Anyone who’s done any mild investigation into SEO has no doubt run into the mantra of content being king. We know that if you want quality organic SEO results, you need to load your site with quality value adding content.
But what many aren’t that sure of is what quality content consists of, practically. One would think that it just means publishing well written academically credible content. The truth though is far simpler yet so much more complex.
Make Sure it Can be Read
This doesn’t just mean by human visitors in a grammatical and logical manner, but rather that the content on your site, particularly the keywords, should always be readable by search engine bots.
So if your website has a lot of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) such as Flash or Java Script, besides the website loading speed penalty you may incur from having such a large site, you may also be hiding a lot of your most valuable content merely by the complexity of its format.
You may want to even consider having two versions of your site for both fast and slow connections so that users with less current devices and software can still visit your site. This will also reduce your site’s bounce rate, as people won’t have to wait as long for the page to load.
Meta Content Still Matters
The optimization of meta-elements has fallen from prominence quite a degree since Google stopped giving many of its aspects any ranking value whatsoever. But any good organic SEO specialist still knows that it has optimization value, even if it isn’t directly included as a ranking factor.
Including popular keywords in the descriptions, meta-keywords and, most importantly, the titles, of your meta-elements gives both human and bot visitors an immediate idea of what your website’s all about and will make your site seem better designed, overall.
Create Content that is Original and Interesting to Your Market
Google values originality over everything. Whatever content you publish, it must offer a unique insight and series of facts. Therefore, simply summarising a Wikipedia page will offer little organic search engine optimization value.
Google also reviews how people react to your content. Do they scroll all the way down, how long they spend on the page, do you ever get shared on social media sites. Improve the way your content interacts with its human audience and you will see a ranking improvement.
Be Objective
The most important way to look at your content is as an outsider. As conventional marketing will tell you, it not whether your product’s benefits are evident to you, but whether they are effectively communicated to you target market.
Organic SEO web marketing is not unlike this. Your website may still have information points and other non-commercial related pages, but it is still prudent to view your entire site as one big marketing touch point. So don’t waste any space on the superfluous.