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The Infallible SEO Option

Posted by Michael Martinez on January 24, 2008 in SEO Theory

When all else fails you, create more content.

If you want more search visibility, create more content.

If you want more links, create more content.

If you want to change the “theme” of your Web site, create more content.

If you want to rank better for more queries, create more content.

If you want more links, create more content.

If you want more influence over your search visibility, create more content.

Many people have no problem creating 200, 300, 400 “landing” pages for their paid advertising but ask them to create more content for organic search and they look like they just missed the last train home. Landing pages are hidden content. You don’t promote them. You don’t link to them (to preserve the reference channel). You don’t even get any benefit from them when you turn off the advertising network.

Frankly, every time someone asks me how they can get more links, the first answer I provide is: “Create more content.” Your inbound links begin with what you give yourself. You increase your chances of enticing other people to link to you by creating more content. If links are all you care about in your organic SEO, you cannot go wrong by creating more content.

Adding content to a typical business site is pretty easy and painless. Persuading business site operators to stop treating their Web sites like electronic brochures is damned near impossible.

If you set up a brand new business site today that is NOT an eCommerce site, you should make sure you can expand it to 1,000 pages of content without having to redesign anything. Your internal navigation should be flexible and extensible without embedding more than 20-30 links in any page (except a sitemap or section guide).

If you just spent two months designing a 20-page site that tells your visitors who you are, what you do, where your business is located, how they can contact you, etc. that’s great. But 20 pages lacks the visibility and self-reinforcing linking power of 200 pages. You can easily create 200 additional pages that complement your carefully designed Executive Bio or Corporate Web site.

You can blog about what you do every day.

You can publish notices about upcoming sales, special offers, trade show appearances, contests, discontinued items, etc.

You can profile your employees, business partners, and customers (get their permission to do so, obviously).

You can write about how your business interacts with its community in special “Community” sections.

You can offer a business person’s point of view on economic and business law (local zoning ordinances, proposed changes in sales tax laws, employment law, etc.) in a “Business Owner’s Editorials” section.

You can write feature articles about your products, you can share product fact sheets, you can post service descriptions, case studies, etc. You don’t have to be a professional writer. In most small to mid-size business sites professional copy would be inappropriate anyway. People reach out to the human aspect of your small to mid-size business. The guys in the oil field want to do business with someone they can trust. People shopping in a grocery store just want to buy low-cost or name-brand products.

A feature article doesn’t have to be anything more than a few paragraphs. It can be what you would write in a blog post without putting it in a blog.

You can write comments about the history of your industry or company (”On this day in 1945, Grandpa Jeremy bought his first tractor dealership and the family was in business”). You can celebrate milestones. You can invite your customers and business partners to submit legitimate testimonial letters to be posted on your business site (only post testimonials where your visitors can identify the person behind the testimonials).

You can include calendars, photo galleries, AND UNRELATED CONTENT.

There are many small business sites that would, in fact, be helped greatly by providing non-business related content to their visitors. A brick-and-mortar business in a small town can enhance its content and search visibility to dedicating an entire sub-section of its site to the small town. Tell people about your community. Don’t just link out to your friends’ and neighbors’ Web sites. Share information about local causes, local history, local celebrities. Did your local high school win the state championship five years in a row? Why not interview the principal an coaches?

In short, the more you limit yourself by NOT creating content, the more you deserve to be buried in the search results. If you’re not willing to create the content people want to find, you have no business complaining to yourself or anyone else about your dismal search results.

Every page you create can link back to your own content with whatever anchor text you want. Every page you create can drive what little PageRank it accrues toward whatever other pages you want to promote.

Every page you create is a potential advertising billboard where you can tell curious people about your business and how it stands out from the crowd.

Every page you create extends your reach into the Internet, broadens the scope of your marketing resources, and helps you in ways you cannot begni to imagine.

5-page business sites are nothing more than the first step toward 500-page business sites. Think of your company’s Web site as the personal Web site for your best friend. What is your best friend’s personality, likes, dislikes? What makes your best friend special, out of the ordinary, and worth saying something about?

In search engine optimization you can never go wrong by creating more content.