Do you know what you are reading right now? (You do, but humor me.) This is content. Although we can all agree that it is rarely written by a mind this complex, you know content when you see it. From blogs, to articles, to news releases - content is everywhere across the internet.
Importantly, unique content can serve a critical role in your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. When you consistently add information about your organization to your website and other sites in the form of new blog posts and news releases, you are boosting the chances of your website ranking high for relevant searches. When done well, content can not only help increase your website’s placement in search engines, but it can help with brand management and consumer engagement as well.
Written content helps boost your search engine ranking through a process called link-building. Within a written online piece, you can set up a specific keyword as anchor text. This means that the keyword, a term you expect consumers to frequently search, will serve as a link to the targeted website you have in mind. For example, if you were to add a post to your blog about Spider Man, and you wanted to target the search term “web shooters,” you could incorporate that term within the body of your content and set it up as an off-site link to your website. After doing this, your website has a much greater chance of sticking on that first page of Google when you search “web shooters” which by the way aren’t, as it turns out, a real thing and are relatively difficult to secure refunds for.
In fact, according to research from SEOMoz.org, “keyword focused anchor text from external links” was designated with very high importance by 73% of SEO experts, more than any other search engine ranking factor. In short, linking keywords within the content of a blog or article is one of the single most effective ways to boost your website’s placement in search results for those coveted keywords that bring serious customers to your site.
If this is the case, though, why not just stack your blog posts and press releases with these key terms? Why even bother smoothly incorporating the term into a well thought-out piece? The first and easiest answer is that this approach is simply not effective. Search engines such as Google are smart enough to catch this attempted keyword stuffing, and the approach would ultimately harm your search engine rankings.
Potentially even more damaging, this approach will seriously alienate your consumers. If they visit your blog and find a lazily and sloppily whipped together mess of keywords, they are going to immediately turn away from the site and probably develop some resentment towards your brand. If they instead visit your blog and find a well-written post that helps them understand some aspect of your organization or product or industry, their feelings toward you are likely to improve. The chances that they will attempt to engage with your brand once they do find your now search-optimized website are much better. Content written for search engines only is not something that will take your site to the highest level of optimization. You must write for your customers while always keeping in mind the best SEO practices.
