Content is Still King

April 3rd, 2008 Bernie

I talk every day with clients and write often in this blog about the importance of links in any SEO strategy. Anyone who has spent more than ten minutes reading about SEO knows that back links are critical ingredient for organic search engine rankings.

One point I make often is that a good link strategy will yield limited results or no material results without a strong foundation of content. In fact, we say that (in round numbers) 30% of a website’s SEO success is based on “on page” factors. On-page factors refer to well-optimized content with good use of keywords, meta tags, header tags, search engine friendly URLs and optimized source code.

The math is obvious. We like to say that about 70% of a website’s SEO is based on off-page factors. Primarily, this refers to the extent to which others think your content is good. At first, this sounds very strange. How can others determine how good my content is? And, how can Google (and other engines) determine what others think?

Consider a comment made by a Google engineer at the Online Marketing Summit conference I attended last October. He said this: “Google doesn’t care about your content. Google cares about who cares about your content.” What he means, is when other content (on other websites) link to your content, they are “casting a vote.” for your content.

The Google technology explanation describes how this works.  Essentially, other web pages link to your content and Google considers that a “vote” for your content.

To accentuate this point consider how Google’s origin as Backrub, is based on this concept of keeping score of the popularity of your content.

So, if creating links to content is so critical to SEO success then why don’t we just go out and buy a g-zillion links to our content?  Well, some do.  First, consider that if you pay a site to link to you, that is frowned upon by Google and the other major engines.  We don’t condone it.

Let’s go back to the comment by the Google engineer.  In fact, Google does care about your content.  He went on to say that the more relevant, keyword-rich content you have (along with a search engine friendly architecture), the more links your content will naturally attract.

Then, if you pay someone to build legitimate links to your website (not pay the website to link to you), those links will be well supported by your content and provide good SEO value.

Now, let’s go back to the 30/70 ratio although, this is admittedly hearsay, not a statistic backed up by Google.  The point to this ratio is this.  If you build a strong foundation in your SEO plan with great, relevant content, then the links you get will carry weight in SEO value. 

Of course, the Google PR value of the source of the links counts as well.  The point here is that links without content are not effective.

So, it comes back to this - content is king! 

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Posted in Link Building, SEO | 1 Comment »

Juiced Up Press Releases

March 21st, 2008 Bernie

I’ve written before about the importance of merit based link building.  I talk about it everyday with our clients.  So, here I go again writing about it.

Wait a minute - the title of this post says it’s about press releases.  Right….

Too many marketers have a one dimensional view of their press releases. They think a press release is an announcement designed to produce some public relations (that other “PR”) value.  Once upon a time, I hawked press releases in a previous life, working the editors and analysts hoping to get ink and win kudos from my boss and my sales counterparts.

Marketers should think of their press releases as content for their website.  Even more, they should think of press releases as content that can be syndicated across the web.  And, it is a great opportunity for merit based links back to your website, ie., SEO, ie., Google juice!

Those of us in the Internet Marketing business refer to “Google juice” as any content which helps us get indexed by Google.  The most powerful Google juice is content which has valuable links anchored from our desirable keyword phrases on a web page of relevant content.

Another term for this simply is an optimized press release.  If we optimize our web content for search engine optimization (SEO), then an optimized press release is just another form of optimized content.

The difference is that an optimized press release can get distributed over a search engine friendly wire service such as PRWeb and BusinessWire.  And, it can produce valuable and juiced up links, anchored from some of your favorite keywords.

Understanding this should inspire marketers not to limit press releases to the most newsworthy stories in their company.  A good marketer should be thinking of press releases as a key component to their SEO strategy.  That’s because a good marketer understands that in SEO content is king, and press releases can make for great content.  And, great content produces merit based links.  This is the SEO circle of life!

Take for example this press release.  In this release we announced a client engagement.  Regardless of your opinion of the news value, note the anchor text linking in this press release.  By optimizing it for keywords such as “SEO strategy” with links back to our website, we are producing valuable one-way links from news services such as PRWeb: http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2008/3/prweb774424.htm. 

So, juice up your press releases by optimizing them and creating great content and great links for SEO value.  It’s not too hard to do it and definitely worth the effort.

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Posted in Link Building, SEO | 4 Comments »