Building Value With Consumers and Search Engines Through Content Marketing

Most business owners should ask themselves one simple question. Why should search engines rank your web site number one? I understand that you think your web site is great. You worked tirelessly writing content, populating pages with images and you probably paid a substantial amount of money to have the site designed. But take a step back and let’s look hard at your web site, your competition and the sites that have knocked it out of the park to receive the coveted top Google ranking.

Content That Builds Value

I bet your web site looks really good, in fact, it probably looks better than your competition that is ranked much higher than your site. How can it be that you have the most innovative site, with all of the bells and whistles, yet a competitor with a horrific looking site still out-ranks your business? Search engines are just a computer algorithm… a mathematical equation that analyzes a web site for very specific attributes. A computer cannot determine what looks good aesthetically and which web sites are an eye-sore. Google can read content, placement of the content, know if the content is original or if it is similar content to that is located on another site. Yes, it looks at uniqueness of your content. It can recognize that you have images on your site and it even knows if the images are stock photos or are being used on other sites throughout the web. However, it does not have any eye to determine whether it is a good image, poorly photographed or at all creative. At the end of the day, your content carries the most weight for ranking.

Content and Search Engines

This is the reason why web sites that have a strong focus on content marketing do extremely well in search engines with less marketing dollars spent than graphic heavy sites. Take a look at the top 10 ranking web sites in your particular industry. More often than not the top five web sites listed in the top ten listings of a Google search will have twice as much text on their web site than the lower five ranking sites. If search engines can read text and it uses text to determine a sites ranking, than it stands to reason that it benefits a business to include a substantial amount of unique text. Simply put, feed search engines what they like.

I often hear the same argument from business owners and webmasters, “My clients don’t want to read a lot of text, they just want to see my products”. I can agree and disagree with this thought process. Correct, your current clients who already know your business and services probably don’t need to be resold through ample amounts of content. However, the beauty of a web site is that it works as a marketing vehicle to garner new clients. In order to gain new clients a web site needs traffic. There are many sources pushing traffic to web sites ranging from social media to print advertisements but the average web site gains 83% of its traffic from search engines. That is a huge number that cannot be overlooked.

Provide Value To Consumers With Solid Content

Web searching is changing as consumers are now more educated than they have ever been. Web users search for solutions first before specific products. “What is the best salad dressing for low calorie diets?”, “How often do I need to stain my deck?”, “Where is the best place in Boise Idaho to get my oil changed?” Providing the answers to these questions not only establishes a web site as a resource within an industry but it sells a product and a business as a solution. It builds value and solves consumer pain-points. Content marketing is the key to building long

This model of content marketing is most likely being employed by the highest ranking web sites in your marketplace. There is a reason why their web site is gaining more traffic, ranking higher and stealing your customers… and it isn’t because of the aesthetics of their web site. Content marketing that offers valuable insight for a potential client is what drives search engine traffic and establishes a business as an industry authority. The SEO value of good content creation is enormous.