Content Is Not The King Of SEO

[Mesa SEO Solutions]

I know that it has been said for years that content is the king of SEO, but it just aint so.

What say you on this topic?

 

[ePag]

And what exactly is the "king" of SEO if not unique and quality content ? You say that content is not the "king" but you bring no arguments to the table. And I disagree with your statement.

In my opinion, a well built web site, with unique and quality content that is updated on a daily basis + some good backlinks can make the difference, and I am saying this from experience.

I also used to think that content is not the king, and I created web sites with copied content and TONS of backlinks. They did well for a couple of months but they ALL ended up being penalized due to duplicate content.

So, my question to you is: do you have arguments to backup your statement? If you do, please share them.

 

[arnoldsmithh]

CONTENT is KING still if you want to drive a huge traffic to a website.

 

[l-l-l.com]

Having duplicate content is the problem

Try having unique content it is still the king

 

[BrainFreeze]

I know that it has been said for years that content is the king of SEO, but it just aint so.

What say you on this topic?

Content is king, and links are queen... and we all know who runs most marriages.
Seriously though, you need both. What's the point of getting traffic if your site is junk, and people just leave. And what's the point of having a great site if no one ever finds it.
The key is you need BOTH... the King and the Queen!

 

[NetworkProblems]

I guess it could be just having lots of links pointing at you. But content is still really important to get results from a wide variety of searches!

 

[Mesa SEO Solutions]

And what exactly is the "king" of SEO if not unique and quality content ? You say that content is not the "king" but you bring no arguments to the table. And I disagree with your statement.

In my opinion, a well built web site, with unique and quality content that is updated on a daily basis + some good backlinks can make the difference, and I am saying this from experience.

I also used to think that content is not the king, and I created web sites with copied content and TONS of backlinks. They did well for a couple of months but they ALL ended up being penalized due to duplicate content.

So, my question to you is: do you have arguments to backup your statement? If you do, please share them.

Well, when I start of a discussion I often do so to judge the threads direction before I provide my detailed thoughts.

Here is why I know that content is not king. Judging quality is not easy for humans to do let alone software (Google.)

I have poured over many Google patent applications and I never ran across anything related to content quality. So I did a little experiment on my blog.

I had created some blog posts that were Do Follow lists. Those caused so much spam problems for myself and others that I removed the lists but not the posts over a year ago from my blog.

Those posts get spam comments almost daily which I post minus the link of course. These posts compete in searches that include over 100 results. Yet, these posts continue to rank on the first place of Google based on these lousy comments alone.

These posts continue to rank well not because of quality but due to freshness of the content even if it is spam!

 

[ePag]

Don't worry your site will not rank well for long.. give it time. As i said I have also tested this and it only lasted for a few months,after that the site(s) were brought down.

 

[mynpid2010]

And what exactly is the "king" of SEO if not unique and quality content ? You say that content is not the "king" but you bring no arguments to the table. And I disagree with your statement.

In my opinion, a well built web site, with unique and quality content that is updated on a daily basis + some good backlinks can make the difference, and I am saying this from experience.

I also used to think that content is not the king, and I created web sites with copied content and TONS of backlinks. They did well for a couple of months but they ALL ended up being penalized due to duplicate content.

So, my question to you is: do you have arguments to backup your statement? If you do, please share them.

I agree with ePag 100%. 70% of searches originate from Google and if you don't have unique content, it is very likely that you won't be on page 1 of Google. If you are not on page 1 of Google, you lose 70% of people who might be searching for the information you have on your website.

 

[nielsencl]

Here is the US we are not so fond about the royalty concept. They offered the crown to George Washington but he wisely turned it down...!

Optimied content, not just content, is the most important aspect to me. I have seen sites with lots of really great content get lots of traffic, and not just from Google. I have other sites with many, many links get some traffic, but over time the sites don't do as well as the content sites. I have been saying for years that links should not be used to rank sites or pages, because of spam. Links are a poor indicator of quality or value that cannot be trusted for the most part.

And from my experience unique content is not as important as many think. look at the rankings and PR of press release, news, and other content sites that don't have unique content. Most do pretty well if they are not juse a single page with an RSS feed from Yahoo.

Look if you want to see how much text content matters, just build a site without any. Put all your text in images and see what the site does then... even with as many links from NP as you can get!!!

 

[Mesa SEO Solutions]

Don't worry your site will not rank well for long.. give it time. As i said I have also tested this and it only lasted for a few months,after that the site(s) were brought down.

Well, that might be true for some uncompetitive local or niche markets. It does not apply to large markets that produce over a 100 million results.

You need lots of links or fresh content to rank well in competitive markets to rank well and to stay there!

