Search Engine Results Pages - Content is King!

I just finished going over our analytics and comparing the results with my SEO efforts for the month of December. The results are in…CONTENT is the number one driving factor to our website.

I know I’ve said that before, but I don’t know if I’ve really driven it home for our clients. There are so many “do’s” and “don’ts” in search engine optimization. All the information that I keep up with including newsletters, groups, articles, companies, books, etc.., all have their basic set of rules (formed a long time ago) and they change periodically when everyone starts to follow the new trends and the search engines change the algorithms, but the bottom line is – if you have good content and your site keeps evolving, traffic will come. Period.

Yes, there are tricks that dishonest companies use to try and get you where you want to be, but you end up being penalized for them. Rather than waste time and money on those efforts, why not just go for the honest way? Good old-fashioned work. We don't always follow the practices we should because of sheer lack of time. We're busy bees! But one thing is for sure, the things that we take the time to do - work.

Speaking of work, how about the people that work at deceiving you in your search in order to gain a buck? Grrrr. Nothing is more frustrating to me than when I do a search, a result comes up that is supposed to be relevant, I click on it and it’s just another damn directory site of another search using the keywords I just put in. It's like those little boxes within a box, O.K. the first time you experience it...but do you want to relive it every time? I don't.

I also get severely irked when I search for something and the results clicked on are just a page full of paid advertising. What's worse than that? When they have nothing to do with what I searched for at all. I read an article during the holidays (I’m sorry I don’t remember who wrote it and I didn’t save it) that kids were for sale at Target. Hello? Really? I just Googled “kid for sale”, here’s what I got:This is precisely why I hardly EVER click on the sponsored links. It’s most likely not what I wanted in the first place. The corporations who have an endless budget will have surely invested in SEO as well for the PPC ad. They end up wiping out the little guy by bidding top dollar for the PPC campaign. (Those of you who understand PPC may complain I'm leaving something out by not explaining the actual CTR, but that's not what this post is about.) Little companies just starting out try to jump in the big pool and they quickly drown.

My advice? Write some articles, start a blog and publish content that is relevant to whatever it is your selling. When we search for your product, we’ll be grateful to land on a website that is what we were looking for in the first place. Isn’t that what all of us want?

Joanne