smart. It doesn’t only consider the number of people visiting the website. It goes one step further and also takes into account the amount of time people spend on your website. In other words, visitor bounce rate is important. Lower the bounce rate, better the SEO ranking. Content is the key to increasing the amount of time visitors spend on your website. If you have good content, people will stay longer and increase your SEO efforts.
Content determines the user experience
One of the main factors considered for search engine ranking is the kind of user experience your website creates for visitors. While the layout and presentation of your website are also important for creating a positive user experience, it’s the content that really makes an impression.
Obviously, visitors come to your website for information and not to check the website layout.
Versatile content improves SEO
Content is not limited to text. It is a very versatile entity and includes pictorial representations such as photos, infographics, sketches and more. You can also have video content based on the needs of your website. Such variations are also more appealing to the people visiting your website.
Unfortunately, search engine spiders cannot read or “see” images. So, when you insert an image, you need to include a tagline that naturally contains the necessary keywords. Don’t fill the tagline with keywords.
Most importantly, don’t embed keywords in your video or image files as they won’t be recognized by search engine spiders.
Content on social media
Search engines take your website’s social mileage into account when ranking it. For example, Bing considers the number of likes your content gets. Google considers “+1”. The number of times your content has been shared is also a ranking parameter.
So, basically you need content for people to support it on social media and improve your SEO performance.
Fresh content improves SEO
The main ideology in creating search engine algorithms is to help people access the high-quality information they are looking for online. For this, the search engine uses a parameter called the “freshness index”. It is an index of how fresh or new the content on your website is.
In a year, search engine spiders crawl several times on your website. If they find a new batch of content every time they visit, your website will likely rank higher than before. Stagnant content will not get you ahead of the rankings. So, you can use fresh content as a strategy to boost your SEO performance.
Content makes you unique
There are billions of websites and blogs on the Internet. Many of them have the same layout and design, especially the ones using templates. In such a scenario, what sets you apart from other business websites of your genre? The simple answer is content. Whether your layout matches other websites or not, you can always make sure that your content doesn’t match anyone else’s.
Why is it so important to be unique? That’s because uniqueness is one of the parameters search engines consider when ranking your website. Google has very strict plagiarism norms. In fact, sites that publish plagiarized content are blacklisted from search pages. So you can use content effectively to make yourself unique.
Content drives interaction
In other words, content begets content. When you post articles and blogs, readers respond. These responses are also fresh content on your website. The best thing about engagement is that a single article or blog continues to generate responses for quite a long time. So you have active content on your website with just a few posts.
Because search engines take the dynamism of your website into account, content can be used as a very effective way to increase your ranking on search pages.
Content forms the core of SEO in more ways than one. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the lion’s share of an SEO strategy is based on content. So, investing in content creation can reap many benefits for you. Contact a Lebanese SEOs company for a strong strategy.
