Create Quality Content for Your Audience
Treat others the way you want to be treated. We’ve all heard it before, the Golden Rule for life. It’s all about how you treat others, your interaction with others, that will lead to how we get treated. In SEO, there’s a Golden Rule as well: create content that you’d want to read. This golden rule of SEO is all about creating high-quality, relevant, helpful content that gives your audience a real value.
Google and other search engines will reward websites that serve people well and provide great content. When you focus on helping your readers, you will start to see your rankings improve.
The golden rule of SEO
The golden rule of SEO is to create great quality content that your audience will get great value from. Google and other search engines want to direct their searchers to relevant and quality information and sites that deliver a great experience. If a business’s content is written to satisfy their audience’s needs, it is far more likely to get a good ranking.
Google will list some websites that pay for sponsorship spots at the very top of rankings. For many users, they simply know to scroll past those. For many users, myself included, unless I’m looking to buy something they’ll always scroll past the sponsored ads. Google’s algorithms are all focused and designed to rank the best content the highest it can for its users. If Google sent users to spammy or garbage sites, users wouldn’t come back to Google time and time again.
When your content and website are focused on providing great content to users, it builds great trust with search engines. As the content on your website builds great trust with search engines, it leads to higher and higher rankings. As your website that is full of great quality content ranks higher and higher on search engines, it will be read by more and more users. As that process keeps happening, you’ll create a powerful SEO vortex that keeps building and building.
How Great Content Builds SEO Authority Over Time
By following this, businesses can start their SEO journey, and simply focus on great quality content. Even if a website’s authority score isn’t the highest, providing great quality content that is written for readers will help get that score moving up. As it does, it’s more realistic to go after higher keyword difficulty search terms. Having a low domain name authority doesn’t mean google won’t rank the site, just means you need to work that much harder to get the ranking. Enter quality content.
Every time you write a well-written page or blog article, it will strengthen your site’s SEO authority. Quality content can earn backlinks, be easily shared, and provide long-term credibility to your website. When creating those great posts, consistency builds momentum. Each new piece of great content helps the next one perform better.
Forget About Google (Sort Of)
There is no spoofing Google and tricking it into giving you a good ranking. In some ways, you should almost forget about Google when thinking about SEO. Focus instead on how you can provide more and more great quality content to users. Remember in Field of Dream, “If you build it, he will come.”
The goal is to provide helpful content, not just optimized content. Ask yourself what questions your current clients are asking you, and write the answers to those questions. Each of those questions is a great blog article or FAQ.
None of the content on your website should be geared for Google and not your audience. If your content is geared towards your audience, it will be geared towards Google as well. Remember, Google’ s Algorithm reads through content and processes it in near-human-like intelligence. By writing for your audience, by focusing on your audience, you will naturally be improving your SEO.
Practical Ways to Apply the Golden Rule of SEO
One point of writing great content that can’t be overstated enough, is to be sure to write in a conversational tone. Write as if you were sitting across from your reader at a coffee shop. Sure there is a time and place for big fancy industry words, but it’s not early on in page content.
Be sure to break out different paragraphs with key headings. Many readers will want to scan through your content and focus on the headings. When they find a section they do want to read, be sure to keep paragraphs shorter and easier for readers.
When you’re writing content, don’t feel like you need to write it in a way that it will be perfect forever and ever. A great SEO technique is to continually come back to content and update it as time goes. Statistics might change, small details might get updated. Be sure to check back in on past content and keep them up to date. Doing that provides even more great content for users.
Keep in mind, this emphasis on quality content refers to all the content on your site. Any images, charts, videos, or any other type of visual needs to match the same quality of content. Having these other forms of visuals is a great way to further explain your points.
Start Using the Golden Rule of SEO
For many small businesses, seo can feel like an always moving target. The Golden Rule of SEO, however, never changes: create quality content that helps your audience. When providing great quality content is your focus, the rankings will follow.
At Full Scope Creative, we help small businesses put this golden rule into practice. From strategy to content to design to hosting and more, we’re ready to make your website shine in search results.