Content is King

Posted on 25th Jan 2012 by Philip Holdsworth in Blog

You sit down at your computer and you tap a search query into Google and the search engine’s job is to firstly return a list of results that match the criteria you were looking for, and secondly order the results by relevance and importance so within the first page of results your answer should be there waiting for you to click on it.

Every company owner wants their site to appear at the top of search engines for a range of different search queries that are related to their business, service, products or location. The problem with this pretty picture is that there are millions of websites out there all selling similar products and what’s more the majority of these websites are full of disjointed and irrelevant content.

The typical process of having a brochure website is fine if you just want an online portfolio. It’s alright if you were setting a website up ten years ago but not nowadays with the intelligence of search engines and social media taking over our lives. Let’s create a scenario; James and Sammy are engaged and are beginning the process of sorting their wedding reception out. They are hosting the event at their house to save on costs but want to hire in some caterers who will look after the food on the day. What is their first port of call? Google, and they type into the search engine: ‘Affordable Catering Company London’.

What are the results going to be like? In most search queries like this all that appears is a list of brochure sites listing their products and services. This is fine, but it’s not going to help. Not anymore. To begin with portfolio websites don’t really give you any insight into the company and in most cases all the copy sounds boring, dull and run of the mill. Remember this is the most important day of James and Sammy’s lives; they don’t want dull, boring and run of the mill food.

The search engine uses around 200 criteria to decide which websites to rank first. And the general way to get high up in the rankings is to generate as many links as possible to websites and thus inflating the value of the website. But Google's clever and it recognizes good practice and bad practice.

The problem is the internet has changed. Now the internet is like a big old conversation. There are blogs, social networks, forums, and message boards, all creating content and conversations. Within these ecosystems conversations are created and react with each other sparking movements. The best way to generate visitors to your website is through social media and the search engines. And what’s more they work together in perfect harmony. By creating relevant, compelling content that will be popular with your customer base is the best way to spark conversations and eventually increase your sales rates.

At the end of the day you still have to create a well-structured website that is going to be a platform that everything else will be built upon but to really compete and rise above the competition you need to build great content that answers the informational requirements of your visitors and potential customers. So start writing, begin creating links to your site through social media and blogging and start sparking conversations.

Remember content is king and SEO is queen.