Why don't we talk more about Content?

Ask a dozen SEOs what the most important fact to rank in Google is and you'll probably get a dozen different answers . You'll probably hear things like you need good technical SEO . All you need is backlinks to rank . Your page title is the most important thing . 301 redirect expired domains to your money pages .

You just need to insert latest SEO trend here and so on . However , what's often neglected is at the end of the day , with that content , then all other aspects of SEO are pointless . With that content , then you're going to struggle to get a page to rank in the first place , no matter what other factors you put into the mix .

But you need to do more than just create any old content . You need to build great content , because this increases your advantage over those that produce average run-of-the-mill content and then try and make up for it with tips , tricks and hacks .

Sure , you can just do things like buying links to average content and it might work for a while until Google does another link spam update . But those people building really great content will be quietly accumulating natural , organic links without even asking for them , those sort of links that stand the test of time .

Building great content is one of the most underrated link building tactics . People often ask but isn't building great content hard , expensive and time consuming ? And if you do it wrong , then maybe it is . But it doesn't have to be hard if you follow a good process .

It doesn't have to be time consuming if you use the right tools to remove as much money as you can . It's only expensive if you build the wrong content . Build the right content and it's an investment that will repay you many times over in the long run .

Now , if you listen to any of my earlier episodes on the Google Quality Rated Guidelines , which was an eight-part series I put together , it's really worth listening to because that really tells you the kind of content that Google wants websites to produce .

It wants websites and web pages to have a beneficial purpose which is useful for the person who's consuming that content .

So what it's really saying here is you know , make your websites and web pages and content useful for people and then to get the highest quality of content , they've got to have a very high level of effort , originality and talent in producing that content .

Now , if we take that down to sort of core principles , if you think about why people search , they search because they have a question they need answering . So you want your content to answer your users' questions . So if you answer people's questions on your site , you have a beneficial purpose for those people .

That's the kind of content that Google wants to rank and Google prefers to rank sites with topical authority on a subject . You can see this in the results all the time . If you search for any kind of subject , you're going to find sites that are very strongly tied to that topical area . There are exceptions .

There are going to be some big sites with huge amounts of authority that can rank on all sorts of things , but in general you're going to find many results are going to be very tightly focused sites onto that topic .

So you know , if we're a site to be successful , we need to answer people's questions , we need to cover the topic in depth and we need to architect the site well so that it's easy for Google and users to find and understand the detail of that content . And if you use to demonstrate that topical authority on your subject .

Taking these steps will set your site on a solid foundation for you to then build and grow over time and then you can start doing those extra things , like some of the technical SEO , some of the on-page SEO that can make a slight difference when you are up there and ranking , but without the core content underneath , without that topical authority , without having

that massive content on a subject , then there really is no point in any of the things , which is why you really really , really have to get your content right first and get your content plan right and really understand what you're going to do with your site before trying to do any of the other things on top .

Now I know it might be quite fashionable to talk about content like this and that people get shot down on social media when they say content is king and all sort of things like that . But all those sites that you see that's done the test of time have got great content .

All those sites that passed the test of time , they've really put a lot of thought into how they architect and arrange their content . They're not taking shortcuts , they're planning for the long term and in the long term that's how you win . You don't win by doing shortcuts and hacks .

They might work for a little bit , but they can really come back to bite you hard , especially if it's something that pushes the sort of Google's terms of service a bit too far . You might win for a little bit , but then you will get shot down and it's no way of making a sustainable long-term income .

So it really is key to think about content first and put your effort into designing and creating great content . Thanks for listening . I really appreciate it . Please subscribe and share . It really helps . Sgo is not that hard . It's brought to you by KeyWordsPeopleUsecom . These solutions find the questions people ask online .

See where thousands of people use this every day . Try it today for free at KeyWordsPeopleUsecom . If you want to get in touch , have any questions , I'd love to hear from you . I'm at Channel 5 on Twitter . You can email me at podcastQWordsPeopleUsecom . Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SGO . It's not that hard .