 

[enlytend]

Here is why I know that content is not king. Judging quality is not easy for humans to do let alone software (Google.)

Get good rankings on a spammy page in a competitive niche and it's only a matter of time before your competitors start filing spam reports.

As for content NEEDING to be fresh, not always so. What about all the high-ranking "evergreen" authority pages? i.e. authoritative pages on static topics? OTOH, for trending topics, QDF comes into play.

(BTW, results from one site don't qualify as a valid experiment - not enough data to be statistically significant. )

 

[DotUSDomains]

Unique content on a regular basis is king.

 

[nielsencl]

Here is why I know that content is not king. Judging quality is not easy for humans to do let alone software (Google.)

Judging quality is not hard, it's just that it's subjective which is the problem. I can tell you what is quality and what is not, but that's my opinion and it may differ from yours.

Also in my opinion is this: basic SEO is just putting on your site the same thing that people use to search with when looking for sites like yours. The more things you have on your site that people are looking for, the more traffic you will get, in general. So if you want more traffic, add more content and use keyword research so you can optimize your content and get the best results. Or just get links if you think that is better...

 

[Alex P]

Quick question, say you are creating a lyrics site for songs, there are many of these sites about therefore your content would be duplicate. How would this effect your sites and its listing since its not going to be unique at all??

 

[nielsencl]

Quick question, say you are creating a lyrics site for songs, there are many of these sites about therefore your content would be duplicate. How would this effect your sites and its listing since its not going to be unique at all??

It may be a problem. The way to try and avoid it is to have other content on the page and not just the content that is duplicated on other sites.

For the page title tag, DON'T use just the song title. You can include the song title, but try to make a unique title tag for your page. The same thing with the meta description tag.

Try adding something that you can write about the song either at the top or the bottom. That content will make the page "unique" even though some of the content is found on many sites. Also try adding audio files or videos. Make the page unique, even though it has things found on other sites. Good Luck!

 

[ePag]

Here is the US we are not so fond about the royalty concept. They offered the crown to George Washington but he wisely turned it down...!

Optimied content, not just content, is the most important aspect to me. I have seen sites with lots of really great content get lots of traffic, and not just from Google. I have other sites with many, many links get some traffic, but over time the sites don't do as well as the content sites. I have been saying for years that links should not be used to rank sites or pages, because of spam. Links are a poor indicator of quality or value that cannot be trusted for the most part.

And from my experience unique content is not as important as many think. look at the rankings and PR of press release, news, and other content sites that don't have unique content. Most do pretty well if they are not juse a single page with an RSS feed from Yahoo.

Look if you want to see how much text content matters, just build a site without any. Put all your text in images and see what the site does then... even with as many links from NP as you can get!!!

The sites you are referring to are authority sites in their fields.

If you start a web site with good quality content and over the years it will become an authority site in your field, then if you add duplicate content it won't matter .. this is why the press release, news and other content sites rank so well.

There are TONS of SEO methods and tricks we can use to optimize our sites, however THE BEST advice that anyone can give, is to focus on site content and adding visitors value. If you do that, you will also gain links.

I have been in this game for almost 8 years now and, please believe me when I say, I know what i'm talking about. I have experimented with A LOT of things and, in the end, i came to the conclusion i wrote above.

Alex: you should try putting the lyrics of a song on your site as an image, this way it won't be considered duplicate content.

 

[Mesa SEO Solutions]

All that I am saying is that Content Is not The King of SEO. Content matters a whole bunch if you want to do business... It's just got nothing to do with SEO.

 

[nielsencl]

Part of SEO has historically been the optimization of content, so I think most would agree there is a connection between content and SEO.

Unless of course you are not optimizing your content. That's not something most SEOs would eschew.

 

[ePag]

Content matters a whole bunch if you want to do business... It's just got nothing to do with SEO.

Please tell me your are just kidding, please!

You see, posts like yours are really influential to some people. For example, a person who has no idea about SEO might read your post. That person now thinks that content has nothing to do with SEO and it doesn't harm your site. Ok then, so that person will start to add a lot of duplicate content to his/her site and then, after a while, starts to wonder why that site got penalized in Google or why it's not getting traffic at all.

Please stop misleading people.

There are no SEO secrets or secret methods to ensure top positions and traffic. They are just sales pitch used by SEO companies to get clients. All these so called " SEO companies" do for clients who buy their SEO services is add their web site to web directories, spam blog comments and forums and so on. After years in this business I can honestly say that. All it mattes is unique, relevant content and relevant link building.

THAT'S ALL THERE IS! That's the only SEO method or "secret" that actually WORKS on the long term.

Google, for example, appreciates the quality of a site and the value that the users get once they visit a web site, not the tricks or SEO methods used by the webmaster ...