Back in the day, if you wanted to get your website
ranking highly in search engines all you had to do was cram the pages of your
site with as many “relevant” keywords as possible. I’m sure many of you
who are reading this still assume that this form of “SEO” still holds weight
today but you couldn’t be more misguided. While keywords still play an
important role in ranking, the game has very much changed on how they should be
incorporated onto your web pages.
CONTENT IS
KING
At some point along the way
I’m sure you have come across the phrase “Content is King.” This is a term that
many web agencies and internet marketing providers use to “explain” the
importance of content. I use it too. However, it has been tossed
around so much and so many have become accustomed to hearing it that either
people aren’t listening OR they simply do not understand “why” content is so
important. I cannot stress enough of how important it is for clients to
understand, educate themselves and/or respect the role in which content plays
in not only ranking their website but how it engages and informs their users.
WHAT IS GOOGLE’S PRIMARY GOAL?
The first step towards
understanding why content plays such a vital role in search involves changing
the way you think. While many individuals want to just pass off the
responsibility of their website’s ranking onto their web company or marketing
agency I must reiterate that it is just as much the responsibility of the
individual to have some base understanding of the current “eco-system” of the
web and search. You need to WORK WITH your third party service providers
just as much as they WORK FOR YOU. Understanding what Google wants is
just as important as understanding what your patients want when they step foot
into your practice.
So, fundamentally, what is
Google’s number 1 goal when it comes to search results? If you answered “To
provide great search results” you’d only be half right. Their number 1
goal is to make money. Not what you were expecting was it? You see,
Google is like any other corporation in the fact their primary goal is to be
profitable. They make money by creating a loyal following of users that
rely heavily on the QUALITY search results that they provide. There are dozens
of other search engines out on the web but Google remains the top dog because
they continue to grow in their popularity and user base by delivering the very
best in high quality targeted results to their users. In order for YOU to
be listed in those results you have to provide high quality unique content.
WHAT “QUALIFIES” AS CONTENT?
Content, is ultimately what
every user is searching for – in some form or another. It may be video,
articles, blogs or other social media, but it is all content, and the more of
it you have, the bigger your slice of the Google pie will be. If you have more
quality content than your competitors for a given keyword or phrase, which site
do you think Google is going to send its traffic to if its desire is to give
the user the best results and experience possible?
ALL CONTENT IS NOT CREATED EQUAL
Sure,
there are different types of content, as elaborated above, but what is more
important is to understand that just having “something” is not necessarily
good.
GOOGLE WANTS TO SEE THREE
PARTICULAR ASPECTS OF CONTENT
·
quality
·
relevance.
·
uniqueness
Quality is pretty self
explanatory – good, well written copy or well produced videos that exude
professionalism and authority.
Relevance is also pretty
straight forward. If the user is searching on “cars” and you’re your site is
about “boats”, clearly it is not relevant. Now obviously that example is
oversimplified, but you can infer that the more specifically relevant your
content is to what the user is searching for, the more success you will have in
bringing those users to your site via Google. Uniqueness is a bit more
esoteric.
Uniqueness has most of the costs
associated with it. Both being time and/or money. However, there are two
fundamental methods you can apply to creating unique content.
Method one is simply to create your own well researched, relevant
and unique content or pay someone else to create it. Keep in mind that if you
do this yourself, it is not quite as simple as you might think. You need to be
very cognizant of SEO tactics and strategies in the creation of your content.
Think of it like this. You’re building a football team and you go out and hire
the quarterback with the best arm in the field, problem is, he’s blind. Content
is the same way. You can have incredibly good quality and even relevant
content, but if it is not crafted in a manner which obeys some of the basic
laws of SEO your results will be mediocre at best. If you pay someone to create
that content for you, you need to ensure that they understand how to apply SEO
principles to the content creation process as well.
Method two is to take a quality piece of content that has already
been drafted and use it as a “baseline” to generate new unique content. Again,
this is not as easy as is implied, so you really need to make sure you fully research
this approach or hire someone who fully understands the proper ways to
repurpose quality material and ensure uniqueness while preserving quality,
relevance and optimizing for SEO.
There are many rules of
content creation, but if you stick to these three basic principles – quality,
relevance and uniqueness – your site popularity within the search engines will
continue to grow. More users and traffic means more to your bottom line and
ultimately that is the goal of any business.
We here at Audiology Design
put in a lot of time and effort into providing you materials that can help you
create a better user experience for your prospective patients and satisfy the
requirements of Google and other major search engines so that you can attract
more patients to your practice website. Help us help you in creating the best
web content in your local market and reap the full rewards of high ranking search engine
optimization!
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