SEO vs Content Who Wins?
In a showdown between SEO and content, which will emerge as the winner?
SEO, or search engine optimization, increases websites’ rankings in major search engines like Google and Bing. There are many kinds of search results, from images and videos, to news and books. Improving your website visibility through organic search results enables Internet users to see your site more. This means more people will easily remember your website as you regularly appear on the first few pages of search results.
Google, a search engine giant founded in 1998, rose in popularity as they made Internet users quickly find the information they need. This company indexes every website they find to form a wide inventory of information they can provide web users. ‘Spiders,’ or software programs fetch a few web pages. They follow the links on those pages and go to the pages they point to, so on and so forth. This allows the spiders to gather large parts of the web and store millions and millions of pages.
How does Google search work? For example, you want to know how tall Mount Everest is. You type on the search bar, ‘height Mount Everest’. Once you hit ‘Enter,’ Google will search for your keywords on its database. This makes it important for web developers to create sites that are user and search-engine friendly. They can use either of the two techniques, mainly white hat SEO or black hat SEO. White hat SEO refers to using SEO strategies that focus on providing quality information. Black hat SEO, on the other hand, concentrates on deceiving the natural search engine algorithm to rank high in search results. Use of black hat tactics can result to a site being banned or shut down.
One tried-and-true method of pulling up search rankings is the use of backlinks. Search engines use the number of backlinks to find out a website’s search engine ranking, popularity, and value. Web designers have to be careful in using only the right backlinks, as indiscriminate use causes linkspam, which is prohibited by search engines. This situation made Adam Torkildson, a recognized SEO consultant, to declare that if this practice continues, “SEO will be dead in two years.”
Thinking about the death of SEO can seem unlikely for many. SEO has been largely instrumental in helping Internet users find the right websites that can supply them with the information they require. Ken Krogue, a Forbes magazine contributor, agrees with Torkildson. “Google proved Adam right one month later (to the day) with the ‘Penguin release’ … change the weight of their emphasis from “backlinks” more towards social media likes, shares, tweets, reddits, and 1+.” Krogue asserts this renders backlinks obsolete and social networking the better option for marketing content.
The emphasis on content increases the need for website owners to publish quality content instead of focusing on backlinking their pages. Quality content means articles, images, videos and other pieces that provide real, relevant and reliable information to users. This means websites should provide their users with good content without linking to other sites.
Is search ranking really important to your marketing campaign? Maybe it is, on the outset when you’re struggling to pull your website to the front page of the search results, striving to make users notice your site first. Once you get users to visit your website, how do you make them stay? If web owners concentrate only on search rankings, the quality of content will suffer. Once users don’t see relevant content, they leave a website. Effort is wasted if you don’t sustain users with content they can count on.
So, which is better—SEO or content?
Both are important, each in their own way. One cannot stand alone without the other, so be sure to use both wisely.
References:
Forbes.com Article: Death of SEO 1
Forbes.com Article: Death of SEO 2