What is SEO (and why you need to worry about it) Part 2: Content

Last week I wrote about the basics of SEO. This week we’re going to dive into some of the nitty gritty.

There are two main aspects to SEO. One is content, the other is technical. This week we’ll talk about content.

Content and SEO

A good website has good content. And content is king. So it’s no surprise that Google has a bunch of rules to help it rate content.

But Google doesn’t have live humans reading websites to determine how good the content is. Instead, it runs computer programs that search websites for certain characteristics that probably indicate the content is good.

One of those characteristics is the existence of relevant keywords.

Keywords

Keywords are words (or phrases) that are commonly associated with a topic. For example, on the topic of SEO, some keywords might be “keywords”, “black-hat”, “white-hat”, etc.

So you want to make sure your website content is using the types of keywords that are typical for your topic.

If you are writing well, and are truly knowledgeable about your topic, then these keywords will probably appear in your writing without you even thinking about it. For example, I didn’t try to “stuff” any SEO keywords into this article—they just naturally appeared as I wrote a thorough article.

Google knows that if you have a webpage about SEO, then your website should contain keywords such as “black-hat”, etc. If your site doesn’t, then it’s a red flag to Google that your website probably isn’t thorough enough, and it will rank it lower.

So keep keywords in mind, learn a bit about the common keywords in your niche, and make sure you are using them in your website content.
  
One word of caution: don’t do what is known as keyword stuffing. That is a technique that involves placing keywords all over your site in the hopes that more keywords will equal higher ratings. Like any other black-hat technique, Google can penalize you for it. Your keywords should flow naturally, and not be awkwardly placed wherever.

Meaningful content

Google ranks pages with meaningful content higher than pages without. What’s meaningful? Information that is relevant to what the user was searching for.

Going back to our tennis example, if a user searched for “how to play tennis”, then meaningful content would be actual and thorough information on how to play tennis. The site would talk about holding the racquet, how to hit the ball, rules of the game, tips for techniques, etc.

That’s why Google searches for keywords—the presence of typical keywords for the topic are an indication that the site is probably meaningful.

Amount of content

Google knows that a website with lots of content on a topic is probably more useful to a searcher than a website with little content. So it ranks pages with more content higher. That means that, ideally, you want to have several pages with helpful, meaningful content. Again, that’s just a better experience for the user, but it also helps your SEO.

Original content

Google loves original content. That means it doesn’t like plagiarism. If you take someone else’s content and paste it on your site, Google will rank your site lower. How does it know that your site has the copied version and not the original? It examines the date the information was first posted. It assumes that whoever posted it first is probably the original owner, and that all others are copies.

Good writing

Yes, Google even looks at spelling and grammar. Why? Because poorly written articles aren’t a good experience for readers. It’s also an indication that possibly the whole site is not that great. After all, if you don’t pay attention to spelling and grammar, then you probably aren’t paying attention to other things, such as making sure your information is complete.

So those are the basics of SEO content. Next week we’ll cover the final aspect of SEO, the technical side.

Cheers,
Tim
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