Is Content Better Than SEO?
I hear the argument all the time. Those who fall down on the “SEO is more important” side point to rankings as the evidence that SEO is more important than content. Well, in strict technical terms, SEO is content. But that’s another matter. We’ll cover it in a minute.
The people who argue that content is more important than SEO do so on the basis that “content is king”, an old cliche. Yes, content is important, but you can write content all day long and if no one sees it then, so what?
Michael Martine calls this a false dichotomy. I’ll have to agree.
If you pose the question in the wrong way then I believe you’ll get the wrong answer. We should ask, “Is content or SEO more important.” There’s a false impression being given by that question that one or the other is the correct answer. And that’s not the case. Neither is the answer. Both are equally important.
Those who succeed online do so because they write great content that is well optimized. You have to have both ingredients in your pie. You can’t make a pie without crust and you can’t make a pie without filling. If you try, you fail. A crust without filling isn’t a pie; filling without the crust is just pudding. So the truth of the matter is, if you want pie you’ve got to include great content and SEO.
11 Responses to “Is Content Better Than SEO?”
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal is Written by SEO Expert:
Nick Stamoulis
Tel - 781-999-1222
nick@brickmarketing.com
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
Good point Nick. And to further enhance your point, let’s consider what Matt Cutts said when discussing content:
“How deep Google Bot crawls your website depends upon how much credibility (i.e. – Backlinks) your website has. The more credibility your site has, the deeper we will crawl.”
Matt further went on to say that a website with 10,000 pages of unique content but no backlinks will not rank well because those pages won’t be indexed until the website gets more backlinks to show that it is a valuable resource to other uses on the internet.
So it all boils down to the fact that you can write content faster than J.K. Rowling turns out books, but the search engines won’t even notice unless you build backlinks to your website.
Nick,
Didn’t Rocky simply copy your last paragraph and paste it as a comment?
Tom
Thanks Tom, sometimes I don’t catch these things…I guess that’s why it made sense
Thanks for being such a loyal reader!
Hi Nick, I’ve seen sites that do not have the keyword phrase at all but able to rank under that keyword. The keyword phrase is super highly competitive, how do you explain that? For ex: wii-games-downloads.com (ranked top 3 under ‘download wii games’)
Sometimes I’m just confused.
Is backlink from quality relevant sites enough to let a site rank high even if the on page is not keyword optimized?
I look forward for your expertise.
I think it is assumed in your post, but I though it worth mentioning that we’re talking not just any content is important, but unique content. Some pre-designed websites sell content as part of the package. You can pick and choose from the articles and pre-written text to fit your needs. This is a major no-no if you want to be found by search engines. Google rewards unique content and penalizes sites that aren’t authentic.
Good Stuff as always and great analogy. I’m gonna have to start eating before I read your post. lol
Hi Nick,
That’s very true and very nicely expressed. I like the pie analogy.
HP
Hi Everyone,
Thanks for reading and your additional comments!
I have done a few experiments with hierarchal layout of articles using h1,h2,h3 tags. If a take an article and write it straight through with basically no formatting it seems like it is not picked up at all. If I take the same article, apply h1,h2,h3 tags with Titles in a TOC format throughout the article, suddenly google will pick it up and in addition so will other blogs. Is this just a coincidence or have I stumbled on something?
Certainly seems logical that both good content and SEO are needed. Even if google finds you thru great SEO, if your content is worthless they will soon figure it out.
In my personal experience, since I am a longtime content creator but am fairly new to SEO, I have found that a small amount of SEO and a lot of good content seems to go a pretty long way. I have good, unique content out the wazoo but only moderate SEO and I rank fairly well. As I learn SEO better, I will do more, but right now, that is my experience. Thanks Nick!
Lorraine
Hi Anthony,
Thanks for sharing your experiment with everyone. I would say it might be a coincidence but more likely you had better on site optimization and your content was indexed.
Hi Lorraine,
Great points, good content and SEO are indeed always needed!