The saying “Content is King” has become so redundant online that it almost means nothing any more. But the concept behind it, the need to create good content is more valid than ever. Does a website need extra content to rank? Yes, but it’s not a necessarily a direct correlation. See content is really just a means to an end for everyone. If you have been dragging your feet getting into the arduous task of content creation, if you need more convincing here are 3 solid reasons any site needs more content.
1. Links
The main reason any good SEO will recommend content is the links that it can attract. Any website in a remotely competitive space needs to actively build links and there are dozens of different ways to go about it. But one of the most effective methods is offering useful resources that others will want to share with their own users via links. Sure, your products, about us and sales pitches are technically content, but is it the kind of content other webmasters will want to pass on? It is a tricky business simply banking on the quality of your business alone to make you worthy of homepage links. But when you write articles, create widgets, run contest or create useful tools, that’s the kind of content people are far more apt to link to.
Of course, it’s not as simple as “if you publish, they will come”. Once you have invested time into making your site chock full of value, the next step is promoting it. Obviously social media is a powerful channel for marketing content, but direct one to one content can be just as useful. When you contact people on an individual basis to share content, you also gain the added benefit of relationship building, which is, in its own way, as important to a website’s success as link building.
2. Entrances
Since every ranking page on your site is, in a sense, a doorway to your website the more content you have the more entry ways you have for people to come through. When people aren’t shopping, social networking or playing games online they are often surfing for information. In fact most searches are informational rather than transactional. That means, whether you’re selling something or not, most people will find you because they are researching something or other. Now it may be as high level as say the “what is half life of plutonium?”, or it may be as vapid as “where does Paris Hilton shop?” While there’s no accounting for taste, this tells us one thing. Everyone, EVERYONE needs to offer more information on their websites in order to capture some of that research based traffic. When you create content that answers informational queries you can rank for these types of searches and attract visitors that way.
With a little bit of research, you can find great ideas for the kinds of content people want. Tools like Wordtracker Questions or even sites like Answers.com or Yahoo! Answers are chock full of ideas for questions that you can answer on your own site. When you create pages that address these kinds of searches, it gives these pages the chance to rank. However, just getting visitors on-site is only half the battle, once they’ve arrived you need to make sure you meet user intent, offer engaging information and include calls to action to turn casual surfers into customers.
3. Education
There is no better customer or client than an informed one. Sure, your sales pitches do a nice job of selling your business as an authority but are you backing it up with content? When someone is looking to invest in anything, they are often inclined to research the decision. Now, they can leave your site to conduct that research, or they can spend more time on your site.
The more objective, unbiased information you provide the more you can educate your potential clients. When you do the business of providing knowledge on your own site you also gain the added benefit of increasing your credibility. When it comes to doing business online trust is everything; and it can be difficult to build trust through text on a white screen. So while you may not be able to sit down with each potential customer and give your polished speech with a smile, your ability to publish expert content on your subject is one of the best ways to compensate for the lack of human contact.
It’s great to have glowing tributes, promises and guarantees dispersed throughout your site. But when you build relationships through education, it speaks just as highly of you, but in a far quieter, and more sincere way. Businesses often run into trouble coming across as genuine, because deep down we all know that they just want our money. But when you offer a plethora of impartial information you increase your humanity and in turn make a much stronger connection with your future customers.
There are so many good reasons to have great content on your site that it is amazing that so many businesses still haven’t caught on. Sure it’s time consuming and the ROI is a little more difficult to track. But it’s well worth the investment of time. The benefits that can be gained in the form of links, entry ways and education should be enough to encourage anyone to add more content to their site. When you are passionate about what you do, creating resources of value should be labor of love that will pay off in their own ways time and time again.
This article is written by Jessica. She writes frequently for the French version of the online reputation management platform Reputation Observer.
this is wat i was lookin!
Hi Jessica,
you know, reading your good reasons about the content, I have a question: How much are we ready to pay for the good content? This is a question to the webmasters. Besides, you can make a next entry in your blog analyzing different options on the market. Believe me, I will come back to read that.
Many Thanks
Omo
In fact, quality content would be more important in the blog post and it could be more helpful as well as useful for all the customers. Thanks a lot for sharing your info on here.
