Is Content Still King?
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There was a saying when I first began Internet marketing (in a serious way) which I luckily took to heart.
Content is King
What it means is that the more and better content your site had, the better. Of course content could be articles, video, or photos. But mostly it referred to, and still does, written content. The idea was that valuable, written content is what gave websites their value and what Google really looked for when deciding how to rank them.
In the beginning, Google focused almost entirely on content. Back in “the day”, on-page SEO ruled. All you had to do was have great, well optimized content on your site and you would rank well. Sometimes, before the algorithm was refined, even trashy/spammy content would rank well.
Content was king then….is it still?
In general, the answer is still yes.
Your site must still offer value to the world. (Google has cracked down hard on spam, duplicate content, auto-blogs, link farms, and even the major article directories to some extent.
Therefore, nothing has changed concerning the on-page aspect of SEO. You still need great content on your site that is optimized correctly. (by the way, “correct SEO optimization” has changed a lot over the years…but that is another blog post).
Creating high quality and original content is still important for your site.
But now days, the concept of “content is king” goes a step further. Today, off-page SEO is vital to success in all but the tiniest niches. Off-page optimization simply has to do with getting backlinks with optimized anchor text. The more links the better AND the higher quality the linking web site is, the better.
Simply put, backlinking is very important and required for success in organic search results in almost all cases. Building backlinks requires content. Whether you submit articles to article directories, post relevant comments to blogs, create feeder sites for link wheels, or build relevant Web 2.0 sites, you will need content…and tons of it!
So yes, content is still king….and it’s more important than ever!
Hey brother, good post. I would say that content (written content) for now is still king just as it was way back when Bill Gates coined the phrase. At the same time, Google is becoming more of a social search engine and in the future, I can see relevance of a site being based more upon the sites social following than actual content. It just seems that everything is heading in that direction. I think that it is time for all of us in the industry to pick our favorite thing and stick to it, not only as far as the content we are putting out there, but the relationships we are building. If Google follows the trend, it will be a lot more important than it is now in the years to come. Cool article.