I saw a post today on the Search Engine Journal, September 11, 2015, that does a great job of explaining why I keep telling people with websites “The content for each page needs to be 400 words or more.”
“Content is King!” We’ve been hearing that mantra for years, and it has largely been true. Search engines like sites with content. Content is how they determine what each page is about. Content is the meat of the web. Without content, there is nothing.
Any website has the potential to rank for thousands of keywords, but only if there is content built around those phrases. Blogs became a great way to add more content, targeting searchers seeking information on those keywords. (this is why you need to have a blog page and post regularly! GS) As long as you could produce the content, you had a way to rank well and get more traffic.
Why it Will Get You Killed TodayWhile content may be king, too many websites were pushing out content for the sole purpose of ranking, without any regard to the quality of that content. Content producers were ranking and drawing in thousands of visitors which brought in millions of dollars of ad revenue. The only problem was, the visitors were not finding the content valuable.
To combat this, Google rolled out the Penguin (It should be Panda, GS) update targeting sites with thin and not-so-valuable content. Many sites that earned their living selling ads on these crappy content pages saw their livelihood come crashing down as the search engines made room for sites that invested in producing a higher-caliber of content.
How to Kill it for Tomorrow and Forever
Your goal, as a content producer, is to be known as an authority on your subject matter. That’s hard to do when you produce content that isn’t worth much. Think of your content as an extension of your reputation. Good content improves your reputation. Junk content reduces your reputation. Better content is more likely to get noticed, linked and produce business.
It’s easy to get caught up in algorithm chasing. But instead of chasing the algorithms, we need to have the algorithms chasing us. That means that we avoid the flash-in-the-pan “killer” tactics that are here today and gone tomorrow. Instead, look to build long-term value in everything you do.
That’s no guarantee that everything you do today will be valuable tomorrow (or forever for that matter!), but you definitely decrease the likelihood that your efforts today will result in a penalty tomorrow. Look for opportunities to build relevance and value with your visitors. Do that, and you’ll always be killing it!
Get the message here…your content is very important so don’t think that a couple of paragraphs will suffice if you are expecting to rank in the search engines.
Glenn