Writing quality rich content gives credibility in the eyes of search engines and its the only way to replace the big players(if they can be replaced?)!.
I really have been struggling with this because my blog is not specific or ‘niche.’ I have lots of topic ideas but being a new blogger – I don’t want to waste my content when I do not have an audience yet. I’ve done research and lots of gurus say that you need to post 10-15 posts each day. When you have a job and other responsibilities, that does not seem feasible (unless you are posting one sentence).
This is Great! Compacting Tips into 3 Basic Reasons. Content is basically the meat and should be leaner and meatier.
Hi Everyone, Wow! thanks for the amazing responses! Several of you have made great points, that in making the most of your content, quality and presentation matter a great deal as well. Thanks for the feedback everyone 🙂
@Atulprex Really I also beleive that using Google Analytics is one of the most effective way to study about the blog performance deeply 🙂
Hey Jessica,
You have explore the real gateway to reach the goals. Thanx for sharing the same to the world..
Having lots of content is good but it is equally important to optimize them for search engine and market those posts properly. I think content creation should go parallel with content marketing. For most blogs most of there traffic comes from few performing articles and you should focus on bringing your existing articles to the top of rankings while building content.
I think that while it is widely known that content is king, and everyone seems to provide a huge amount of content, the quality matters. There were times when you had only to write and article and to receive traffic and links, but now there are so many articles published daily that you need quality and promotion if you want to get links and traffic.
First of all you have to drive some visitors to read the article so a small percent of them would share and link to it because it is good.
Well said!…. Content is the Meat of the blog however there are factors that you need to look to. Same as the meat; the color, the texture, the scent and the like. If you want your blogs to be hot and marketable then put on the meaty side in all in one package.
Great post Jessica, yes, content is important because it is the doorway to your site like you said but one must not compromise quality with quantity and should always focus on quality content instead of more quantity
More content allows user’s crawl the website and new posts will persuade a user return to the website after exit
More content = More traffic. More Traffic = More Money and Success. This is simple
Loved your post Jesicca. Also liked your idea about checking yahoo answers, i will give it a try 🙂
Yeah, “content is king” which could be more important point in the blog. Thanks a lot for written a valuable article on here. Great work,Jessica.
Content is even more important nowadays, especially with the latest changes that Google made to their algorithm. There’s a stronger focus on creating more and more content.
I agree, there is a need to create more good content and you definitely gave three great reasons. I think your second reason is the best reason you gave.
As a site owner you want more doorways to your site because it will increase your website traffic. I was surprised by how many different doorways I found to my site on the search engine results.
The more content you create that provides information the more you will find your web pages in the search results. This is why I add more content to my site each week. Thanks for sharing your insights Jessica.
The more content you have on your site, the more chances of you getting noticed…. as the opportunities are more… You only need to take care of quality of content…
Good Post..
Cheers
Sandeep
Great and different post. I enjoyed reading it.
Quite a big Article. But I agree with your first point. Sometimes while writing a post I feel that I should’ve written this article earlier in order to link to a particular keyword.
Content is king! I am sure this statement is still very valid. But SEO and quality (of the content) is more and more important these days!
Well you 2nd point if perfect and I think if you have 100 quality articles with unique information than it will open 500 different keyword for your blog for sure . Analytic reports are best method to discover new keyword related to your content and than use them to seo your posted content again .
You basically need more content because the more fresh and unique content you post and the more response you get on each content page, the more authority you get in google (see popular newspapers)
Content of your post is really fresh, espicially what you said under EDUCATION is good
“….your ability to publish expert content on your subject is one of the best ways to compensate for the lack of human contact. ” 🙂
Jessica ,Awesome and inspiring post ,thanks for sharing.From now more concentration on content.
Few new points i saw here in it, superb article.
Yes Agreed. Inspiring one. It may take few years to build more content and once you are popular, you will start getting the love from others.
I agree ! content is the thing , but how you put it up does matter ! Superb post .
Agreed Content is the only thing which makes you flourish…Presentation is another thing we will have to concentrate on as it’s like a Recipe it is tasty but should also look good to attract viewers..