Why Content on a Website is So Important
I’m sure you have heard it everywhere you go on how important content is in this industry and how it is the driving force to any successful search engine marketing campaign, but why?
It is important to understand exactly how the search engines work. I know many people like to keep their websites clean and clutter less but the search engines are not artificial intelligence. They are readers; they read massive amounts of information in a split second and find the most relevant information they can in order to supply the search user with what they need. With that said the better the content the easier the search engine spiders can find your business. If you don’t have enough content they don’t have enough to read and your rankings will slip a bit. Text is the search spider’s food. You have to feed them with good quality content and over time you will be rewarded with better and faster indexing.
That doesn’t mean you have to fill each page of your website with thousands of words either. Make an educated business decision with how much content you need to provide for your users to do what they need to do. If you have product pages that need content a hundred to a hundred fifty words will work. You don’t need to drop a thousand words so the search engines can find you. Think about your user experience as well. If you own a website that sells t-shirts do you want to have a thousand words on your product page? Probably not because nobody wants to sit there and feel like they have to read all that but if you are a business to business entity and you offer technical database solutions to your audience than a lengthy description of your services or products might be in order. Think about your audience and step into their shoes.
Take a step back and figure out exactly what your audience is like and what they want to see on your website before you think about what the search engines want to see. Your audience is more important, they are the ones that are going to purchase from you not the search engines. The search engines are just there to display the information in the best possible fashion.
19 Responses to “Why Content on a Website is So Important”
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I agree, more sites or blogs are getting creative which is great but they are lacking content… if you are aware of how to use seo you should already be aware of this.
Hi Minneapolis Web Design Guru,
Content is so very essential for any long term SEO or sales success for any type of website. Thanks for reading!
I agree that we cannot have lengthy text in web pages – however, a company will still need to showcase its strengths and track on the website. They can address this by leveraging case studies, white papers, articles etc – while prospects may not read all of them, their presence will be sufficient to indicate expertise/experience etc.
Hi Jayanthi Badrinath,
Thanks for reading, very true about showcasing different relevant and useful forms of content, including whitepapers, case studies, etc.
Yes, content is very important. It helps even more when we match the queries.
I am a small business owner and trying hard to get my online shop work. Thanks to all of you to provide some SEO tips and lessons, so that we can improve our work.
I think the content on my website is good. Let me know what you think. Visit http://www.northcarolinabeachvacations365.com and let me know what you think
thanks,
jen
Thanks for these great tips. I’m hoping that after working this into my website, I will see an improvement in my ranking.
I totally agree on creating and having content on your site. Content is mutually beneficial for both the search engines and your readers.
First your readers are more likely to find information that they are specifically looking for to answer the questions they have. This provides benefit to your reader.
Second for the search engine there is now more indexed content that provides many more long tail keywords that your website can be found for.
Both provide benefit for you. You have your content in front of the reader and build your readership as well as increasing traffic that you get your message to. Now you have more opportunities to generate your most wanted response from readers.
I found this article very encouraging. Putting products on a page is a relatively simple task that goes quickly. But putting good sales copy on that page, and the next, and the next takes hours of thought, research, and brainstorming. It’s good to think that in the end it will all pay off!
No one reads long stories either in real life and more so on the net.
Some types of sites lend themselves more to a lot of text content. My site is an information-oriented site with an endless stream of article possibilities.
You can not say the same thing about a mini site designed to capture leads.
Thanks Nick.
I liked your anology about “Your audience is more important, they are the ones that are going to purchase from you not the search engines. The search engines are just there to display the information in the best possible fashion.”
It’s no point optimising our website solely for the search engines but neglected our customers perspectives and needs in mind. Thanks for reminding us that our first target should be the customers not SE. As always, you hit the nail, Nick.
I agree entirely about content. And if it’s a promotional or informational website, it needs to have content that provides BENEFIT to the target audience. The more benefits, variations of benefits and related benefits the better! That’s why our Website is full of beneficial material to our target audience: writers, small business owners needing ‘friendly-tech’ advice on building/improving their websites, and also content suggestions that can help them gain additional profits from their website.
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the thoughts and for reading, I will be sure to check out your website as well.
Thanks for setting out these principles for us, Nick. If one is able to do enough research to determine what it makes great sense to tailor the content to meet their needs.in this way you will satisfy the customer as well as the search spiders. To your article I would add that one should insure that your content reflects what you have put in the keywords.
Hi Capetown,
Thanks for reading and your additional content tip. I would say on site optimization of content should be done naturally after the content is written for your website visitors.
Thanks so much. Link Building, keywords and social media have built my company http://executees.net into having a Worldwide customer base. SEO is a process. You have to continue to build daily, and over time your ranking will improve tremendously.
Hi Tracy,
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts…it is nice to hear such a great success story from a reader!