Content and SEO Strategy

Today’s SEO techniques rely on good, written content that both speaks to your business’s brand strategy and mission, and answers the questions your customers have as they are searching and buying.

Here’s why SEO isn’t as simple as it used to be.  Content.  Today’s SEO strategy has grown from a mechanical process of cramming keywords into the header and footer of a site, into a process of crafting your site’s content, considering the site’s layout and structure, then keywording and aligning the site’s content with search queries that match your brand and mission.

Used to be that SEO companies would charge a certain retainer a month for a set number of keywords.  “Guaranteed results!”  (Some companies still do this method.)  Thing is, this method simply isn’t effective any more.  Google will tell you that, while you can still pad your meta descriptions with keywords, the search engines will not recognize it.

To be a better search engine, Google had to change algorithms to provide better search results.  In order to do that, Google has to make sure a site’s content is as much of the real deal as possible.  Gone are the days of tricking search engine users into visiting your site just because you crammed it with keywords.

Allison McDonald, Seagate Technology’s Digital Marketing Manager, notes that today’s SEO has evolved from just a “keyword driven tool.”  Today, SEO strategy is a collection of “best practices” that includes not only website content, but social media content that speaks to your company’s brand, pr and marketing initiatives.    Great content “will prevail,” and if you don’t try and cheat the search engines, your company will be able to weather any changes and updates to the Google algorithms.

The new “best practice – content driven SEO” is really just as achievable as the old “keyword only SEO”, but does require more effort.   Unless you are looking for the ‘fast track’ to the top of the search engines, by keywording a page with no content, this updated way of aligning your site’s content with Google search results should be a goal your company wants to accomplish anyway.

With our Quartzlight clients, we spend time discussing the company’s brand and mission, long and short term goals, and marketing or pr initiatives.  Once these goals are realized, we have a clearer direction of what website content should be written to support these goals.  Once we have content that supports the company goal and brand, keywording and aligning website content for best SEO practices is a much simpler task.  Contact us for a free, no obligation SEO analysis of your website. 

Tim Vahsholtz

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