Good Content: The Key To Search Engine Ranking

Good Content: The Key To Search Engine Ranking

What drives visitors to your website and keeps them there? Good content.

Content is Key

Good content is key to website promotion success. All the bells and whistles in the world will not hold an audience like compelling information. Ask yourself: Why would a visitor stay at my website? What are they looking for? What do I have that they need? What holds them there once I've got them visiting? You have to tell your story in a way that will keep your visitors interested and coming back for more.

Get Those Visitors

The first part of the process is getting visitors to your site through search engine promotion and other traditional marketing methods. As you increase your visibility, more visitors will come to see what the commotion is all about.

Keep Those Visitors

The second part of the process is keeping them there. If you provide quality information that is easy to access, you are giving the visitor what they are looking for. Don't give your visitors a reason to click away. Quality content means happy visitors, and with enough happy visitors, you become an "authority" on your topic. Having a site recognized as an authority means good ranking in the search engines.

Know Your Audience

So how do you get your visitors to stay on your site, and to return to it? First, you need to understand your audience. Who are you trying to reach? Create your pages with them in mind. Do you want to reach a narrow audience, or will you try to reach all levels of readers? Buzz words may make sense to you in your business, but will they reach your target audience? If you are a high-powered underwater basketweaving consultant, focused only on serious underwater basketweavers, you can keep the discussion on your site fairly technical. If, however, you really want to spread the joy of underwater basketweaving to a wider audience, you may want to keep the tone more general, giving newcomers to underwater basketweaving the information they need to become as enthralled by basketweaving as you are.

Get Your Visitors Involved

So what kind of content do you need to provide for your visitors? If you have a site selling gardening books, you will have lists of the titles you have for sale, an order form, and contact information. Everybody else selling gardening books will have these pages too. How do you rise above the crowd? How do you stand out as the definitive gardening book website?

Write Articles

One technique that you can use to good effect is that of writing articles pertaining to your site's topic. After all, who knows more about gardening and gardening books than you? Not only does this give your visitors yet another reason to keep coming back to your site, but it also allows you to reach out beyond your site. There are many other websites out there looking for authoritative information on your topic. Find those sites and submit your articles to them. This creates a "win-win" situation: the other web site gains the benefit of your knowledge, while you are further recognized as an authority in the field. Getting a link from that site back to yours brings more visitors to your site, and increases your site's link popularity.

Keeping an archive of articles on your website builds your knowledge base. You can refer visitors to your articles when answering their questions. People searching for information on the topics you have written about will find your articles listed in their search results. Once they arrive at your site, maybe they will buy something from you: if you know so much about planting bulbs, maybe your site is the place I should buy my bulb-planting books.

Other Offerings

What else can you add to this mix? Think about adding professional gardening book reviews, a gardening book club, FAQ's about gardening, gardening articles, a rating system for books, audience book reviews, and other gardening-related topics. Adding this type of information gives your visitors more reasons to keep coming back to your site. Offer free tools, create a forum. Set up a newsletter for your audience with your topic, adding in a discount for your product for newsletter readers. Give your audience a reason to come back to your website.

What Results Can I Expect: Google PageRank

A primary example of how this works is Google's PageRank. One of the most important aspects of ranking for Google and other search engines is good content. Google wants their search engine users to find what they are looking for, a successful search experience for their users. The keywords included in your site are important; after all, those are the terms your potential visitors are searching for. Now not only do you have your catalog pages and ordering information, but you also have a more in-depth treatment of the topics you have addressed in your articles, book reviews, and other materials. More keywords in more places means you have a better chance of matching a potential visitor's search.

So how can you "rise above" the other online gardening bookstores out there in the search engine listings? Link popularity can be the next important piece that allows you to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. All other things being equal, search engines that pay attention to link popularity will list your site higher in their results if you have more links coming back from other sites which have a focus related to yours. In other words, if your gardening bookstore has a number of backlinks pointing to it from the websites of gardening clubs, nurseries, and so forth, your site will be seen as more authoritative. The more authoritative a website looks to Google through link popularity, the higher that site will rank. After all, if all these other gardening-related sites point to your site, they are demonstrating that you have something important to say. That is another reason why it is important to have your material published on other websites.

