Content is a mixture of written, graphical, video and audio information that is presented on your site. Content is the bedrock of search engine optimization. Search engines cannot be optimized efficiently without good content. The inclusion of relevant and good quality content for users increases the chances of your website appearing on the first page of SERP (Search Engine Result Page).
Google was founded in 1998, with the mission: “Organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. In order to do so, Google ranks the content available on the web, by its order of usefulness and relevancy. Therefore, in order to make your content to have any SEO value, it needs to be beneficial to the users. For making your content “worth-it”, Google has also suggested some guidelines.
If these elements are considered and included in the content written by you, then you would maximize the potential of the SEO value of your content. Without these, however, your content may not have that much of a value.
Following are the reasons your website should include quality content:
Aids site rank on SERP
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Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) ranking is linked to the length, value and quality of content. To identify the relevance of a website’s content to the searched queries; the search engine looks at how well the page answers the user’s questions or fulfills the purpose of the query. The quality and quantity of the content that fits into the context of a search query, help to rank the pages by search engine algorithm.
Aids link building
Content that is of good quality and link-worthy is shareable and useful to people looking for information related to the link. Good quality content also facilitates people to engage in online conversations. This increases the popularity and credibility of the link over which discussion happens. Influencers are always on a lookout for sharable and valuable content for their followers. When there is valuable content, it eventually helps in building links and connecting people for a long period of time.
Longer shelf life
When the content is of high quality, it does not lose its value over time. Producing evergreen content for your website is very important for search engine optimization. Search queries evolve over the years in context with the latest trends. Content can be updated or re-purposed to adapt to the latest industry debates, trends or chatter, making it valuable to the SEO. Content that has a great shelf life is available to search queries, spanning for a long period of time, as keywords from these contents may still be relevant to the present queries.
It must be kept it mind that even though the old content may be relevant to the current scenario, it still has to be updated whenever necessary, to make it even apter.
Improves user experience
Creating content of high value helps ensure that visitors perceive it positively and also encourages sharing, bookmarking, return visits and inbound links. All these actions lead to higher rankings. Apart from higher rankings and appearing on the first page of the SERP, quality content on a website encourages the users to further engage with the website, enhancing their experience with the website.
Inspires trust and credibility
A very important aspect of making a website successful, from the point of view of search engine optimisation, is making it credible and trustworthy. The easiest and the best way of doing so is through providing the users with quality content.
Quality content with credible and relevant information which meets the requirements of the users, earns their trust. Such content also helps the website gain authority. Authority is the measure of how trustworthy or valuable a page is.
Fresh Content Leads to Frequent Indexing
The more frequently that you update your website, or the better content that you post, or the more activity you carry out on your website, such as uploading articles, downloads, new web pages, etc., the more frequently does the search engine go by your site. During these frequent visits of the search engine on your website, you are provided with chances to strive for better rankings.
Search engines use bots or web crawlers, which are high tech programs that scan the internet for websites. These bots “index” your site based on algorithm parameters determined by the search engine company. So, every time that you update your website, these bots take notice and rearrange your ranking.
It is to be noted that, fresh or high quality content leads to frequent indexing, not necessarily higher indexing.
We may know why high quality content is essential to SEO, but there are some challenges that one must be prepared for when coming up with high quality content.
- Big investments
To create high quality content, a relatively higher amount of investment is required, in terms of hiring better writers and graphic artists.
- A return may not be immediate
Even though you may invest a huge amount, the return on that amount may not be all that soon. It takes time to build a reputation. You may have to invest a lot of time too, hoping you would reap rewards, eventually.
Despite these challenges, when websites choose to deliver high quality content, they sure reap higher rewards than their competitors. Higher quality content is one of the most important factors that ensure your SEO game is up to the rank.
