Websites Need Content Before You Can Optimize!
At Brick Marketing, we consider the first phase of SEO to be on-site optimization. Some other SEO professionals may disagree, but I believe you have to have a well optimized site before you even bother to start on link building. But the debate over which is more important—on-site SEO or link building—is for another day. Regardless of which comes first or is more important, the simple fact is that in order to optimize a site, there has to be content to optimize! Meta tags and H1 tags are important and should be optimized, but they won’t make up for a lack of site content.
I had a client who worked in home renovation design and build. While conducting keyword research for them, I found a lot of great keywords that focused on specific areas of the home—kitchen renovation, bathroom remodel, living room design and build—and so forth. These were all great keywords for this company. The problem was, as I looked at their site, I realized that they didn’t have pages to use to these new keywords on!
Keywords have to be page specific. Bathroom centric keywords need a bathroom renovation page to be used on. They shouldn’t be the focus of the homepage. Their existing site didn’t have these pages. They just had a generic design and build page that explained their process. While there was a lot of great content on that page, it had its own set of appropriate keywords. Incorporating “kitchen redesign” would mean sacrificing one of those keywords.
If your site doesn’t have the content to support them, you can’t include those keywords. That means you’re missing out on the traffic that comes from those keywords. Depending on which words and phrases you are forced to leave out, it could be hundreds of thousands of potential visitors that will never even see your site!
There is nothing wrong with adding a few more pages to your site in order to go after more keywords. Like my client adding a bathroom design page, a kitchen design page and a special projects page. Each of those pages has the potential to rank in the search engines and become a point of entry for traffic. Think about a car dealership website, they don’t lump every brand of car onto one page. Most likely they have a page for each brand of car, making it easier for visitors to find the car they want and so the dealership can go after those keywords.
The trick is to not go overboard with the pages. If the car dealership had a Toyota page, then a Corolla page, then a separate page for each year of Corolla in stock, which further divided into pages for each make and model, it gets too cluttered. Site navigation plays a big role in user-experience and SEO. Sometimes you can combine a few pages with limited content into one very successful, content-juicy page.
6 Responses to “Websites Need Content Before You Can Optimize!”
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This is great advice, Nick, thanks. Time and time again, when we look at recent organic search performance for brand marketers, we discover that they have yet to make a sufficient investment in content to capture that search traffic.
As you suggest, we have found that the topic-focused landing pages that you describe are an important ingredient to success for our agency and brand partners. Focusing the searcher (and the search engines) on key topical areas is important.
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Tom Gerace is CEO of Skyword, the search-driven media company
When either developing a site from scratch or doing a site revision, we always stress to clients the need to write to their audience first (develop useful content) and that good SEO will follow that practice. It needs to be “on the page” before it can be “seen in the code”.
They can add Panda, they can add +1, they can add any new tools but content is still king!
Content is the foundations of any web activities including SEO and you can’t build the roof withouth foundations.
Thanks for the post, Nick. It’s surprising how often business owners are not aware of which keywords will resonate with potential customers, since these are the terms that should be used in both consultations and in written media. I have been mystified when working with business owners who are unable to articulate their value proposition and what they do in more than very general terms. Once I drill down with a client and identify the services they offer, a website architecture with keyword-rich landing pages and sub-pages emerges naturally. The customer-focused content follows from there.
We find this all the time too Nick.
We prefer to be involved early on in a site’s development to advise the client on what content they should have to maximise traffic AND sales too.
After all, if and when a human visitor does reach the site looking for the e.g. bathroom design service they were searching for, they need to find it and be sold on it – and you need real content to do that – it’s not just there for SEO
Thanks Nick – had an experience recently while doing freelance copywriting and directory-building for an agency and its client. Client did not understand that the website had to first be optimized with new content. Wanted it all backwards! But we’re getting there …