SEO Vs Quality Content.. Where’s the Balance?
Posted by Patrick Murphy on Mon, Oct 17, 2011
Getting great content out that people love and want to share is hard enough, even without considering the demands of SEO and search engines. These days, tablet computers and iPhones have only increased our demand for digital content- now that we can consume it on the move we can read so much more.
Mediocre, link riddled content – does that make you happy as a reader?
The problem is that a lot of sites have become content starved, and are dishing out mediocre content that is wrapped around SEO. How many times have you clicked a search result only to be presented with one paragraph of key worded hyperlinked mediocrity? The fact is, without great content writing, readers don’t come back. And should we really be slaves to SEO?
We need to make the search engines happy
The fact is, that pushing out a lot of digital content with SEO applied is the best way to make Google happy. This goes for all search engines, where SEO rules the roost. Increasing traffic through SEO is cost effective, and driving that traffic means increased quality leads and revenue from advertising. Buying traffic won’t work in this scenario, because the leads will be of terrible quality. So SEO gets it right in terms of generating great organic traffic leading to quality leads. So then we should be focusing on SEO, and not quality content, right? Wrong.
The trick here is to design content that satisfies SEO rules and gives the reader good value for their time. This is no easy task, and requires content writers with both skill and knowledge of your target industry and SEO.
Not sure where to go from here? Have your website graded for SEO using our free website grader.
What matters most to you, great content or SEO? Leave us your thoughts below.