SEO Tips - It's The Content!

by John Dow

It doesn't matter how many times or in how many ways Google says it. People are always looking for the mystical SEO or search engine optimization factor that will give them the number one listing. The best SEO tips I have seen are from Google, and they simply state that original content that is of value to the visitor is the way to get more search engine traffic to your website.

You should always adhere to the technical onpage recommendations that are mentioned in the Webmaster section of Google. Basics like title, description, easy navigation, descriptive anchor text links, and naming. That's not that difficult to do if you make a little checklist and follow it for each web page. All need to be related to the content.

It's also a good idea to drill down on the subject matter. Instead of having one page that includes several topics, make a page for each topic and then link them. If you have a widget that has several functions, make a introduction page and list the functions with links to pages that specifically address that function.

Drilling down allows you to better describe and document different aspects that people might be searching for in relation to your subject matter. It also can provide an advantage in that people often do very descriptive searches, so you get very targeted traffic.

Offpage links help too. Although it's a very elusive factor. The "authority" of the website that is linking to you, the method of linking (anchor text that describes the content is best), and a host of other factors will determine the value of the link. Links are a factor but with so many conditions, it's difficult to measure the true value.

If you want to see an example, go do a search on a multiple word subject. Use three or more words to better describe your end goal. Look at your first page results, do a little check on each one as far as links. An easy way to check using Yahoo is to use the link command in the search like this:

link:http://www.domain.com

The reason I'm using Yahoo is that Google doesn't accurately report links and we are really just looking for enough to show who has more links. The point of this example is to show you that you will find websites listed on the first page of results that don't have a lot of links. So even though links are a big factor, they may not be the factor, like many would like you to believe.

In fact I've found websites that were in the top three positions on a given search that broke every single recommendation by Google or anyone... Except one, CONTENT! The one consistent element in the whole search engine madness is content.

You have to keep in mind that Google (and other search engines) use an algorithm to base many of the factors in indexing and ranking. And math works great in many ways to determine the content. The sophistication of these new algorithms is far and above the originals. And using new techniques like LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) are becoming even better at figuring out the content. 

By using statistical algorithms, LSI can retrieve relevant documents even when they do not share any words with a query. LSI uses these statistically derived "concepts" to improve search performance by up to 30%. So if you have a web page that describes an elephant, but you never mention elephant, chances are your web page will come up in a search on elephants.

So it goes back to content. It's the single element that will be used to rank your web page in any circumstance. So the best SEO tips should include the basic technical recommendations, and establishing links with relevant websites. But put content first, and make it relevant and of value to the visitor.