Conclusion

Maintaining good content is a stepping-stone for your visitors to delve in deeper to your website. Taking the time to build your content and provide for your audience will pay off in good search engine ranking and returning visitors.

Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing, a Search Engine Marketing company serving small businesses. She has specialized in Search Engine Optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O'Reilly Media, Inc., a technical book publishing company.

Copyright © 2002-2005 Search Innovation Marketing. http://www.searchinnovation.com All Rights Reserved.

Permission to reprint this article is granted if the article is reproduced in its entirety, without modification, including the bio information. Please include a hyperlink to http://www.searchinnovation.com when using this article in newsletters or online.

---

Taking Advantage of Googles Sandbox Effect

Most new sites submitted to Google (at least within the... Read More

Keyword Optimization - How To Achieve It

The most important thing you can do for your business... Read More

What Is Waiting for Us? Tomorrows SEO Industry

Today, SEO is swiftly approaching saturation point. More and more... Read More

9 Ways to Keep Google Happy

A recent Google patent application has the SEO community buzzing.... Read More

Why Articles Are Not The Route To High Search Engine Rankings

If you have any interest in getting high search engine... Read More

Search Engine Optimization Tips For 2005 - Part Two

Welcome to the second part of our series of articles... Read More

Keep Your Content Fresh with this Quick and Easy Tip

Some of the Search engines want only original content. So... Read More

Lets Make Your Website #1

Their is simple way of making your website rank top... Read More

Is Google Having a Tough Time with Their Website Limit?

If you are one to pay attention to what happens... Read More

How To Boost Your Keyword Density On Your Web Site To Gain Top Positions At The Search Engines

Let's talk about what keyword density is and how to... Read More

The Small Screen SEO!

First of all, What is SEO? SEO stands for Search... Read More

?Web Content Management System fr Window?: Search Engine Typos

Oops! I meant "web content management system for windows." Do... Read More

The Sandbox Effect

What once many people thought they had a penalty, is... Read More

Determining the Value of Your SEO Service

Every once in a while--and probably more often than we... Read More

Site Maps: A Force To Be Reckoned With

Another important component of search engine optimization is the use... Read More

The Changing Face of Search Engine Optimization

With the ever evolving internet market for just about anything... Read More

Google Website and Web Page Indexing for Dummies

You may have heard how important it is to have... Read More

Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy: Make Love, Not War

When it comes to search engine optimization strategy, there are... Read More

Copywriters: Make Friends with Search Engine Optimization

I don't know about you, but I felt a lot... Read More

Professional SEO: Hand Off to Bob or Outsource the Job

We are often asked if professional SEO (search engine optimization)... Read More

The Great Search Engine War, Where Content is King

When search engines first appeared, they were simple affairs consisting... Read More

SEO Expert Guide - Page Optimization (part 5/10)

In parts 1 - 4 you learnt how to develop... Read More

Search Engines The Masters Of The Internet Universe ? Part 2

"This is a continuation of the pervious part, split into... Read More

Yahoo Listing Still Worth It?

In October 2002, the Yahoo! portal changed the way it... Read More

60 Day Sandbox for Google & AskJeeves; MSN Indexes Quickest, Yahoo Next

Search engine listing delays have come to be called the... Read More

Getting Noticed by Search Engines

We all, meaning us webmasters want to have the best... Read More

Dynamic Pages

Dynamic pages and the Search Engines By Clare Lawrence 10th... Read More

Internet 2005: The Ten Billions Pages Search Engines

To see each and every page during 10 seconds would... Read More

Googles Back Door... Get Your Website Indexed Quicker!

It's the buzz word's going across the internet marketing guru's... Read More

Dont Submit Your Website To Any Search Engines

We all want to get our websites high up in... Read More

Is Reciprocal Linking Dead?

I just read an article at SitePro News that really... Read More

Banned By Google And Back Again

The date: 29th July 2005. The time: early morning. I... Read More

All About Links -- Interview With Link Building Expert , Bob Gladstein

Julia: Welcome Bob. Thank you for taking the time to... Read More