This is a guest post from Jessica Meyer – Jessica is a frequent writer for seosoftware.net a site which features reviews of SEO software. Jessica has been writing for an umber of years and has extensive experience with link building, content creation and SEO in general.
It’s all about the content isn’t it? I know it’s so redundant. Everyone is always talking about how you need more content; 500 words this and articles that. It made some sense when you were talking about syndication for links and all, but the there are some really good reasons to keep ramping up the content on your site. When you produce content; articles, tools, widgets, graphs, calculators, info-graphics, studies, lists, it doesn’t matter what form it takes. By having it, you stand a better chance of seeing long term gains.
1) Increase Traffic
It just makes sense; the more content you have the more you can rank for. That is, if each page is set up with the proper tags of course. When you create content to reflect the kinds of searches people are doing in your space you can capture some of that traffic. By studying common questions and research queries that are relevant to your industry you can create content to match what the masses are demanding. When you create content to meet an existing need, with a title tag that matches the words people are looking for you stand a chance of ranking for those search terms and getting visitors from them.
2) Internal Links
Your content is the perfect place to spread your internal link love. Sure, you have a main navigation and maybe even bread crumbs and related pages. But when you embed links within your content it sends a different, but equally important, message about the linked page’s importance. You can use target anchor text and even co-citation. And the more powerful each individual content page become the more valuable those internal links will become.
3) Build Links
Speaking of links, content is your best way to get links. Whether you’re writing blog posts, doing case studies, or inventing tools and widgets these pages are attractions. With a little networking and active promotion these assets can be your flag ship in getting public attention. If you have something that does very well you can make use of it through internal links and calls to action which can help turn a casual visitor in to a customer.
4) Panda Protection
If you haven’t heard about the Google Panda update, I’m going to assume you don’t have an internet connection and aren’t reading this. The update which is supposed to purge the SERPs of low quality content is only a sign of things to come. Putting ample time and effort into creating articles based on knowledge and mass appeal along with valuable resources can help protect your site for the future.
Content is more than just an SEO buzzword it’s an SEO weapon. If you want your site to appear higher and more often in the search results, creating content is the way to go. When you provide smartly labeled, worthwhile content you can increase your traffic, attract links, set up a great place for internal links and help create a sustainable strategy that will be viable for the long run. And since SEO is marathon rather than a sprint, it’s going the distance that matters.