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Importance of Quality Content - Recently, Courtney Tuttle, a respected Internet Marketer and blogger wrote a post on his blog titled “Content Has Never Been The King”. ( I would link to it, but it’s been removed from his blog). This post basically proclaimed that content is not very important to a website and that link building is actually king.
As you can imagine, this prompted lots and lots of heated comments and basically a war ensued between those who agreed and those like me, who disagreed with him.
A couple of days ago Court posted As It Turns Out, Content is King, where he admitted he was completely wrong and therefore was proclaiming that content was most definitely king and he cited this reason:
“If your site doesn’t have quality content, a Google search engineer can crush it with a simple push of a button.”
I am certainly not surprised that he has retracted the original post and changed his opinion and I respect him for having to guts to post about his newly found opinion.
What is amazing is that soon after Court posted the original post, Content Has Never Been King, his blog that ranked page 1 of SERPS for the keyword Internet Marketing without quotes, against a competition of 87 million sites, has mysteriously been pushed to page 7 in SERPS . He does not even rank for his name, or blog title
This was, as Court himself believes, a manual slap from Google and it seems as Google is giving a clear message to Court and his 4600 readers and anyone else who thinks content is NOT king about what Google really thinks about content.
Actually there are several MMO bloggers (not referring to Court) who recommend taking shortcuts, using automated software and creating thin affiliate sites, ignoring quality content in order to slap up as many affiliate sites as possible.
I don’t want to go into a blogger bashing and mention names, but I am sure that some of my readers will know who I am referring to. Many times it’s these same bloggers that give the bad advice to build 100 niche websites, as we previously discussed in 1 Niche, 2 Niche, 3 Niche, 4, How Many Niche Sites is Too Many?, only because it is through taking shortcuts and not taking the time to create quality content that you can touch the tip of the Internet Marketing iceberg for 100 niche websites.
These shortcuts can only lead to disaster, because they create crappy, thin and basically generic, microwaved niche sites, that only focus on the short term. You can build junk, but what’s the point, it will eventually catch up with you.
Content Is Crucial For Real Website Success
1. While, the Google algorithm is a mystery, it is a fact Google loves to rank thick, high quality content sites. A site with little, scraped or low quality content but one filled with affiliate links and ads will never stand up to a content rich site.
This is common sense. It’s simple, Google’s job is to provide the most relevant helpful results to it’s customer, the searcher.
So, if I am searching for “How-To Clean Computer Registry” and Google has the choice of providing me with a website page that has written 2000 words on the subject with lots of explanations, guides and software options/reviews or a site that has a page with 4 links to buy software on Computer Registry Cleaners. Which one do you think Google would like better?
2. With the high competition on the Internet, thin affiliate sites will die quickly, or be pushed so far back in SERPS that they won’t really matter, as they will not get any search engine traffic. Content rich websites will always crush those thin, automated built, hollow sites.
3. Build your sites for visitors and NOT search engines
This is another important aspect of content, if you have nothing to offer your visitors they will not come back and won’t stay long on their first visit. Aren’t visitors who stick around the whole point?
Yes, you should optimize your sites, and Google wants you to, for keywords, you have to implement on-site SEO techniques that will allow Google to properly index and relate your sites, but the content MUST be rich, useful and information full, not just a bunch of lame pages of words built to squeeze in keywords that will make your visitors say WTF IS THIS?
4. Content with naturally occurring keywords is the Best Actor and Link Building the Supporting Actor. First came the content then came the link. The Link May Bring Traffic BUT Content Keeps the Traffic. Great content is good for search engines and SERPS.
Great content provides the valuable material that other sites want to link to and improves the number of backlinks to your site.
Great content is good for visitors, visitor retention and therefore your sales!
Content Is King & Link Building Is Queen
You should have quality in both, one does not negate the other, they work together! If you still don’t believe, here are some quotes directly from Google Webmaster Guidelines about building quality sites:
Little or No Original Content
“One of the most important steps in improving your site’s ranking in Google search results is to ensure that it contains plenty of rich information that includes relevant keywords, used appropriately, that indicate the subject matter of your content.
However, some webmasters attempt to improve their page’s ranking and attract visitors by creating pages with many words but little or no authentic content. Google will take action against domains that try to rank more highly by just showing scraped or other auto-generated pages that don’t add any value to users. Examples include:
Thin affiliate sites: These sites collect pay-per-click (PPC) revenue by sending visitors to the sites of affiliate programs, while providing little or no value-added content or service to the user. These sites usually have no original content and may be cookie-cutter sites or templates with no unique content.
Auto-generated content: Content generated programatically. Often this will consist of random paragraphs of text that make no sense to the reader but that may contain search keywords.
It’s worthwhile to take the time to create original content that sets your site apart. This will keep your visitors coming back and will provide useful search results.
There is no problem in being an affiliate as long as you create some added value for your users and produce valuable content that gives a user a reason to visit your site.” Learn More from Google Guidelines
What do you guys think? Any experiences with this? Do you take great care with your content?