Why content is king for SEO?
To answer this question in its entirety, I will have to go back in time. Those of you who have been in the web business for a long time (think year 2000) , would recall that there used to be at least ten popular search engines . I used to take years just to submit my website to each one of them. Many guys made pots of money automating the submission process. It was a lot easier getting great rankings on most of the search engines. The trick was to manage the Title and description in the meta of the Html pages. Then came along Google with its own version of search engine. This almost coincided with the busting of internet bubble which killed many IT companies. During that time many search engines went down the chute. It was somewhere during that period that content begun to matter in the scheme of things.
Keyword stuffing
So what do you think smart guys did to rule the search engines? Obviously they stuffed their web pages with keywords. The search spider simply counted the number of keywords and decided on its density and presto- the website got listed at the head of search engines. Meanwhile the only surviving search engines other than Google were yahoo and MSN. But the race was headed by Google. Why did Google become popular? That’s another big story. But for now I will only mention that guys at Google are a lot smarter. They came up with the concept of keyword density. What is this all about? When we write words like I, we, you, it, is and the are used often. But other words when used in normal writing are not repeated often. What research showed up was that normal writing contains words with less than a few percent density. If this density was crossed, it meant that keywords were being introduced artificially or there was an attempt to stuff keywords. This brought in a revolution in writing content for purpose of search engine optimization or SEO.
Keyword density
These developments were not happening in isolation. The search engine algorithms were getting refined and Google almost attainted cult status with its innovations. Yahoo and MSN willy-nilly followed up with these trends. The keyword business was getting more and more monetized. Google ads which were served on all their platforms were (and are) dependant on keywords. The ads would only be clicked on if they were relevant. The entire money making machine would have shut down if Google ads were served in irrelevant places. Relevance of keywords becomes all the more critical to Google. It is no wonder that they started penalizing websites which engaged in keyword stuffing. Blacklisting these sites was the only option left.
The arrival of content in SEO scene
Another important conclusion which Google arrived at was that good websites (those which deserve a higher search engine ranking) must invariably have large amount of information or content. More the content on a website better the chances of it having information. The search algorithm therefore was modified to take this factor into consideration. What followed was mayhem. Thousands of content writers were engaged in writing content and the internet almost burst at the seams with information. A stage was reached when almost every site was a replica of another. Content was copied and pasted without application of mind. Duplication of content became a major problem. Google understandably came up with another algorithm to tackle this menace of content duplication
Duplication of content
I have mentioned earlier that Google’s lifeline is its ads and if they are not served they would never earn a penny. The Google monetizing framework is built on this fact. It is natural that they make every effort to counter this threat of duplication. A new concept of content duplication evolved in which sites which copied content were penalized. But what is duplication? How much of identical content is allowed before being considered as duplicated? It is generally agreed that 40% of copied content is permitted. A whole new category of content writers who specialized in rewriting mushroomed as a result of this modification in search engine algorithm. Many software like Copyscape emerged which would calculate the percentage of duplication.
Content is king
It is now obvious to most of you why content is king for SEO. Rather than work out complex calculations, it is better to provide excellent, relevant and detailed content on your website. This will ensure that your search engine ranking is not compromised. The logic is simple. Add as much of content on your website as possible. Another aspect which needs to be considered is adding content continuously. Though I confess that I myself have not done any research on this subject, it is widely believed that search spiders love changing content. We must feed these with fresh content and only then can we maintain our search engine ranking. We must therefore avoid dumping all the material at one go. The content should be uploaded continuously and spread over time. Someone may argue that grabbing pole position is better than the slow climb. I have nothing to say to these guys. SEO is anyway a test and trial activity.
